The first woman was nominated for Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards in 2018. It was the longest category at the Oscars to go without nominating a woman outside of the male acting divisions.
Only three more have been nominated since Rachel Morrison got that landmark nod: Ari Wegner, Mandy Walker and, now, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the cinematographer behind Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners.”
Durald could make history at the Academy Awards as the first woman to ever take home the Best Cinematography prize. She would also be the first Black cinematographer to win the award (with the first African American nominee, Bradford Young, recognized only a year before Morrison in 2017).
“It’s about photography. It’s about an emotional format that someone wants to know my perspective on. If everybody’s a white male, then that’s just one perspective,” Durald said. “I think there are more women now. There are fewer women of color, but hopefully after all of this awards (season), I’ve gone out there, spoken a lot to people and young girls, it helps, because you want to see yourself reflected out there to know that you can do this job.”
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These late landmarks speak to the long-running disparity between men and women in the field of cinematography. Despite being formed in 1919, it wasn’t until 1980 that the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) inducted its first female member, Brianne Murphy. It wasn’t until 2022 that Ellen Kuras became the first woman to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC.
When Durald began studying cinematography in the early 2000s, she noted that there “weren’t many women in the field.” She eventually came across Kuras’ name for her work on the film “Blow,” which encouraged her to study the discipline at AFI.
“I thought, well, if she’s doing it, that means I can do it.”
Durald now calls Kuras a friend, one who will be at the Oscars with her on Sunday night. Now, on the awards trail for her own history-making awards season moment (Durald is the first woman of color nominated for Best Cinematography), the “Sinners” DP hopes to give young, aspiring filmmakers the same inspiration Kuras gave her.
“Young girls will look up this nomination and see that film and will associate all the people that made it, people that are people of color,” Durald said. “All of our heads of department are Black women, and I think that’s important because you don’t see that very often. Ryan creates that.”
“I would say it’s very unique to Ryan that he creates a community on set where you see yourself reflected around you, and that becomes very important when you want to feel confident and strong. You lead and your ideas are heard and you have power on the set. It’s a very lovely place to be creatively, and it’s very rare.”
Durald and Coogler met through Rachel Morrison, Coogler’s DP on “Black Panther.” After shooting the first season of “Loki,” Durald joined Coogler for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” before the two reteamed for “Sinners.”
“I knew that the next project was something personal that he wrote that he wanted to shoot on film,” Durald said. “But that’s the only thing I knew.”
“Sinners” marked a big change from Durald and Coogler’s prior collaboration. While the second “Black Panther” film took place in the sweeping vistas of Wakanda and the Atlantis-like underwater world of Talokan, the action of “Sinners” occurs in a far more confined setting.
Almost the entire back half of the film takes place in the central Juke Joint, a setting that goes from being a celebratory club to a relative tomb as a group of vampires close in. Though the situation brings with it a bit of claustrophobia, Durald said it was important to ensure that the audience didn’t feel overly confined in a single setting.
“I think it’s really your job as a photographer to shape the space, but also know how to move the camera around in order to make frames feel new or move them around if people were to get bored,” Durald said. “I think there are moments where things can be static and then there are other moments where they require movement.”
“With (production designer) Hannah (Beachler), I’m working with her as far as where the shape and space should be, where the motivated light should be, where the practicals should be. What are those tones? I always love building contrast with my team, so that’s most important to me. I think if something has really nice shape and creates mood, then you don’t get tired of a space.”
One of the most visually striking scenes in “Sinners” comes when Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore performs his song “I Lied to You” at the Juke Joint — a performance so profound that individuals across time and cultures are pulled into a mind-bending celebratory dance. Durald pulls out all the stops for this sequence, expanding the aspect ratio to fill an IMAX screen and finding various stitch points to make it all appear as a single fluid shot.
“It was written on the page beautifully,” Durald said. “It’s like a departure from the story. It wants you to kind of go on a dream essentially with the storyteller for a moment and open your mind up, really. It’s interesting because, like, when you read it, your mind does open up.”
“Sinners” brought in a record-breaking 16 nominations at the Oscars, shattering the previous top haul of 14 established 75 years ago by “All About Eve” and later tied by “Titanic” and “La La Land.” Out of 17 eligible categories, “Sinners” was represented in 16, missing only a Best Actress nomination (which the film, lacking a leading lady, did not campaign for).
“There’s no one left out. That it wasn’t just like one person or two people, that made me very happy, because we all are family,” Durald said. “We get along really well, and we all work really well together, so it’s nice to be able to do the awards circuit with all the same people you made the movie with.”
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