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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

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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
Time
Ways
Shoot
Making
Complexes
Money
Complex
Thought
Punishment
Firsts
Profit
First
Prison
Profiting
Going
Industry
Purely
Way
Went
Industrial

More quotes by 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.
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Figure out what you need to do to be the heroine of your own story.
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[ Hollywood] is a patriarchy, headed by men and built for men.
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Historically, you've had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people.
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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 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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True change is a long game, and it remains to be seen if this is change. We've had years before where there have been great years for filmmakers and performers of color, LGBTQ filmmakers and performers, women.
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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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Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn't done when they lock picture. We must see our films through.
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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.
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Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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You know, often films that are deemed positive, nobody wants to see them.
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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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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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Working full-time as a filmmaker has been a dream come true.
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I was talking to Shonda Rhimes the other day and I said, I. Do. Not. Know. How. You. Do. This. While we're writing episode 10, episode 6 is shooting, episode 3 is in the edit, and episode 2 is in its color session...You've got seven episodes in different parts! It's a wild, wild, wild ride, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was badass and amazing
Ava DuVernay