The Film Industry Award Series - Corrobaoration or Competition?

This paper extends existing research that compares the verdicts of seven juries bestowing annual cinematic achievement awards. The main question pertains to the level of consensus between them about the choice of winners and nominees, which is measured by the means of reliability analysis. Results of the tests in ten ''major'' categories were compared to the decisions of the panels in the foreign language films category, which was previously largely neglected by the literature. For these awards, lower values indicating agreement were found, as it was hypothesized, given the immense variety of cultural values represented in films produced in the global film market, what consequently might influence the assessment of quality. However, it was also discovered that these findings have to be interpreted with great caution due to imperfection of the measures employed. Conclusions were made regarding the particular performance of the juries compared to each other, on the basis how close they are to the consensus. Conversely to the study focused on the Anglo-Saxon productions, the American Academy bestowing the Oscars performed worst of the seven, and was closely followed by the British Academy (BAFTA). These results suggested an organizational bias in their judgments stemming from the qualifying procedures of titles eligible for a nomination and then the award in those two contests. Closest to the aggregated decisions appeared to be the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the only jury in consideration composed of non-Americans. From the perspective of the field, this thesis adds to the knowledge on the proceedings of the prominent expert juries that through their award series assess and assign quality to the cultural products.