Ava DuVernay quotes
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“Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.”
-- Ava DuVernaySource : "The "My Mic Sounds Nice" Interview". Interview with Kam Williams, aalbc.com.
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“We [Americans] know Martin Luther King Jr. as a statue. We know him as a holiday. We know him as a speech. We don't know him as a man. Most people don't even know the whole speech, just "I have a dream." They don't know what his speaking voice was like, how he looked at his wife, or that he had four kids.”
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“If your dream only includes you, it's too small.”
-- Ava DuVernaySource : Twitter post from Feb 27, 2015
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“I love making films. I'm happiest when I'm doing it. For me, the fear is not being able to make the next thing and not being able, as a woman filmmaker and as a filmmaker of color, to put together the resources to make another thing.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
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“Time will tell ... whether folks want to point and stare at the black woman filmmaker who made a certain kind of film, and pat her on the back, or if they want to actually roll up the sleeves and do a little bit of work so that there can be more of me coming through.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
“There’s something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. It’s a different perspective. It is a reflection as opposed to an interpretation, and I think we get a lot of interpretations about the lives of women that are not coming from women.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
“Don't wait for permission to do something creative.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
“Hollywood needs more women directors, and Mama Ava needs a carafe and a half of that sweet vino divino.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
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“Figure out what you need to do to be the heroine of your own story.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
“All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
“I thing for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films. You see the statistics, and the dropoff on the second and third [films] , are dire.”
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“Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn't done when they lock picture. We must see our films through.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
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“You know, often films that are deemed positive, nobody wants to see them.”
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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 -
“All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.”
-- Ava DuVernaySource : "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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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.”
-- Ava DuVernaySource : "Filmmaker Ava DuVernay". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. October 9, 2012.
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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.”
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“If you're doing something outside of dominant culture, there's not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.”
-- Ava DuVernaySource : "Filmmaker Ava DuVernay". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. October 9, 2012.
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“I'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible.”
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“I didn't go to film school. I got my education on the set as a niche publicist in the film industry.”
-- Ava DuVernaySource : Interview with Sheila Heti, believermag.com. October 1, 2009.
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“Film school was a privilege I could not afford.”
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“I tell the stories that are of interest to me.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
“I think I am a little jealous of women who have great girlfriends as adults.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
“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.”
-- 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.”
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“At the end of the day, I had to remain dedicated to historical accuracy.”
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“Black people loving and losing is something we don’t see enough of. We’re always in these heightened situations like something big is happening, something funny or something violent. And you know what? Sometimes we die of breast cancer or a broken heart. Things happen that are just not being explored cinematically. It’s time we reinvigorated that type of film.”
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“As a Black woman filmmaker I feel that’s my job: visibility. And my preference within that job is Black subjectivity. Meaning I’m interested in the lives of Black folk as the subject. Not the predicate, not the tangent.[These stories] deserve to be told. Not as sociology, not as spectacle, not as a singular event that happens every so often, but regularly and purposefully as truth and as art on an ongoing basis, as do the stories of all the women you love.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
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“When you're in your lane, there's no traffic.”
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“In documentaries, there's a truth that unfolds unnaturally, and you get to chronicle it. In narratives, you have to create the situations so that the truth will come out.”
-- Ava DuVernaySource : "Ava DuVernay, Sundance Award-Winner for ‘Middle of Nowhere,’ On Why It’s Important That Stories About Black Women Be Told By Black Women". Interview with Claire Easton, www.indiewire.com. October 10, 2012.
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“I've been to Sundance eight times as a publicist and thought I was very prepared. I mean, who could've been more prepared for me? A publicist who's been there eight times. Getting there as a filmmaker was a completely surreal, different, unexpected experience.”
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“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.”
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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.”
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“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.”
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“I just don't think there's a lot of support for the woman's voice in cinema, and it becomes really difficult to raise that money and start again every time.”
-- Ava DuVernay -
“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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