JULY – AVA DUVERNAY
Ava
DuVernay is an African-American woman who directs movies made in
Hollywood. There are very few African Americans or women among Hollywood
directors, and DuVernay started out on another side of the business.
She grew up in Los Angeles, went to school at UCLA, worked as a movie
publicist, and formed her own marketing agency and a distribution
company. She had briefly performed in a rap duo when she was in college,
and her first film was a documentary about the hip-hop community she
was part of. She made it for $10,000. She wrote and directed her first
full-length narrative film, I Will Follow, based on her experience
caring for her dying aunt. In 2012 she received the Sundance Film
Festival award for Best Director of a drama made in the United States
for her second feature, Middle of Nowhere, about a woman whose husband
is in prison. Selma, which she directed and co-wrote, was distributed in
2014 by a mainstream studio, Paramount.
Selma
is about Martin Luther King's campaign for voting rights for black
Americans. The turning point was Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, when
white police and state troopers attacked a group of protesters
attempting to march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in
Montgomery. Two weeks later, protected by federal troops and the
National Guard, King led a march from Selma to Montgomery that swelled
to 25,000 people. Later that year, the U.S. Congress passed a voting
rights act. DuVernay's father had grown up near Selma and watched
marchers go by his family's farm. With her account of the events, which
she filmed where they happened, DuVernay became the first black woman to
direct a film that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Comments
Post a Comment