American filmmaker Ava DuVernay was at the Marrakech International Film Festival this year to share her wisdom during a public Conversation, where she talked about making movies as a Black woman but also the ability to watch cinema and how that changes depending on your socio-economic background.
A long time ago, in an emirate far far away, I first met Ava DuVernay. She had come to participate in the Dubai International Film Festival where she was involved in a “Conversation on Directing” meant as inspiration for local filmmakers — an event hosted by AMPAS. This was 2013 and yet, when she greets our group of journalists in Marrakech, to introduce herself, she remembers having met me before. “You look familiar,” she tells me, holding my hand a moment longer while shaking it. In that instant, I’m reminded of the great Maya Angelou quote about never forgetting how a person makes you feel.
As an aside, after that visit to Dubai, DuVernay was elected to the Academy Board, helping to change the narrative from the #OscarsSoWhite campaign she inspired. Something else she has inspired has been the “DuVernay test,”coined back in 2016 by the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis, in which the respected film critic described movie scripts developing into films “in which African-Americans and other minorities have fully realized lives rather than serve as scenery in white stories.” Think of the Bechdel test, which applies to women characters in film, in its Black form.
Following Dubai, I also remember attending a chat with DuVernay in Venice, when her short film The Door was screened as part of the Miu Miu Women’s Tales series. She was super kind then too, and real. There is a difference between someone smiling politely and uttering something mundane, and a person connecting with you, while looking straight into your eyes, as if your souls are communicating for a moment. Perhaps this is DuVernay’s most endearing quality, her authenticity, and one of the reasons people swarmed to her after her public talk in Marrakech, wanting a piece of her, a word, to share a moment with this gorgeous Cinema Queen.
Lately, in fact, DuVernay has been looking even more radiant than ever before. Her persona shouts “Success!” from every pore and she even has a handsome boyfriend accompanying her in Marrakech. Svelte, glamorous and kind, the American filmmaker, producer and activist embodies everything which makes one proud to be a woman, because behind all that beauty there are also brains, talent, coolness and a soul to match.
How being a publicist made her a more courageous filmmaker
“What being a publicist gives me as a filmmaker is less fear because no one can ever tell me, ‘no one’s going to care about that’,” she tells our group, when asked about her former profession. For years, before becoming a filmmaker herself at the age of 32, DuVernay helped promote films as a Hollywood publicist. “I know that anything can be promoted, because I’ve promoted so many different things,” she continues, holding court in the garden of La Mamounia, Marrakech’s most glamorous hotel, “so you can never tell me, ‘no one’s gonna care about that story’, because I know the ways that movies can be sold and offered to people.” She cites a filmmaker’s personal story, or even the making of a film as connecting threads into a project — what inspires her personally to watch something. The idea to “invite people into a filmmaker’s experience no matter what it is,” is what inspires audiences, she confirms.
The Selma, When They See Us, A Twinkle in Time — just to mention a few — filmmaker has also been unconventional about her film making path, and when she wasn’t finding distribution for her films, she founded ARRAY, a company she describes more as an advocacy collective than a business.
Continuing on her former profession, DuVernay says that “being a publicist gave me a swagger, a confidence, to make a film about caste and say ‘hey this might not be as big as a Marvel movie but there will be people who are interested in human dignity, in social justice, in equity and this film can be made’.” The film she is talking about is Origin, her 2023 title based on the non-fiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by American journalist Isabel Wilkerson. The film stars the glorious Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Wilkerson and while it was praised by critics and audiences after premiering at the Venice Film Festival that year, it wasn’t properly distributed by Neon and fell short of being a box office hit.
DuVernay with Rosalie Varda, photo by ©Hadnnan in Marrakech, courtesy of FIFM
When asked what her take away was from that experience, DuVernay says “the only challenging thing is that I want more people to see it,” continuing that “the positive is that people who have seen it, I’ve had extraordinary conversations with, people have had revelations, people have disagreed with it, people have debated, people have embraced it which is exactly what it was meant to do.” She also confesses that “it was really important for me, that it came out last year in the United States — I wanted it to be talked about as people considered new leadership in the US and the elections” and concludes that “I feel that in the spaces it was seen it did exactly what I had hoped it would do. And my hope is that it continues to find its way in the world.” International distribution for Origin “is something that comes a little bit later,” as DuVernay conceded. Inshallah, it will come soon as I missed watching the film on the big screen in Venice and would love to watch it now, knowing what I know after interviewing its filmmaker and watching her chat on stage with cinema royalty Rosalie Varda in Marrakech.
To stream or not to stream, that shouldn’t be the question
“I have to say I was a very early on and outspoken supporter of Netflix,” DuVernay tells me, when I ask about streaming and how it has made her films more accessible. I personally believe that those who insist on cinema being only viewed on the big screen come from a privileged background and are disconnected from those in remote parts of the world where movie theaters aren’t around the corner. DuVernay confirms it.
“I grew up in a neighborhood where there are no movie theaters, a Black neighborhood. Cinema segregation, [means] there is no movie theater,” she says, without anger. “To go to the movie theater I had to take the bus for an hour. So do I just not see movies? What if when I was growing up there was a Netflix and I could see films from around the world… “ Plus, DuVernay points out, the price of a movie these days is more than the minimum wage in America, and add on to that popcorn and parking. “If I’m a person who makes $20 an hour, I can’t do that,” she explains, “but for $20 I can see a world of films on my TV — we have to offer different experiences to people, and there needs to be thought about that as opposed to complaining that people aren’t going to the cinema.”
DuVernay famously put ARRAY titles on the back of airplane seats, when in 2022 she partnered with JetBlue and launched a special channel on the US budget airline, featuring 12 films directed by women and artists of color. Titles included Out of My Hand by Takeshi Fukunaga, Heidi Saman’s Namour and DuVernay’s own I Will Follow and Middle of Nowhere which won the filmmaker Best Director at Sundance in 2012.
“I am very passionate about the cinema, I feel the loss,” DuVernay confirms, “I think the reason I’m criticized for the statement about the backs of airplane seats, is misunderstood. And I hope you’ll all be nuanced in what you say here,” she asks of our group of journalists. “I’m misunderstood that I don’t care about cinema. Of course I care,” elaborating that “people are also watching it on streaming, so what do you do? Yell at them and be mad or do you get your work out in the way that people are seeing it? The people have spoken, sometimes they want to see it in the theater, sometimes they want to see it at home, for many reasons.”
The irrationality of the media and one particular festival director — you know who you are! — to insist that cinema only exists if watched in a theater is something I’ll never understand, especially since Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, Amazon and other streamers have added so much to the current landscape. I only imagine it must have been the same in the 1950s when television first came onto the scene and everyone cried for the end of cinema. Or with the internet and how it has changed our viewing habits. Fact is, longer and more etherial, cryptic films are not only being made, but are being watched and nominated for awards than ever before, so that vein of thinking, that streamers are taking something away, is just plain wrong.
Putting her money where her mouth is
“I do not feel precious about it being seen in a theater,” she explains, about her own work, “of course I want it to be seen in a theater, I’ve worked very hard on sound, the picture calibration, the color, everything. But the story is what’s most important to me. And as a woman filmmaker, as a Black filmmaker — as a Black woman filmmaker the work being seen in the most important for me. The voice being heard is the most important to me. So whether you see it on the back of an airplane seat or you see it in IMAX, I just want you to see it.”
“ The people have spoken, sometimes they want to see it in the theater, sometimes they want to see it at home, for many reasons.”
Always one to put her money where her mouth is, DuVernay talks about the LA campus of ARRAY, where she has a small 50-seat DCP compliant movie theater equipped with a Dolby system, donated by the company. “It’s beautiful. It’s free, everything we show there is free,” she gushes, “whether I’m showing Iranian cinema or Korean masters, or old African American black and white films or the latest films — Lin-Manuel Miranda brought me the latest film. Whatever they are. And it’s always free to the community and there is conversation, and there is food and people are brought into a space of community around cinema. There is a reason to not sit on your couch and watch it. Because you want to be with other people and be in community.”
Mission accomplished if you find yourself in LA and crave a movie experience to complement your Netflix addiction. Courtesy of Ava DuVernay — Cinema Queen.
One Moroccan film student in the audience during the Conversation with DuVernay, stands up to ask a question. “Can I come visit you at ARRAY? How do I do it? Can you invite me?” expecting perhaps an official invitation. DuVernay answers enthusiastically, without any of the judgement I’ve just displayed here. “Of course you can, come on over, spend the day!” I wonder why it is that male filmmakers never get asked for favors like that. Imagine asking Guillermo Del Toro for an invitation onto his Miranda Studios, expecting him to host you… Not done.
By the way, Del Toro was one of the readers of the script for Origin, giving DuVernay opinionated and passionate notes. “Evita, think about this, what does this line mean, what about this!” And you’re sitting there going “OK, yeah, I’m taking all the notes in,” DuVernay confesses she doesn’t love the process of writing as much as other filmmakers, mentioning friend and Black Panther filmmaker Ryan Coogler as one who is instead excited about it. “It’s just very difficult for me,” she says about writing “I’m fortunate that I can do it but my process is a very intricate process called procrastination.”
Where do we go now?
Finally, a colleague asks DuVernay “As an artist and as a citizen, how scared are you for the future?” With wars on several continents, lunatics loose left and right and a certain orange-topped American president ready to take office, very, I would imagine.
Instead, she is quick to answer. “Scared for the future? You know, I’m a student of history so it’s easy for us to feel like these are the worst times ever…. But they’re not, yet.” She explains further that “if you study history of countries around the world, the difficulties are so oppressive that you read the history books and wonder how people even got up in the morning to face the day — and we’re not there.” What is her advice for Americans, at this challenging time? “We keep hope, we keep working, we keep making art, we keep raising our voices, we keep educating ourselves and we continue on. Is it worrisome, yes. Is it the most challenging time I’ve seen politically in the United States, in my personal history? Yes. But as a student of the long [history]… and knowing what is happening in other places around the world, I think it’s challenging, yes, some of us don’t like it. But you have to deal with it and step into it and work for what you wish to see. ”
Famous final last words, from the brilliant filmmaker who is next going back to filming a documentary, as she announces to us in Marrakech, “Going back to a space where I’m exploring some things about American history that people should know.”
Images courtesy of the Marrakech International Film Festival, used with permission.