A public film school for minorities: George Clooney’s new project

Always committed to charity and activism, George Clooney he does not hold back this time either and, together with colleagues like Don Cheadle and Kerry Washington, he is ready to work to set up a school district in Los Angeles that will allow marginalized communities to study film and learn the crafts of the show business. In Hollywood, in fact, there are very few non-white workers to have a job, and that is precisely why Clooney has chosen to embrace the cause: to create new opportunities that can train the set designers, costume designers and camera operators of tomorrow.

The actor, in his early 60s, discussed the idea with his agent Bryan Lourd and his partner Grant Heslov less than a month ago, quickly realizing that the film industry has big problems on the front. racial representation behind the scenes: “This is the perfect time to get people to participate because everyone has their eyes on it,” said Clooney. “It makes no sense that Los Angeles is not part of this movement that is able to involve more underrepresented people.”

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The new school, nicknamed Roybal School of Film and Television Production, will open its doors in the fall of 2022 and will be housed in the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center. Hopefully, the program will look to expand to include more Los Angeles area schools, while Clooney and others involved are working to make contacts with professionals to organize internships and obtain the appropriate equipment. According to a study by USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, in the first 300 films made between 2016 and 2018 there were no women of color as cinematographers: Directors such as Ava DuVernay have, however, sought alternative avenues to foster inclusion such as the launch of a free research platform, called Array Crew, for anyone with verifiable industry credit.

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