I always go into a blocking rehearsal with an anchor, with a blocking plan. And sometimes they'll step into the room and they'll be in costume and you're like, "That sucks, that's not going to work. Let's think of something new." Ava DuVernay More Quotes by Ava DuVernay More Quotes From Ava DuVernay Usually, you have two people in a scene, and in the history of cinema the hero is most likely going to be the white guy. And the other guy is his friend who is carrying the bag or whatever, and you're not going to light for that guy. Ava DuVernay light hero two 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 admire narrative ifs 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 DuVernay lovers jobs thinking [ Age Of Trump] was something that I really wanted to do, and I also really wanted it to feel evergreen, so we made a lot of attempts not to bog it down in the campaign fight, even though we were right in the middle of that. I wanted it to be something that could live on and be a conversation piece long after this inauguration, whoever it was going to be. Ava DuVernay fighting age long We're a new world and it's not pretty. It's going to be for the brave to figure out how to survive in this. Ava DuVernay figures brave world I didn't go to film school. I got my education on the set as a niche publicist in the film industry. Ava DuVernay niche film school 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. Ava DuVernay white men mean It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be. Ava DuVernay sound believe art 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 DuVernay truth-will-come-out documentaries narrative When I look in the mirror, I see a woman who is happy. Ava DuVernay Most of us think prison is a place where bad people go - which is what I thought for a long time - until you really start to look inside the system and you see, this is not right. Ava DuVernay long people thinking What we tried to do in 13th was get to the bottom of that. What were they motivated by? But certainly the attention that the Attorney General's office paid to it allowed for there to be some dialogue across the aisle that I think were the first steps then in change. Ava DuVernay office attention thinking I soon found I could not talk about that in a vacuum without understanding the historical, cultural, political context, and giving it some legacy and some roots, and so then it just started to have tentacles that just spread out in all these places, and already a vicious project became pretty overwhelming in scope, and so it was a lot of diligent, day-to-day fighting with the footage, trying to get it down to a place where it was manageable and emotional. Ava DuVernay emotional fighting roots 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 realist want negative These are dark times for a lot of people who believe differently than our incoming administration [of Donald Trump], but there's also joy there, and there's also something in unifying around the things that we do believe in. Ava DuVernay dark believe people For far too long, independent voices have been relegated to places where these ideas are not seen on a mass level. Ava DuVernay independent voice ideas 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 epidemics issues thinking To pretend like Hollywood is anything other than that is disingenuous. #OscarsSoWhite is trendy, but for women filmmakers and filmmakers of color, it's not a trend. This is our reality, and it's important that we do something to change it. Ava DuVernay color important reality Netflix represents, as well as all the streaming services, something that I've been talking about being so important to inclusive voices around films. Ava DuVernay voice important talking At the end of the day, I had to remain dedicated to historical accuracy. Ava DuVernay the-end-of-the-day historical ends
