Ava DuVernay, a proud black woman filmmaker, is a talented director, screenwriter, film marketer, distributor, and a feminist film hero – a jack of all trades, really. She is an inspirational woman who is known as a gender and race equality advocate. DuVernay describes herself as a feminist as well as a womanist and stands by her belief that a feminist is "anyone – man or woman – who believes in equality of the sexes.” In the film industry, there is a small number of female directors – especially those of color – who have been recognized in the ways she has been.
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| via AvaDuVernay.com |
DuVernay is an award winner as well as the first woman of color to direct a blockbuster movie with a budget of at least $100 million when production for A Wrinkle in Time begins. She has been awarded such positions due to her previous work. Her journey begins with her first narrative feature film, I Will Follow (2010), which granted her the African-American Film Critics Association award for best screenplay. Her following feature film, Middle of Nowhere (2012), rewarded her with the Best Director Prize at the 2012 Sundance film festival; she had been the first African-American woman to receive that award.
However, Ava isn't motivated by the awards. Instead, she strives to tell important stories from woman and people of color that are typically silenced in Hollywood and mainstream media.
"I wish I could be the black woman Soderbergh, and put the camera on my shoulder and shoot beautifully while I directed" (DuVernay).
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| via Los Angeles Magazine |
As Melissa Harris-Perry states in the chapter "Crooked Room" of her book Sister Citizen: "Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire are common and painful characterizations of black women that each has a long history in American social and cultural life" (Harris-Perry 33). These stereotypes of black women either deem them asexual (Mammy), overly sexualize them (Jezebel), portraying them with outspoken anger (Sapphire), or just claiming them as "welfare queens."
Ava wants women of color to be seen from a different lens or perspective – one that does not box them into categories set in stone, but one that allows them to be recognized as diverse women with their own, individual stories. Audre Lorde explains this as: "Where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives" (Lorde 43). Thus, this is exactly what DuVernay's mission is.
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| via Elle Magazine |
"I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality" (DuVernay).
DuVernay aims towards creating content that allows for the voices of women of color to be heard by an audience. In doing so, it gives a newer perspective to a public that had them once hidden away. Women and women of color life experience's are far from the dominant white male culture that is most commonly promoted in Hollywood. Because DuVernay is such a large advocate for these issues, more marginalized stories will be heard. Therefore, by shining a spotlight on these missing tales, it educates members from other communities and offers a larger range of stories to be acknowledged in mainstream media.
Works Cited
Harris-Perry, Melissa V. “Crooked Room.” Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, Yale University Press, 2013, p. 33.
Lorde, Audre. The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action. 1977, p. 43.
Thank you for this, very informative. I've been really excited for A Wrinkle in Time to come out.
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