Quote

It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be.

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
Artist
Informed
Art
Filmmaker
Film
Sounds
Sometimes
Piece
Needs
Meant
Kind
Films
Believe
Pieces
Sound
Flighty

More quotes by Ava DuVernay

Image
I know that there are a lot of great women that have gone before me, so it's important to acknowledge them.
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
It was easy for me to show the films to the studio and the network and say, This is who I'm hiring.
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
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 just remember not having access to films as a young person who loved films but living in Compton.
Ava DuVernay
Image
The terrain of the face is the most dynamic thing you can point the camera at, to me. I love production design and bells and whistles and all of that. I love a technograin as much as the next gal, but a great actor's face? What else should we be looking at?
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
I tell the stories that are of interest to me.
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
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
Image
I'm not the most athletic gal, but because making a movie is very physical, I slow down on the Krispy Kreme and Ice Blendeds. I start to get leaner and more focused - like I'm going into a boxing match - because I'm about to really try to put this idea on its feet.
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
We're living based on laws and ideas that we, as a society, embraced back in the days of slavery.
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
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
Image
I think there are pieces of the film [Age Of Trump] that are even more emotionally resonant and more vital to talk about than ever.
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
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
Image
I make films about Black women and it doesn't mean that you can't see them as a Black man, doesn't mean that he can't see them as a white man or she can't see them as a white woman.
Ava DuVernay