There's a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.
Ava DuvernayRead
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.
Interpretation
Ava Duvernay emphasizes the significance of black women creating films that reflect their own experiences, offering an authentic perspective.
In this quote, Ava Duvernay highlights the importance of representation in filmmaking, particularly the necessity for black women to tell their own stories. She argues that films made by black women provide a unique and genuine perspective that can often be lacking when narratives are interpreted by others, thus creating a more accurate reflection of their lives and experiences.
In practice
In a keynote speech at a film festival focusing on diversity.
There's a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.
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.
I didn't go to film school. I got my education on the set as a niche publicist in the film industry.
I think for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films.
When we say there's a dearth of women directors, it's not that there's a lack of women who direct: it's a lack of opportunities and access for women to direct and be supported in that.
I intend to be making films until I'm an old lady. So, if God willing I get there, I need to create a paradigm for myself where I can make it regardless of whether or not they still like what I'm making.
Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.
What I am after, above all, is expression.
When I was a mailman, writing songs was my escape from the regular world, and now writing songs is my job. And I've always been one to avoid my job.
If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.
I wanted to make my stories, which are inspired by Asian stories, into something fresh, decontextualized - to give them new life as a new kind of fantasy that isn't so cloying and exotic and strange.
Acting is all about relating to the people on stage with you, even in plays that break the fourth wall. Clowning, for the most part, is the opposite. If somebody in the audience sneezes, I can count on it: I don't even have to look at Shiner; he'll have his handkerchief out. It's all about all of us in the room together.
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