Quote

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.

Ava DuVernay

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Amazing
Took
Away
Herzog
Really
Werner
Spike
Narratives
Narrative
Admire

More quotes by Ava DuVernay

Image
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
Image
I didn't go to film school. I got my education on the set as a niche publicist in the film industry.
Ava DuVernay
Image
I wish I could be the black woman Soderbergh, and put the camera on my shoulder and shoot beautifully while I directed.
Ava DuVernay
Image
I just remember not having access to films as a young person who loved films but living in Compton.
Ava DuVernay
Image
To pretend like Hollywood is anything other than that is disingenuous. #OscarsSoWhite is trendy, but for women filmmakers and filmmakers of color, it's not a trend. This is our reality, and it's important that we do something to change it.
Ava DuVernay
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Historically, you've had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people.
Ava DuVernay
Image
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
Image
I don't understand the iPhone. I just don't get it. Don't ya'll have to write serious emails throughout the day? How can you possibly manage detailed missives on a phone with no keys?
Ava DuVernay
Image
Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.
Ava DuVernay
Image
Ignore the glass ceiling and do your work. If you're focusing on the glass ceiling, focusing on what you don't have, focusing on the limitations, then you will be limited. My way was to work, make my short... make my documentary... make my small films... use my own money... raise money myself... and stay shooting and focused on each project.
Ava DuVernay
Image
When you force sleep, it doesn't happen.
Ava DuVernay
Image
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
Image
I know that sounds a little bit corny, but I've found some solace in that. I hope art can continue to do that for people, I really do.
Ava DuVernay
Image
Stop asking, start doing.
Ava DuVernay
Image
When I went out to shoot for the first time, I thought this was going to be about the prison industrial complex, purely about prison for profit and the ways in which there's an industry making money and profiting off punishment.
Ava DuVernay
Image
I thing for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films. You see the statistics, and the dropoff on the second and third [films] , are dire.
Ava DuVernay
Image
We have to find new ways to work without permission, new ways to turn corners and go through doors that are closed off to us to create our own audiences and our own material independently.
Ava DuVernay
Image
Don't wait for permission to do something creative.
Ava DuVernay