Chronicling the Historic Wins of the 94th Oscars

While most of the world is focusing on a moment that lasted less than a minute in a 3 hour and 40-minute broadcast, I would like to refocus some of that spotlight on some of the historic moments, specifically, the historic wins that happened at the 94th Oscars.

If you missed the winners, here's my write-up!

Best Picture

CODA made history on Oscar Sunday as the first streaming studio to win the Best Picture Oscar. Netflix was one of the first studios to break into this category with 2018’s Roma and has had many since, but no matter how much money the streaming service threw at the FYC campaign, they could never snag the win in this category. Some might argue that the same-day release of Nomadland in theaters and on Hulu might actually be the first Best Picture win here. However, that was a simultaneous theatrical and streaming release, whereas CODA had a theatrical release after its Oscar nomination.

Furthermore, Siân Heder became the sixth film to be awarded a Best Picture Oscar without receiving a Best Director nomination, the previous winners being Wings at the 28th Oscars, Grand Hotel at the 32nd Oscars, Driving Miss Daisy at the 62nd Academy Awards, Argo at the 85th Oscars, and Green Book at the 91st Oscars. CODA was also the ninth film to win with a PG-13 rating and the second remake of a non-English film to win Best Picture.

Best Actor

As controversial as the man is right now, Will Smith has become the 45th Black Oscar winner in the ceremony’s 94-year history. Not only that, but he is the second Black actor and the ninth Black actor to be nominated for both acting and producing in the same year.

Even though Denzel did not win, it’s worth noting that he also made history for the most nominations for a Black actor: 7 nominations in the Best Actor category and 2 in the Best Supporting Actor category. He was also the first Black actor to receive a nomination for a performance in a Shakespeare adaptation.

Best Supporting Actor

Troy Kotsur won for his role in CODA as Frank Rossi and became only the second deaf actor ever to be nominated for an Oscar (the first being his co-star, Marlee Matlin, in 1986). No, that’s not just the second deaf actor to win an Oscar - Kotsur is the second deaf actor even to be nominated for an Oscar. In any category. The Academy has a lot of work to do.

Best Supporting Actress

Ariana DeBose won for her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Through this win, she became the first Black and openly queer woman to win in this category. Marlon Brando, who won multiple Oscars, was bisexual when he won both of his Oscars but was not out at the time. Neither was Kevin Spacey, who came out as gay in 2017 after a sexual misconduct accusation by Anthony Rapp but was not out at the time of winning either of his Oscars. That’s probably a great place to stop, but you get the picture.

Best Director

Jane Campion, who was previously nominated for The Piano at the 66th Oscars in eight categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, has become the first woman to be nominated in the Best Director category twice and the second year in a row which a woman won Best Director (Chloé Zhao won last year for Nomadland).

Also making history in this category is the legendary director Steven Spielberg, who has become the first director to be nominated across six decades. Those six decades of nominates are in 1978 for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1982 for Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1994 for Schindler’s List, 2006 for Munich, and 2012 for War Horse, and now for West Side Story.

Best Visual Effects

A neat little tidbit: both Dune films have been on the shortlist for Best Visual Effects, but Dune: Part One is the only one of the two out currently that has been nominated for the Oscar, and by extension, the first one to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Best Animated Feature

Anyone - feel free to correct me if I’m super wrong about this, but I’m 90% sure that Encanto is the first Latino animated film to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. There were Latino animated films nominated in the past (again, correct me if I’m wrong), but they were produced by White producers.

Furthermore, this year was a very diverse one for this category. Besides Encanto, we have Flee (a Danish animated documentary about a child refugee from Afghanistan), Luca (an animated film with an Italian-American director and is set in the Italian Riviera), and Raya and the Last Dragon has many diverse cast and crew members. Even The Mitchells vs. the Machines, a film directed and produced by non-LGBTQ crew members, still has LGBT themes with its main character, Katie.

And those are the historic wins of the 94th Oscars! If I missed something, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments below or on any of my social media accounts.

Until next time!

Thanks to Thomas Stoneham-Judge from Movies For Reel, Shane Conto, Joseph Davis, David Walters, Ambula Bula, and Matthew Simpson for supporting Austin B Media on Patreon!