MOVIES

Brown grad, professor and student are in running for Oscars

Linda Borg
lborg@providencejournal.com
Directors of the documentary "RBG," Betsy West, Brown Class of '73, and Julie Cohen. [Storyville films / Kristen Hoeberrmann]

PROVIDENCE — A Brown alumna has been nominated for an Oscar for her work on the critically acclaimed movie "RBG," which describes the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Directed by Betsy West, Class of 1973, and Julie Cohen, the film is nominated for best documentary feature at the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday. The film is also nominated for Best Original Song for 10-time nominee Diane Warren's "I'll Fight."

Both West and Cohen had interviewed Ginsburg previously, West for her PBS series "Makers: Women Who Make America" and Cohen for her documentary "The Sturgeon Queens," when they dreamed up the idea to make a movie about her.

The two join Peter Farrelly, a Cumberland native, whose latest movie, "Green Book," is nominated for best picture and four other awards, including best original screenplay.

"We had learned about her extraordinary story — both the challenges she faced as a brilliant young lawyer and how she took on the centuries of discrimination as a litigator in the Supreme Court and changed the world for American women," West told the Brown Daily Herald. "Beyond the memes and the T-shirts and the tattoos, this is one extraordinary person whose story is inspiring."

But West isn't alone. RaMell Ross, an assistant professor of visual art at Brown University, has also been nominated for best documentary feature. He said his film “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” was an attempt to convey the pace of everyday life in a rural, primarily black Southern community, according to Brown University.

And Brown freshman Charlotte Silverman has been nominated for an Oscar for best documentary short. She is an executive producer for “Period. End of Sentence,” which explores the links between access to menstrual-hygiene products and access to education, according to the Brown press office.

Silverman’s group partnered with an Indian grassroots organization to purchase and install a sanitary-pad manufacturing machine in a village outside Delhi, India, creating a women-run micro-economy there. Silverman told Brown, “Our motto is, ‘A period should end a sentence. Not a girl’s education.’”

— lborg@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter:@lborgprojocom