Jan Lisa Huttner, the Chicago film critic who is the co-founder of International SWAN Day and WITASWAN, has created an international stir about the directing credits for the film, Slumdog Millionaire…
When the Golden Globes nominated Boyle for “Best Director” but failed to mention Tandan, Huttner started a letter writing campaign asking the Golden Globes leaders to explain why they had not included Tandan with Boyle. Many of our readers joined the letter writing campaign, often adding touching stories of their own about not being recognized for their creative work.
The people at the Golden Globes never responded, but journalists in the U.S. and Great Britain picked up on the story including John Jurgensen of the Wall Street Journal, Prairie Miller of WBAI, Ramin Setoodeh of Newsweek, Melissa Silverstein of the Huffington Post, Amar Singh of London’s Evening Standard, Anita Singh of the UK Telegraph, Sasha Stone of Awards Daily, and World Entertainment News Network published on IMDb News. The Oscar nominations came out this week, and once again Danny Boyle was nominated for Best Director of “Slumdog Millionaire,” and Loveleen Tandan was not mentioned.
Tandan is trying to distance herself from the controversy. We will never know if it is because she truly does not think she deserves the credit or because she is worried about being labeled as a “difficult” woman. The “co-director” title is ambiguous, and the situation is complicated by race as well as gender issues. The reporter for Newsweek pointed out that the faces in the movie are brown, but the ones on stage accepting Golden Globe Awards were all white.
