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I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

Ava DuVernay

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Ava DuVernay
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: August 24
Film Director
Film Producer
Filmmaker
Screenwriter
Showrunner
Television Producer
Writer
Long Beach
California
Ava Marie DuVernay
Interest
Tell
Stories

More quotes by Ava DuVernay

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I'm not to say that my male counterparts do, but certainly, it feels very special to me because I know that so few women have had the opportunity to do what I'm doing, so I'm thrilled by it every day.
Ava DuVernay
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These are dark times for a lot of people who believe differently than our incoming administration [of Donald Trump], but there's also joy there, and there's also something in unifying around the things that we do believe in.
Ava DuVernay
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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.
Ava DuVernay
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A lot of work was done with one of my best friends and editor, Spencer Averick, who's edited everything I've ever made from the very, very first documentaries the very, very first films I made were docs, so we learned the form together.
Ava DuVernay
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I think that women definitely have a special bond as friends that is hard to describe to men, and we don't often see that portrayed narratively.
Ava DuVernay
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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.
Ava DuVernay
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I just remember not having access to films as a young person who loved films but living in Compton.
Ava DuVernay
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Netflix represents, as well as all the streaming services, something that I've been talking about being so important to inclusive voices around films.
Ava DuVernay
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I know that there are a lot of great women that have gone before me, so it's important to acknowledge them.
Ava DuVernay
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The fact that's why the prisons and stock in private prisons rose the very day after the election results [for Donald Trump] were announced. The fact that progress that was made for people of color, for women, for LGBTQ people, are all at risk.
Ava DuVernay
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For film, you know, the Tarantinos and Nolans of the world who are very focused on a certain kind of film aesthetic and a certain kind of presentation, to be honest, that comes from a place of privilege. It comes from a place of always having access to such, but when you ain't never - you can't see it because you can't even get to it.
Ava DuVernay
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I think when we get to a place that this is not the story, that everyone's story is a part of the story, then we can say this has changed. Until then, these are steps to change if they're consistent.
Ava DuVernay
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Most of us think prison is a place where bad people go - which is what I thought for a long time - until you really start to look inside the system and you see, this is not right.
Ava DuVernay
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When you force sleep, it doesn't happen.
Ava DuVernay
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Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn't done when they lock picture. We must see our films through. Studios no longer do this for a large percentage of films. The odds that your film will get a major campaign are dim these days. So you must find and nurture your own audience and make sure your film has a life.
Ava DuVernay
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The traditional ways to make a film, the traditional ways to share a film, have all collapsed. There are no gatekeepers, per se, any more, and anything can be done. Truly, I feel that.
Ava DuVernay
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I think I am a little jealous of women who have great girlfriends as adults.
Ava DuVernay
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Historically, you've had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people.
Ava DuVernay
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There's no reason not to employ, seek out and take a chance on a woman filmmaker that you might not have been looking at her direction. She's not done it before because you've not given her the opportunity to do it before, and I'm just happy that folks like Jessica Jones' Melissa Rosenberg and folks like Ryan Murphy are also embracing this idea.
Ava DuVernay
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We [Americans] know Martin Luther King Jr. as a statue. We know him as a holiday. We know him as a speech. We don't know him as a man. Most people don't even know the whole speech, just I have a dream. They don't know what his speaking voice was like, how he looked at his wife, or that he had four kids.
Ava DuVernay