Zitat des Tages von Ava DuVernay:
We know there needs to be diversity in storytellers telling their own stories. I think there's a beautiful forward movement in that direction with McQueen telling '12 Years A Slave,' with Coogler telling 'Fruitvale,' and with Daniels telling 'The Butler.'
Film school was a privilege I could not afford.
My mother is from Compton, California, but my father is from Hayneville, Alabama, and that's less than 20 miles from Selma.
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.
To win Best Director at Sundance was beyond anything I could have imagined for myself. It's still an incredible feeling to know I won. But as happy as I am about winning, I also know many other women of color have directed amazing films over the years that were equally deserving and didn't win.
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.
I'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible.
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.
You know, often films that are deemed positive, nobody wants to see them.
I think good publicists are just like good mommies - always looking out, making sure folks are comfortable and making sure that folks are on time and making sure that folks are getting what they need and know what they need to do.
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.
There's really no precedent for someone like me gaining clout in the space that I'm in - a black woman directing films in Hollywood.
One of the reasons why I created the podcast called the 'The Call-In' that we do through Array - because as a black artist, every time I sit down with mainstream media, I'm asked about issues of race, identity and culture. No one asked what they ask my white male counterparts, which is: 'Where do you like to put the camera?'
If you walk into a room, and there is no one that's not like you there, whether it's a woman or a person of color, anyone that's different from you, you should be able to say this is a problem. We need allies in that room to say that video, this room, this company, these ideas, this film, this whatever, this is not right - this is not good enough.
I want more girls to be able to see themselves behind the camera creating images we all enjoy, and I want to call attention to the fact that women directors are here all over the world.
You gotta follow the white guys. Truly. They've got this thing wired. Too often, we live within their games, so why would you not study what works? Take away the bad stuff - because there's a lot - and use the savvy interesting stuff and figure out how they can apply. It's a good one for the ladies.
Positive characterizations are complex characterizations. That's all we need to know. They shouldn't be saccharine. They shouldn't feel like medicine.
Nonviolence is pretty ballsy, pretty advanced weaponry.
I want to be an old lady, with my cane, shouting, 'Action!' and 'Cut!'
I spent a whole 12 years helping other people tell their stories as a publicist, so just to be able to go and write and get behind the camera, that's my thing.
Women have been trained in our culture and society to ask for what we want instead of taking what we want. We've been really indoctrinated with this culture of permission. I think it's true for women, and I think it's true for people of color. It's historic, and it's unfortunate and has somehow become part of our DNA. But that time has passed.
As a filmmaker, you put the film out there, and you just want it to be okay. You don't want to let people down; you don't want to embarrass yourself.
I don't even really see sit-ins and marches as passive. I see them as quite assertive. I see those as emotionally aggressive tactics. I see people putting their lives on the line and being bold and brave.
I make films about black women and it doesn't mean that you can't see them as a black man, doesn't mean that he can't see them as a white man or she can't see them as a white woman.
My interest as an artist is to illuminate the lives of black folks. I definitely am focused on films that illustrate all that we are and all our nuance and all our complicated beauty and mess, and when you're telling those stories, you gotta have black actors.
Creativity is an energy. It's a precious energy, and it's something to be protected. A lot of people take for granted that they're a creative person, but I know from experience, feeling it in myself, it is a magic; it is an energy. And it can't be taken for granted.
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.
In Hollywood, there is one dominant voice. It is a white, male, straight gaze. When I talk about positive portrayals of black people and women, I'm saying complexity. I'm not saying goody-two-shoes, everything's okay. No. The positive view of me is to see me as I am: the 'good,' the 'bad,' the gray. That is a positive portrayal.
I'd be absolutely happy to go back and make a smaller picture. I never want my choices to be dictated by budget. That's one of the reasons why I take so much pride in being able to make films for $2 and a paper clip - because I can always get my hands on $2 and a paper clip. I never have to ask for permission for that.
Every filmmaker imbues a movie with their own point of view.
Oprah Winfrey is a big role model for me from a business capacity and a creative capacity. She is an incredible interviewer who cultivated a certain style by inserting her own personhood into a show on national television at a time when no one was talking about empowerment, spirituality, or our inner lives.
There was a time when I was knocking on doors and concerned with being recognized in dominant culture. I've found a space where the terrain is different, where I'm embraced by people like me, and where I'm building new ways of doing things, as opposed to trying to insert myself in a place that might not be welcoming.
There can be a progression to the dream; there can be steps to it. When you dissect any successful person's story, it's really rare that it was all or nothing. It's steps, and I just try to remind myself of that in terms of the things that I want; it's like, everything is a step, leading you to where you need to go.
Especially when we're dealing with issues of race, culture, identity, and history, the time has passed for the 'white savior' holding the black person's hand through their own history.
I made my first film when I was 35, so I firmly believe that you don't have to be one thing in life. If you're doing something, and you have a desire to do something different, give it a try.
All black women aren't sassy, loud, difficult, or subservient. We are, in fact, very complex and very diverse, living very complex and diverse lives. That point cannot be made enough.
