According to the Huffington Post, the U.S. distributor for the Australian film ‘The Sapphires’ has since apologized after the film’s DVD cover was blasted as racist and sexist.

Though the film centers around the true story of a 1960s Aboriginal girl group, the cover relegates them to a blue-tinted background and places their white manager in the center.

From The Age:

London-based American blogger MaryAnn Johanson wrote on her site flickfilosopher.com on Tuesday that the artwork “is a problem”, suggesting Anchor Bay had both “dick-washed and whitewashed The Sapphires”.

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“The women are Aborigines,” she wrote. “They are black black black black blackety-black black. Not blue. Oh, and they’re women.”

 

The post was read by 24-year-old Melbourne climate change activist Lucy Manne, who started a petition on change.org to try to convince Anchor Bay to change the artwork.

 

“This is a film about four Aboriginal women who battle against sexism and racism in the 1960s. Now we’ve got a DVD cover that is both sexist and racist – it’s the antithesis of what the film is about,” Ms Manne told Fairfax on Friday.

 

Read more at The Age

 

Check out a trailer for The Sapphires below:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ljho1cyEfg

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