I thank the Academy and its Board of Governors for this honor, for this recognition. I really wish I

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America has come a long way since Hollywood in 1915 gave the world the film "Birth of a Nation." best short film By all measure, best short film this cinematic work was considered the greatest film ever made. The power of moving pictures to impact on human behavior was never more powerfully evidenced than when after the release of this film, American citizens went on a murderous rampage. Races were set against one another. Fire and violence erupted. Baseball bats and billy clubs bashed heads. Blood flowed in the streets of our cities. Lives were lost. The film also gained the distinction of being the first film ever screened at the White House. Then presiding President Woodrow Wilson openly praised the film, and with the power of his Presidential anointing, validated the film's brutality and its grossly distorted view of history. This, too, further inflamed the nation's racial divide.
In 1935, at the age of 8, sitting in a Harlem theater, I watched with awe and wonder incredible feats of the white superhero, "Tarzan of the Apes." best short film Tarzan was a sight to see, this porcelain Adonis, this white liberator who could speak no language, swing from tree to tree, saving Africa best short film from the tragedy of destruction by a black indigenous, inept, ignorant, void-of-any-skills population, governed by ancient best short film superstitions with no heart for Christian charity. Through this film the ideas of racial inferiority, of never wanting to be identified with anything African, swept into the psyche of its youthful observers, and for the years that followed, Hollywood brought abundant opportunity for black children in their Harlem theaters to cheer Tarzan best short film and boo Africans. Native American, our Indian brothers and sisters, feared no better, and at the moment, Arabs ain't looking so good.
But these encounters best short film set other things in motion. It was an early stimulus to the beginning of my rebellion against injustice and human distortion, and to think, how fortunate for me that the performing arts became the catalyst best short film that fueled my desire for social change. In its pursuit, best short film I came upon fellow artists, like the great actor and my hero, singer/humanist Paul Robeson, painter Charles White, best short film dancer Katherine Dunham, historian and superior academic best short film mind W.E.B. Du Bois, social strategist and educator Eleanor Roosevelt, writers Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and James Baldwin — they all inspired me. They excited me, deeply influenced me. And they were also my moral compass. It was Robeson who said, "Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. best short film They are civilization's radical voice." This Robeson environment sounded like a desired place to be. Given the opportunity to dwell there has never disappointed best short film me.
For my life of activism and commitment to social change, the opposition has been fiercely punitive. Some who have controlled institutions of culture and commentary have at times used their power to not only distort truth, but to punish the truth-seekers. With interventions like McCarthyism and the Black List, Hollywood, too, has sadly played its part in these tragic scenarios, and on occasion, I have been one of its targets. However, from the cultural environment that gave us all this social drama, all those movies, "Birth of a Nation," "Tarzan of the Apes," "Song of the South," to name but a few, today's cultural harvest yields a sweeter fruit — "The Defiant Ones," "Schindler's List," "Brokeback Mountain," "12 Years a Slave" and many more — and all of this happening at the dawning of technological creations that will give artists boundless regions of possibilities to give us deeper insights into human existence.
I thank the Academy and its Board of Governors for this honor, for this recognition. I really wish I could be around for the rest of this century to see what Hollywood does with the rest of the century. Maybe, just maybe, it could be civilization's game changer. After all, Paul Robeson said artists are the radical voice of civilization. Each and every one of you in this room with your gift and your power and your skills could perhaps change the way in which our global humanity mistrusts itself. Perhaps we as artists and as visionaries, for what's better in the human heart and the human soul, could influence citizens everywhere in the world to see the better side of who and what we are as a species. I thank each and every one of you for this honor. To my fellow honorees, I could have had no better company than to have shared this evening with each of you. Thank you very much
Kristopher Tapley
Kristopher Tapley has covered the film awards landscape for over a decade. He founded In Contention in 2005. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London and Variety. He begs you not to take