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If you have the ability to do something, you should do it.

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
Ability
Something

More quotes by Ava DuVernay

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Stop asking, start doing.
Ava DuVernay
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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.
Ava DuVernay
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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.
Ava DuVernay
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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.
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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I wish I could be the black woman Soderbergh, and put the camera on my shoulder and shoot beautifully while I directed.
Ava DuVernay
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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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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
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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.
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 tell the stories that are of interest to me.
Ava DuVernay
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Folks can look at this issue and read it and it can feel like medicine, it can feel epidemic. We wanted this to hit people in their gut, and the hope is that by doing that, we can get more people to think more deeply about these issues.
Ava DuVernay
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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
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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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When you say cultural icon, I scrunch my nose.
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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We're living based on laws and ideas that we, as a society, embraced back in the days of slavery.
Ava DuVernay
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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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Working full-time as a filmmaker has been a dream come true.
Ava DuVernay
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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.
Ava DuVernay