Rachel Morrison, the first Oscar-nominated female cinematographer

If Rachel Morrison had her way, she would be in hiding until after the Oscars on Sunday. Morrison is a cinematographer – part of a tribe that generally prefers to keep a low profile. “We specialise in being behind the camera. It’s strange to suddenly be in front of it.”

As Hollywood faces up to #MeToo and #TimesUp, Morrison has been thrust into the spotlight as the smasher of three glass ceilings in as many months: making Oscar history as the first woman to earn a best cinematography nomination, for her work on Mudbound; the first woman to shoot a Marvel movie, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther; and being the first woman to be nominated by her peers for the American Society of Cinematographers award.

It’s lunchtime in Los Angeles, and Morrison is dropping off her car at the garage (this is the only window in her diary that her agent could find to speak to the Guardian). The attention has been overwhelming, Morrison says: “It’s being in demand and being quite exhausted. I have a three-year-old and I’m working …” Her voice trails off.

In my experience of film sets, the cinematographer – or director of photography (DP) – is treated with almost as much godlike reverence as the director. But among filmgoers there is confusion about what a cinematographer does. In nuts-and-bolts terms, she or he (usually he; more on that in a bit) heads up the camera, grip and electric departments, which puts them in charge of the biggest crew on set. Morrison is not convinced that she explains the nitty-gritty of her job very well to people. “My dad, before he passed away, never understood what I did. What I say is that I’m responsible for translating the director’s vision, hopefully turning an idea into something people can connect to and relate to.”

Rachel Morrison on the set of Mudbound. Photograph: Steve Dietl/AP

What that meant on Mudbound was creating its lived-in, gritty aesthetic. Directed by Dee Rees, the film follows two families – one black, one white – farming the same land in 40s Mississippi. For Morrison, authenticity is everything, visualising emotions as images that look and feel real. In Mudbound her two female leads, Mary J Blige and Carey Mulligan, look done in: beautiful, yes, but battered by a hard life and sweating, with dirt caked under their nails and not a trace of Hollywood gloss. “I find beauty in imperfection,” Morrison says. “I love faces that have freckles. I love faces that have wrinkles. For me, beauty is naturalism, I guess.” Cinematography, she adds, should be invisible: “I generally feel that if you notice the cinematographer we’re getting something wrong.”

Growing up, Morrison starting snapping photos on her mum’s camera aged six or seven. She got the movie bug in her teens and never looked back: “I realised that there was an incredible job where you could take 24 photos a second.” What draws her to a film, I ask? “I pour my blood, sweat and tears into a movie. What I always look for is a message and a social consciousness; a relevance to what’s happening in our world.” She was disappointed that her first movie with Coogler, Fruitvale Station, based on the real-life police killing of a young black man, didn’t make a difference: “I had this dream that they would show Fruitvale in police precincts across the country. It didn’t come to pass. That was a bit of a wake-up call.”

But then again, Black Panther, has far exceeded her expectations: “We just hoped it would resonate. Best-case scenario: we were going to provide a chance for young children of colour to see a superhero who looks like them. Then it created a whole movement. People are setting up voter registration at Black Panther screenings. I do think you get enough of the magic.”

Garrett Hedlund and Carey Mulligan in Mudbound Photograph: Allstar

The reason Morrison is gritting her teeth and giving interviews before the Oscars is in the hope of helping to shake up the gender imbalance in her profession. Of the 250 top-grossing films in the US last year, only 4% had female cinematographers (that’s lower than women directors, at 11%). Does Morrison understand why representation is so bad? “No. I really don’t. Cinematography speaks to everything women do inherently well. To me, cinematography is all about empathy, which women are groomed to be very good at. It’s about picking up on the subtlety of emotion; about multitasking. So no, I never have an answer for why so few, other than history. It becomes the norm. It’s our job to get people unused to it. We need to get to a point where when you say ‘DP’, people don’t picture a dude.”

And spare a thought for her on Sunday night. While most showbiz types live for Oscars night, Morrison is extremely nervous. Winning would be an honour, but the prospect is keeping her awake at night. “I live in fear of public speaking,” she says. “I take Xanax just to get through panel interviews. I’m absolutely terrified. I also live in fear of high heels.” Cath Clarke

Yance Ford: the first Oscar-nominated transgender director

Yance Ford is the first openly transgender director to have a film nominated for an Oscar. Or is he? “Look, I’m a data wonk,” he chuckles down the line from New York. “Something tells me history will be revised after a little more research. If it turns out to be true, that’s great. But when people say I’m making history, I’m like: ‘Let’s just make sure.’”

Putting aside this healthy scepticism, his achievement is impressive, as is his film, Strong Island, a Sundance special jury award-winner now in contention for the Oscar for best documentary feature. It centres on the fatal shooting in 1992 of Ford’s older brother, William, during an argument at a Long Island garage. The situation seemed clearcut. William was a law-abiding 24-year-old teacher, and Ford remembers thinking: “The system is gonna work for us. We’ll get the chance to represent the evidence.” He reckoned without institutional racism. The Fords are an African American family; the killer was white. The case never got to court.

Yance Ford … ‘I don’t think I present as gender-conforming on screen.’ Photograph: Teri Pengilley/The Guardian

Race is necessarily one of the dominant themes of the picture, which shows how the segregation of black communities contributed to tensions on Long Island. But just as important is its engagement with two other issues that have lost none of their relevance: gun violence and queer identity. “In 1992, in the suburban working-class community where I grew up, no one would have guessed there would be a gun on the premises,” reflects the director. “The fist fight was the thing everyone expected. That was how masculinity was expressed, almost like the Sharks and the Jets.” And today? “I would never even speak to another person who seemed agitated. Even in a minor fender bender [road accident], I have sat in the car and waited for the police to arrive because that’s the safest option.”

Though Ford plays down the historic significance of his Oscar nod (“I’m happy and honoured, but that’s as far as that story goes”), he will acknowledge that the nomination should foreground the queer elements in the film for those audiences who might otherwise overlook them. “I don’t think I present as gender-conforming on screen, but some people need a little extra information. I have heard it said that this isn’t really a queer film. And I’ve been, like: ‘Wow. Maybe I should have turned the volume up louder.’ There’s a whole section on me coming out.” He talks movingly on-screen about a phone call William made to him a few weeks before his death, in which he seemed to be confiding in him man-to-man rather than brother-to-sister. Ford never came out to William; it was in that moment, though, that he felt properly “seen” by his brother.

Yance (far right) with William Ford Jr and sister Lauren in Strong Island. Photograph: Netflix

Race and gender are weighty issues, but there is another, more footling, prejudice that Strong Island will have to overcome if it is to take the Oscar on Sunday. The film is a Netflix production, which guarantees the antipathy of some voters. Peter Bart, a former editor of Variety, said recently: “I don’t want to see Netflix’s streaming universe get rewarded with Oscars based on a symbolic one-week theatre opening.” Ford has no truck with this argument. “No one who looked at the amount of festivals and screening engagements we have had could say the film hasn’t had a theatrical presence. And there are lots of theatres in communities where I want my film to be seen that simply don’t run films like mine. Am I supposed to say: ‘Tough luck’?”

In other words, every film can’t be Black Panther. “Exactly!” he whoops. “I’m psyched that Black Panther is gonna join the billion-dollar club and I fully anticipate the same thing for A Wrinkle in Time. But if we don’t start to appreciate how people can and can’t access cinema, we will be having this argument in a vacuum of our own making.” Ryan Gilbey

Strong Island is available to stream on Netflix.

John Singleton: the youngest-ever Oscar-nominated director, and first African American Oscar-nominated director

“Yeah, I was nervous: ‘I’m on the world’s stage. I’m just a kid. What do I know?’” John Singleton is recalling Oscars night 1992, when he was both the first African American and the youngest ever film-maker to be nominated for best director, for his debut Boyz N the Hood. He was 24 years old. He was also nominated for best original screenplay. Singleton also had to go up and present the best documentary award with Spike Lee. Where Lee simply looked pissed off, Singleton looked decidedly hot under his bow tie. “I was just trying to make sure I read the teleprompter right. I couldn’t be cavalier and cool about it, no matter how hard I tried.”

Boyz N the Hood, made when Singleton was 24. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

That wasn’t all Singleton was nervous about: “My biggest fear was that I was going to be a flash in the pan. I was thinking about Orson Welles, who got nominated at 25 [for Citizen Kane]. I didn’t want to be like that: you do something spectacular your first shot and then, no matter what you do, you can’t follow it up.”

It was momentous enough that Singleton had been able to make Boyz N the Hood at all. The film was an authentic, semi-autobiographical story of young men growing up in 80s South Central Los Angeles (now South Los Angeles), in a landscape of poverty, prejudice and gang violence. Its African American cast consisted largely of then-unknowns, including Cuba Gooding Jr, Ice Cube and Morris Chestnut, as well as the established star Laurence Fishburne. “There had been very few historical precedents for me,” he says. “The first African American hired by a studio to direct a film was only in my lifetime and that was Gordon Parks [for 1969’s The Learning Tree].”

Singleton is quick to acknowledge Lee, his friend and co-presenter that night. There had been uproar the previous year at the Academy’s lack of appreciation for Lee’s Do the Right Thing, which, despite critical and commercial acclaim only earned best screenplay and best supporting actor nominations. “The year that happened was the year that I got a chance to make a movie,” says Singleton. “I got out of film school in spring 1990, so they were looking for the next Spike Lee, the next black film-maker with the vision to make a mark in commercial Hollywood. So I was the guy. They gave me a chance, gave me $6m to make a movie, and I knocked it out of the park!”

John Singleton … ‘They gave me $6m to make a movie and I knocked it out of the park.’ Photograph: Maarten de Boer

Singleton was in Las Vegas at a film convention when he found out he had been nominated. “I was half-asleep, watching it on TV in the morning. I was like: ‘Wow!’ And then I had to get up and go to the bathroom,” he laughs. “Maybe it was out of nervousness I was going to wet my pants, who knows?”

Nerves aside, Singleton enjoyed the experience of the ceremony: “It was cool. It was the first time I ever got my nails done. They massage your shoulders and give you all this pampering, and put you in a great outfit. And then they push you out in front of these cameras. It was all new to me.”

He didn’t expect to win and didn’t have a speech prepared (best director went to Jonathan Demme for The Silence of the Lambs), but the recognition cemented Singleton’s ambition, he says. “It made me think even more about how important it is to strive to make interesting work and to have an identity as a film-maker, and not give into the hype of what Hollywood does. It builds you up and then, if you’re not a settled person in your mind, you start to think the world revolves around you, instead of just being a student of what this thing is.” The next morning, he began rehearsals for his next movie: Poetic Justice, starring Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur.

Singleton was not a flash in the pan. He has rarely been out of work since. He is now back in South Los Angeles, shooting his TV series Snowfall, which almost picks up where Boyz N the Hood left off. Furthermore, the 90s moment that put black film-makers such as Lee and Singleton on the map paved the way for black nominees such as Steve McQueen (Twelve Years a Slave) and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight). Jordan Peele could be the first black director to win the prize outright this year, underlining how far things can come, if also how far they still have to go. “That moment propagated and became a whirlwind,” says Singleton. “And now that moment is the new normal.” Steve Rose