Details Behind ‘A Hot Set’s’ Upcoming AHS Awards Lifetime Achievement Categories
Akira Kurosawa and Ethel Waters
The first annual virtual A Hot Set Awards (AHS Awards) announced the nominees on Friday, January 13, 2023. The virtual ceremony honors the best of media in film, television, and new media. Nominees were selected by A Hot Set journalists and editors for twenty-five categories. Alongside the accolades for media, the AHS Awards also feature two Lifetime Achievement Awards which will be awarded to actress Michelle Yeoh (Akira Kurosawa Film Award) and television creator, producer, and screenwriter Shonda Rimes (Ethel Waters TV Award). The special honors are named in memory of two people of color whose careers helped pave the way for the future of the film and entertainment industries: Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa; and African American actress and singer Ethel Waters.
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese director who worked on thirty movies over the course of a fifty-year career. He is considered one of the most significant and influential filmmakers in history. Kurosawa, who was heavily influenced by Western cinema, began his career in the Japanese film business in 1936 after serving as an assistant director and scriptwriter on several movies. During World War II, he made his directorial debut with the well-known action movie Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Rashomon (1950), co-produced by actor Toshiro Mifune, was the unexpected Golden Lion winner at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. That film's commercial and critical success made Japanese film products available for the first time in Western film markets. During the 1950s and the early 1960s, Kurosawa made about one movie per year, including numerous well-known ones such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), and Yojimbo (1961). Even though he produced somewhat less after the 1960s, his later work was still highly regarded. He earned the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy in 1990. Kurosawa was also given the title of "Asian of the Century" in the category of "Arts, Literature, and Culture" by CNN and AsianWeek magazine posthumously. Today, Kurosawa is still recognized as one of the few people who made the biggest contributions to the development of Asia in the 20th century.
Ethel Waters was an African American singer and actress who frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. Her notable recordings include: "Dinah"; "Stormy Weather"; "Am I Blue?"; "Cabin in the Sky"; and "I'm Coming Virginia.” Waters began her career as a singer within the Black vaudeville circuit, earning several accolades for her talent and working alongside well-known individuals in the music industry like Bessie Smith, Fletcher Henderson, Pearl Wright, Donald Heywood, and Will Marion Cook. She was just as adept on the stage and the screen. In addition to being the first African American to star in her television program and be nominated for a Primetime Emmy, Waters was also the second African American to receive an Academy Award nomination. In the satirical black-and-white picture Rufus Jones for President from 1933, in which Sammy Davis Jr. played the role of Rufus Jones, Waters made her acting debut. She appeared in the popular Irving Berlin Broadway musical revue As Thousands Cheer in the same year. She was the first Black woman to integrate Broadway's theatrical district thanks to her time there. Despite passing away in 1977, Waters continued to receive posthumous honors: three recordings inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, her 1933 recording of "Stormy Weather" was added to the National Recording Registry in 2003, inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1983, and the Christian Music Hall of Fame in 2007.
Special tributes will be written for Michelle Yeoh and Shonda Rimes as honorees of the lifetime achievement awards and will be available when the winners of the AHS Awards are revealed in February 2023.