Major award shows such as the Grammys and the Oscars are right around the corner, but much of the arts and entertainment world is spending more time reacting to the new presidency of Donald Trump and his recent executive order on immigration. Here’s what’s new and interesting in entertainment and the arts:
For anyone wondering just how political this year’s Academy Awards are likely to get , here’s an early sign: One of Hollywood’s leading talent agencies is canceling its traditional Oscar party and will instead hold a rally to protest the Trump Administration’s controversial moves on the immigration front.
The United Talent Agency has announced that it will hold an event it is calling “United Voices” at its Los Angeles headquarters on Feb. 24, two days before the Oscars. In a press release, the agency said the rally is intended “to express the creative community’s growing concern with anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and its potential chilling effect on the global exchange of ideas and freedom of expression.”
The agency also announced it will donate $250,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union and the International Rescue Committee.
“If our nation ceases to be the place where artists the world over can come to express themselves freely, then we cease, in my opinion, to be America,” UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer said in a letter to the agency’s employees announcing the steps. “When fear and division get the better of a society, artists are among the first to feel the impact—and to denounce the ill winds.”
At least one Oscar nominee, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi – whose film “The Salesman” earned a nod in the foreign language category and who is a UTA client – has said he will not attend the Oscars this year to protest President Trump’s recent executive order that sought to temporarily bar immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. The future of that order, which has been suspended, is now in question following a decision Thursday by a federal appellate court declining its reinstatement.
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