There’s a big difference between the independent film world and the Hollywood film world, and I don’t know that I understood that until I got into certain rooms, and people’s faces go blank when you talk about Sundance. – Ava DuVernay
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
There’s a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way. – Ava DuVernay
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
I think that black people making art, women making art, and certainly black women making art is a disruptive endeavor – and it’s one that I enjoy extremely. – 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
Women have been trained in our culture and society to ask for what we want instead of taking what we want. We’ve been really indoctrinated with this culture of permission. I think it’s true for women, and I think it’s true for people of color. It’s historic, and it’s unfortunate and has somehow become part of our DNA. But that time has passed. – Ava DuVernay
As a filmmaker, you put the film out there, and you just want it to be okay. You don’t want to let people down; you don’t want to embarrass yourself. – Ava DuVernay
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’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. – Ava DuVernay
I am honored to be one of this year’s Urbanworld ambassadors for the festival’s 20th anniversary, joining my friend David Oyelowo. I have always had a special relationship with Urbanworld, back to my days as a festival publicist to previewing my earlier films and now as an ambassador. – Ava DuVernay
I want more girls to be able to see themselves behind the camera creating images we all enjoy, and I want to call attention to the fact that women directors are here all over the world. – Ava DuVernay
I spent a whole 12 years helping other people tell their stories as a publicist, so just to be able to go and write and get behind the camera, that’s my thing. – Ava DuVernay
With the Black Lives Matter movement, a lot of the focus is on the protest and dissent. I’m hoping to dismantle the public notion – for folks outside of the community – of what Black Lives Matter means. It’s really about saying that black lives matter: that humanity is the same when you go inside people’s homes. – Ava DuVernay
To win Best Director at Sundance was beyond anything I could have imagined for myself. It’s still an incredible feeling to know I won. But as happy as I am about winning, I also know many other women of color have directed amazing films over the years that were equally deserving and didn’t win. – Ava DuVernay
There’s something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. It’s a reflection as opposed to an interpretation. – Ava DuVernay
I don’t even really see sit-ins and marches as passive. I see them as quite assertive. I see those as emotionally aggressive tactics. I see people putting their lives on the line and being bold and brave. – Ava DuVernay
My mother is from Compton, California, but my father is from Hayneville, Alabama, and that’s less than 20 miles from Selma. – Ava DuVernay
Creativity is an energy. It’s a precious energy, and it’s something to be protected. A lot of people take for granted that they’re a creative person, but I know from experience, feeling it in myself, it is a magic; it is an energy. And it can’t be taken for granted. – Ava DuVernay
I think any black woman is a queen. It’s just, do you know it? Do you see it in yourself? Do you recognize it, do you abide by that, do you define yourself as that? Based on who we are and what we’ve been through and how we survive and where we stand, we are on kind of sacred ground. We stand on the backs of our ancestors. – Ava DuVernay
The best art is realized when you can share the experience of making of it and not just the presentation of it, so that the audience is part of the creation and not just part of the consumption. Then it becomes much more full-bodied and robust. – 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 DuVernay
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
There’s really no precedent for someone like me gaining clout in the space that I’m in – a black woman directing films in Hollywood. – Ava DuVernay
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. – Ava DuVernay
Oh gosh, I’m completely allergic to historical dramas. Particularly those around the civil-rights movement. It’s not my favorite thing to watch. So often they feel like medicine. Or not even a history lesson, because I really like history. Just… obligatory. – Ava DuVernay