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Ma Rainey wins two prizes in BAFTAs opener

Marie-Louise GumuchianAAP
Actor Noel Clarke received the outstanding British contribution to cinema award.
Camera IconActor Noel Clarke received the outstanding British contribution to cinema award. Credit: EPA

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, a jazz drama set in 1920s Chicago, has won two awards at the opening of the BAFTAs, but the race for the main prizes remains open with a list of contenders that shines a spotlight on diversity.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts ceremony is being held virtually over two nights as the COVID-19 pandemic prevents the usual celebrity-packed show with a live audience.

Saturday's opening focused mainly on the crafts side of filmmaking and handed out nine awards. Ma Rainey, starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman, won for costume design and make-up and hair. Hollywood throwback Mank won for production design.

Other prizes went to coming-of-age story Rocks, thriller Tenet and Sound of Metal, about a drummer going deaf. Actor Noel Clarke received the outstanding British contribution to cinema award.

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The main prizes will be announced on Sunday, when director Ang Lee will receive the BAFTA Fellowship. American recession drama Nomadland and Rocks had led the nominations with seven nods each.

After an outcry last year when BAFTA presented an all-white acting contenders list, more than half of this year's 24 nominees are actors of colour.

Nomadland, about a community of van-dwellers, is in the running for best film, leading actress for its star Frances McDormand and best director for Chinese-born Chloe Zhao, one of the four women out of six nominees in that category.

The other best film contenders are 1960s Vietnam War protest drama The Trial of the Chicago 7, #Metoo revenge black comedy Promising Young Woman, dementia drama The Father and Guantanamo Bay movie The Mauritanian.

So far Nomadland and The Trial of the Chicago 7 have won top prizes at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards respectively.

McDormand and Vanessa Kirby, who plays a grieving mother in Pieces of a Woman are the only two leading actress contenders also nominated for an Oscar for those same roles.

BAFTA surprised many when it named Bukky Bakray for Rocks, Radha Blank for The Forty-Year-Old Version, Wunmi Mosaku for His House and Alfre Woodard for Clemency as their competition.

Leading actor nominees include Riz Ahmed for Sound of Metal, and Boseman, who has won numerous prizes for portraying an ambitious trumpet player in Ma Rainey.

The others are Adarsh Gourav for The White Tiger, Anthony Hopkins for The Father, Mads Mikkelsen for Another Round and Tahar Rahim for The Mauritanian.

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