Words matter. These are the best Ava DuVernay Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The consumer is deciding what they want to see and when and how, and filmmakers are more aware and accepting of the fact that success is not predicated on your movie showing in a traditional theater for a certain amount of time.
Why do we always have to see black people in hindsight? Why are the Hollywood movies always historical? What about the contemporary image of black people?
I want more girls to be able to see themselves behind the camera creating images we all enjoy, and I want to call attention to the fact that women directors are here all over the world.
When we’re talking about diversity, it’s not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us.
There’s a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.
We know there needs to be diversity in storytellers telling their own stories. I think there’s a beautiful forward movement in that direction with McQueen telling ’12 Years A Slave,’ with Coogler telling ‘Fruitvale,’ and with Daniels telling ‘The Butler.’
I think good publicists are just like good mommies – always looking out, making sure folks are comfortable and making sure that folks are on time and making sure that folks are getting what they need and know what they need to do.
Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.
In documentaries, there’s a truth that unfolds unnaturally, and you get to chronicle it. In narratives, you have to create the situations so that the truth will come out.
Many hated ‘Selma.’ Just because my voice and the voice of the people I come from is antithetical to so much of what Hollywood produces. I don’t think what I’m saying is in particular radical or anything; it’s just different from what they want to sell.
I really admire Werner Herzog and Spike Lee. They’re amazing documentarians. If you took away all the narratives, they’d just be amazing documentarians.
My interest as an artist is to illuminate the lives of black folks. I definitely am focused on films that illustrate all that we are and all our nuance and all our complicated beauty and mess, and when you’re telling those stories, you gotta have black actors.
I’ve been to Sundance eight times as a publicist and thought I was very prepared. I mean, who could’ve been more prepared for me? A publicist who’s been there eight times. Getting there as a filmmaker was a completely surreal, different, unexpected experience.
To win Best Director at Sundance was beyond anything I could have imagined for myself. It’s still an incredible feeling to know I won. But as happy as I am about winning, I also know many other women of color have directed amazing films over the years that were equally deserving and didn’t win.
You know, often films that are deemed positive, nobody wants to see them.
When I’m marketing a film, whether its mine or someone else’s, I work with a great deal of strategy and elbow grease until the job is done.
Today, when you look at social media, you see that the narrative can be overtaken by people just from Twitter and Instagram. I know when Ferguson was going down those first few nights, I was watching feeds on the ground on Twitter, not CNN.
I don’t even really see sit-ins and marches as passive. I see them as quite assertive. I see those as emotionally aggressive tactics. I see people putting their lives on the line and being bold and brave.
I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.
If you’re doing something outside of dominant culture, there’s not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.
I didn’t start out thinking that I could ever make films. I started out being a film lover, loving films, and wanting to have a job that put me close to them and close to filmmakers and close to film sets.
I spent a whole 12 years helping other people tell their stories as a publicist, so just to be able to go and write and get behind the camera, that’s my thing.
I just don’t think there’s a lot of support for the woman’s voice in cinema, and it becomes really difficult to raise that money and start again every time.
I was a publicist for other people’s movies.
There’s been no major motion picture released by a studio, no independent motion picture, in theaters, with King at the center, in the 50 years since these events happened, when we have biopics on all kinds of ridiculous people. And nothing on King? No cinematic representation that’s meaningful and centered.
Nonviolence is pretty ballsy, pretty advanced weaponry.
I love to see people just being regal in their own skin; it’s just when they know who they are.
I think for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films.
Art morphs with what’s going on in the world. We say ‘Ferguson’; we don’t say ‘Mike Brown.’ Just like we say ‘Selma,’ not ‘Jimmie Lee Jackson.’ There is something startling about the people in a particular place, a city or a small town, rising up and taking to the streets.
Creativity is an energy. It’s a precious energy, and it’s something to be protected. A lot of people take for granted that they’re a creative person, but I know from experience, feeling it in myself, it is a magic; it is an energy. And it can’t be taken for granted.
I’m a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It’s horrible.
All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it’s a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.
Film is a mirror. I want to see more filmmakers. We all want to see ourselves.
Oh, Diane Nash deserves her own film. Diane Nash is a freedom fighter who is still alive and kicking. She was one of the leaders of the desegregation of Nashville, basically. She was a student at Fisk University who was one of the founding members of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
I think I am a little jealous of women who have great girlfriends as adults.
All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.
‘Queen Sugar’ is a drama about family. It’s something that allows us to be ourselves and see the ways that we interact with our own families.
There’s something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. It’s a reflection as opposed to an interpretation.
It’s not enough even to have one black Barbie… because black women are not a monolith.
I’d be absolutely happy to go back and make a smaller picture. I never want my choices to be dictated by budget. That’s one of the reasons why I take so much pride in being able to make films for $2 and a paper clip – because I can always get my hands on $2 and a paper clip. I never have to ask for permission for that.
I’m a filmmaker to my bones.
I am honored to be one of this year’s Urbanworld ambassadors for the festival’s 20th anniversary, joining my friend David Oyelowo. I have always had a special relationship with Urbanworld, back to my days as a festival publicist to previewing my earlier films and now as an ambassador.
I intend to be making films until I’m an old lady. So, if God willing I get there, I need to create a paradigm for myself where I can make it regardless of whether or not they still like what I’m making.
There can be a progression to the dream; there can be steps to it. When you dissect any successful person’s story, it’s really rare that it was all or nothing. It’s steps, and I just try to remind myself of that in terms of the things that I want; it’s like, everything is a step, leading you to where you need to go.
I like silence. Aesthetically, I feel strangled by the fast cutting and a wall of sound. And I think showing black people thinking onscreen is radical.
I’m not signing on to direct ‘Black Panther.’ I think I’ll just say we had different ideas about what the story would be. Marvel has a certain way of doing things, and I think they’re fantastic, and a lot of people love what they do. I loved that they reached out to me.
Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn’t done when they lock picture. We must see our films through.
Oh gosh, I’m completely allergic to historical dramas. Particularly those around the civil-rights movement. It’s not my favorite thing to watch. So often they feel like medicine. Or not even a history lesson, because I really like history. Just… obligatory.
You see women struggling to keep it all together while a loved one is in jail. But we don’t hear about them or their struggles in a way that resonates with others. Their stories are so compelling. It’s as if they are in their own little world and no one else sees them.
Film school was a privilege I could not afford.
I made my first film when I was 35, so I firmly believe that you don’t have to be one thing in life. If you’re doing something, and you have a desire to do something different, give it a try.
As long as you’re in an environment where the worth of the project isn’t based on the project but what its predecessors did, it’s not truly inclusive.
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