Ava DuVernay takes risks. After working in journalism and publicity she knew she wanted to make films. She was 32. Although the odds were against her, she decided to take on the challenge. “If you’re on a path that’s not the one that you want to be on, you can also pivot, and you can also move, and age doesn’t make a difference, race, gender. It’s about putting one step in front of another, about forward movement to where you wanna be.”
In a few short years, and several films later, she became the first African American woman to win Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival, be nominated for a Best Director Golden Globe, direct a film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, and direct a film with a budget over $100 million. And although she did not pick up a camera until she was thirty-two, she became the highest grossing Black woman director in American box office history. Her latest project, When They See Us, was nominated for 16 Emmy awards.
A Wrinkle in time, the film with the $100 million dollar budget was also a challenge. It was based on Madeleine L’Engle‘s 1962 novel of the same name which won the Newbery Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. She had to adapt the book and preserve its message. Her version follows a young girl who, with the help of three astral travelers, sets off on a quest to find her missing father. The film stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Levi Miller, Storm Reid, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Peña, Zach Galifianakis, and Chris Pine. The main characters—Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O’Keefe—embark on a journey through space and time, from universe to universe, as they endeavor to save the Murrys’ father and the world.
Ava’s own father was an inspiration to her. She was born on August 24, 1972 in Long Beach, California, and developed a passion for art and creativity. She spent every summer in Lowndes County, Alabama where her father’s family lived. He recalled watching the historic civil rights march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the neighboring town of Selma, Alabama. These summers eventually inspired her to direct Selma, a movie about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She realized that art could be a vehicle for activism.
After working in publicity for the studios, in 1999, DuVernay started her own public relations company called The DuVernay Agency. She told Elle magazine, “I loved the strategy. To be able to think about the ways in which you can introduce various aspects of the story, the cast, the craft, and the themes to audiences bit by bit—through magazine coverage, events, television appearances, reviews. It really feels like a puzzle. And in the end, the audience will decide whether it was successful or not.”
The DuVernay Agency also worked on campaigns for movies and television shows. While running her business, the multi-talented DuVernay made her first short film called Saturday Night Life based on her mother’s experiences. After this came Compton in C Minor, and This Is the Life (about hip hop culture ). Next she did I Will Follow which became the official selection of the American Film Institute Fest, Pan-African Film Festival, and the Chicago International Film Festival. Her second feature film, Middle of Nowhere, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and won the award for Best Direction.
DuVernay’s career quickly took off. For her work on Selma (2014), DuVernay became the first black woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director, and also the first black female director to have her film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.] In 2017, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for her film 13th (2016). In addition to directing many TV shows, commercials, and music videos, DuVernay’s films Selma and 13th received critical acclaim and multiple awards for their portrayal of racial prejudice in the United States. She collaborated with Oprah Winfrey to create and direct the TV series Queen Sugar on the Oprah Winfrey Network, as well as the Disney live-action film, A Wrinkle in Time. In 2010, she started her own film distribution company called African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM) but rebranded the company in 2015 under the name ARRAY to focus on racial and gender inclusion in filmmaking. In 2019, DuVernay created, directed, and co-wrote the Netflix drama When They See Us. This five-part miniseries based on the 1989 Central Park jogger case quickly became Netflix’s number one most watched series daily in the U.S., with over 23 million viewers during its first month of release, and 16 Emmy nominations at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards.
Ava DuVernay rose to the challenge. She continues to set the bar high for all of us who choose a balance between creativity and business, art and advocacy.
by Neil Healy
