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I don't want to say that in a place that's negative about what the fear is. I just want to be a realist.

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
Realist
Negative
Fear
Place

More quotes by 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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Don't wait for permission to do something creative.
Ava DuVernay
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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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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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Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn't done when they lock picture. We must see our films through.
Ava DuVernay
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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.
Ava DuVernay
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When you say cultural icon, I scrunch my nose.
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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I tell the stories that are of interest to me.
Ava DuVernay
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Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.
Ava DuVernay
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When you force sleep, it doesn't happen.
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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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
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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 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
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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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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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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
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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
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If you have the ability to do something, you should do it.
Ava DuVernay