Did you watch this year’s Academy Awards ceremony? If so, you saw history in the making. Costume designer Ruth E. Carter was nominated for an Academy Award for the fifth time for her work in the movie Sinners. This makes her the most-often-nominated Black woman in Academy Award history. Here, btw takes a closer look at her illustrious career in honor of Women’s History Month, which is a time to recognize and celebrate the many contributions of women and girls.
Who is Ruth E. Carter?
Costume designer Ruth E. Carter was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, as the youngest of eight children. She was raised by a single mother. She learned to sew at age nine, using her mother’s old sewing machine. After her high school graduation, Carter studied Theatre Arts at Hampton University. Then, she moved to Los Angeles, where she met director Spike Lee. The two have worked together ever since, partnering on fourteen films. Carter has also worked with other directors, such as Steven Spielberg on his film Amistad about the 1800s slave trade in New England, and Ryan Coogler on the Black Panther series.
Carter has been nominated for Academy Awards for her work on several films, including Malcolm X, Amistad, Black Panther, and now Sinners. She won two Academy Awards for her designs for the Black Panther franchise. Her recent nomination for Sinners makes her the most nominated Black women in any category in the history of the Academy Awards. She is also the first Black costume designer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Why It Matters
Sinners is a movie about African American sharecroppers in the 1930s living in the Mississippi Delta. With her costumes, Carter wanted to accurately portray what working-class life was like for Black sharecroppers in that part of the country at that time. She used costumes to show the difficulty of sharecroppers’ lives. But the film also focuses on the moments of joy they experienced as well. In addition to being set in a different time period, Sinners is also a horror film, which presents extra challenges. There had to be multiples of many costume pieces due to the fake blood used to film the movie.
Since 1929, over 3,100 Academy Award “Oscars” have been awarded, but only twenty have gone to Black women. In other words, Black women have won just 0.6percent of all Oscars. As the most nominated woman in history, Carter says she hopes to draw the Academy’s attention to the need for better representation of Black women, both in front of and behind the camera.
Sinners Cinematographer Also Makes History
Carter was not the only member of the Sinners team to make history at this year’s Oscar awards. The movie’s cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, became the first woman in history to win the Oscar for best cinematography. She was also:
- the fourth woman ever to be nominated for cinematography
- the first woman of color to receive a nomination and
- the first Black person to win the Best Cinematography award.
Sinners was also the first time in history that a movie was shot on IMAX film by a woman.
Born in Northern California, Arkapaw studied art history at Loyola Marymount University and attended graduate school to pursue cinematography at the American Film Institute. During her Academy Awards acceptance speech, she thanked all of the women in the room and asked them to stand, saying that she couldn’t have succeeded without them.
Sinners–the most-nominated film in history, with a record of sixteen Academy Award nominations–had several other moments of triumph as well. Michael B. Jordan became just the sixth African American winner of the Best Actor award in history. The film’s director, Ryan Coogler, also won for Best Original Screenplay, He was only the second Black person ever to win that award.