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During her acceptance speech for the Toronto International Film Festival Share Her Journey Groundbreaker Award, Cate Blanchett called for an increased focus on sustainability and green practices in the film industry, as well as a continued commitment to varied storytelling that uplifts women.
“In an industry that naturally recycles and reexamines ideas, I think there’s an inherent creative circularity to the way we make work,” she said. “And as we all know, gloat and excess are the enemy of creativity. I think the piece of change we’re missing is to make work as an industry more sustainable, more circular.”
The Carol star began her speech by lightly admonishing herself — “Oh God, technology,” she said — holding up a phone in her hand and joking that she was so “disorganized” that she wasn’t able to prepare her remarks on the teleprompter.
With her words at the TIFF Tribute Awards at the Royal York, presented by Joanna Griffiths and the women of Knix, she praised the entertainment world for being at the “forefront” of finding ways to continue operations amid the pandemic. While there were COVID officers appointed to productions, she asked, “Where are the green officers?”
At this time, her speech was briefly interrupted by the stage music that began playing to cut off long acceptances at ceremonies. “Oh is that music?” she said, looking around and briefly confused as the audience chuckled.
“You mention climate change, and that’s what you get,” she said, throwing her hand up.
“It’s the end of a long evening folks, but — you know — it could be the end of us all,” she said, prompting cheers from attendees and shouts of someone heard chanting, “More, more, more!”
“I think there is a moral imperative to make this switch … we are a hugely influential industry and there’s a huge financial and creative opportunity in making work more sustainably,” she concluded. “So I would suggest that we seize this opportunity. I’m off my soap box now and off to the bar.”
She was presented with the honor by Lupita Nyong’o, who referenced her 2014 Academy Award speech, in which she pushed back against the notion that films led by women are “niche.” “The world is round, people,” Blanchett said at the time, upon accepting her Oscar for Blue Jasmine, which Nyong’o delightfully repeated to uproarious applause from attendees.
Earlier in her speech, the Disclaimer star called on her peers to continue in the work the women before her had done, who had “so quickly … found the industry calcified around them to exclude them.”
“We often talk about the work we’ve still got to do in the industry, and my God there’s still so much work to be done, but the industry has changed enormous amounts since I’ve stepped in it,” she said. “And unfortunately, we do need to keep talking about the changes that we’ve made, because I think that fairness, equity and respect are not embedded into the systems that we work in.”
She added, “We have to keep ourselves front and center. We have to keep asking questions that open locked doors and knowing our worth: knowing our worth creatively as well as financially. And greater inclusivity on our sets lead to less marginal and vibrant storytelling, as is evidenced by what is going on here at TIFF at this festival. I think homogeneity is the enemy of everything we make.”
