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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

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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
Create
Permission
Audience
Closed
Turns
Corners
Find
Material
Without
Materials
Work
Doors
Way
Turn
Independently
Ways
Audiences

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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.
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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.
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When you force sleep, it doesn't happen.
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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.
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I just remember not having access to films as a young person who loved films but living in Compton.
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Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn't done when they lock picture. We must see our films through.
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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.
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Historically, you've had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people.
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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.
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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.
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You know, often films that are deemed positive, nobody wants to see them.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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We're living based on laws and ideas that we, as a society, embraced back in the days of slavery.
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