Reeshika Sharma | Staff Writer

The Oscars award ceremony was on Mar. 10 at 4:00 p.m. These awards are given to celebrate technical and artistic merit in the film industry, and hold great value in the film community. 

Samuel Ortega, a Whitworth University second-year English and film double-major, shared his opinions on this year’s Oscars.   

Ortega mentioned that he has been seeing this award ceremony from many years and said, “this year’s ceremony was pretty good compared to other years, it went smoothly there weren’t any mishaps.” However, the time difference was a change. 

“It was strange that it was moved to 4:00, as usually it is at 5:00,” said Ortega.

One of the movies that most stood to him was Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” ” because it [was] such a monumental movie to be made and [to] have the first native woman to be nominated for best actress, which was very impressive,” said Ortega.

Amongst the many speeches of the night, Ortega shared an important highlight from the director of “Zone of Interest” Jonathan Glazer’s speech. Glazer spent time recognizing the occupation in Gaza, which Ortega said he appreciated.

Dr. Nichole Bogarosh, associate professor of communication studies at Whitworth and a long-time avid fan of the Oscars, shared her experiences with this award ceremony as well. 

Diversity and representation among the nominees and winners are getting “better in recent years, really taking steps since the #oscarssowhite first appeared a few years ago,” said Bogarosh.

Lily Gladstone was the first Native American actor to be nominated for best actress category for her role in movie “Killers of the Flower Moon.” “I am sad that this was the first time a Native American [actress] was nominated for an acting role in the entire history of the Oscars. That was a long time coming! So, it was disappointing to see Lily Gladstone lose in the best actress category, though I loved Emma Stone’s performance,” said Bogarosh.

“In the acting categories, which are the most visible and which the public [knows] the most about, the supporting actress race was the most diverse, with three out of five of the nominees being women of color. However, only one of those individuals was over the age of 45, none had a known disability and only one was openly queer. […] The other acting categories had even less diversity. Diversity is about more than just race,” said Bogarosh.

To check out the winners of this year’s Oscar awards, check out the official Acadamy Awards list here.