Is Beyoncé’s Lemonade one of the Best Films of 2016?

Is Beyoncé’s Lemonade one of the Best Films of 2016? - Vanity Fair

Posted: 09 Dec 2016 12:00 AM PST

With the release of Lemonade in late April, Beyoncé's status as one of pop culture's most talented artists became unquestionable. The visual album was not just a collection of songs—it was a work of art meant to be savored and celebrated, one that announced music's queen bee as an accomplished filmmaker as well as a multi-talented performer.

And so far, it has also been a magnet for awards. Lemonade, which debuted as a one-hour film aired on HBO, was nominated for four Primetime Emmys, and won eight Video Music Awards in August. (It had been nominated for 11.) Lemonade's also the most nominated album of the 2017 Grammy Awards, with nine nominations to its name—including Album of the Year. It seems the only award it can't win is an Oscar, since Lemonade never screened in theaters—though that hasn't stopped critics from naming it one of the best films of the year anyway.

There is a small but noticeable crusade underway to get Lemonade recognized not just as a visual album, but as an award-worthy film as well. Already, Lemonade has been included on Sight and Sound's annual 'Best Films of 2016' list, and it's also been popping up on several individual critics' end-of-the-year lists.

David Ehrlich, a film critic for IndieWire, placed Lemonade at number 23 on his Best Films of 2016 list. Alan Scherstuhl, Film Editor for the Village Voice, told Vanity Fair, that many critics have reached out to him to ask whether they can include Lemonade on their ballots for the Voice's annual critics poll

Most recently, Jen Yamato, an entertainment reporter and critic for The Daily Beast, led a campaign for Lemonade's recognition when she nominated the piece for a special citation at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

"I personally nominated Lemonade, and was happy to see some support. I think we got about eight votes in total and they did come from the younger members of this critics group," Yamato tells Vanity Fair. "LAFCA is one of the most prestigious critics groups in the country, but I don't think many older critics got to see the visual album."

That could be a major roadblock for the movement: because Lemonade was not presented as a traditional film would be—i.e. in theaters—film critics had to seek it out in order to see it. Many didn't. And on top of that, there's controversy over whether it should considered a film at all. "When Jen [Yamato] put it up for Special citation, there were some laughs in the room," Drew McWeeny, a film critic at 80sallover.com and LAFCA member, says. "I think that's a generational thing. There's no question for people in my generation that MTV changed the visual language of the 80s—that music videos can also be great films."

There's also a technicality keeping Lemonade from being considered a film by traditional criteria. For a piece of visual art to be considered for an Academy Award, it must be over 40 minutes long (except in the short film categories), released in the qualifying year, and exhibited with certain video and audio quality standards. But it also must complete a seven-day consecutive "qualifying run" in a Los Angeles County theater, during which it screens at least three times a day, with paid admission.

Lemonade didn't do this, which makes it ineligible for many prestigious film awards despite its quality and reception. Instead, the project falls in the gray area between film and TV. Lemonade was eligible for Emmys because it premiered on HBO, but will not be eligible for an Oscar; meanwhile, ESPN's five-part documentary series O.J.: Made in America, is being considered a film outright because it was screened in limited theaters, even though it also aired on television. It's a slightly arbitrary distinction that feels outdated in an age where the lines between art forms are becoming blurrier and blurrier.

"Formal and economic decisions made decades ago decide what a 'film' is, and those systems have not caught up to [the work] artists are producing," Scherstuhl says. "I'm not going to say that Lemonade is not a film. I'm just not. The only thing that says it's not a film is this very particular criteria that's been established."

The definitions of "film" and "television," Ehrlich says, are "archaic:" "They mean things in economic terms for the systems that produce them—the means by which a product is distributed to viewers—more than anything else," he said. "The conversation is not really necessarily about the qualitative aspect. It's about how they get into the world."