Celebrating Ava DuVernay, the first African American to be nominated for an Oscar
Ava DuVernay is not the first African-American woman director and producer, but she is one of the greats.
DuVernay didn’t start making films until she was 33 years old. While working as a publicist, she was introduced to the filmmaker world. She made her directorial debut in 2008 with the documentary “This is the Life.”
Over the course of nine years, DuVernay established herself as one of the directors to look out for. She has won awards for her hit show on the OWN network, “Queen Sugar,” while also winning an award for outstanding Netflix Documentary at the NAACP Image Awards for her film, “13th.” To top off the success of her recent works, DuVernay has become the first African-American female to receive $100 million dollars to work on her own version of the Disney film “A Wrinkle in Time.”
DuVernay makes it a point to mention on Twitter, tweeting, “Capable of doing so. Not by a long shot. Thanks @DisneyStudios for breaking glass with me.”
Not only is the director getting a huge budget for the film from Disney, the modern adaption has gathered much more attention as it was announced that Oprah Winfrey will star in the film as Mrs. Which, a selfish old billionaire.
The movie is part of Disney’s new diversity image along with other revamped classics such as the “Rocketeer” and a new adaption of “The Nutcracker.”
“I watched ‘13th’ with my roommates when we came back to school from winter break,” said Dominique Burke, senior biology major. “I never knew DuVernay was the one to direct and produce the film. It’s always cool to find out a woman, especially an African-American woman, created such big film in a part of the entertainment world that is usually dominated by males.”
DuVernay also broke other social norms by becoming the first black woman to receive the nomination for Best Director at the Golden Globes. She is now one of the only three black directors to be nominated for the award. She was nominated for directing the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic “Selma.”
In 2012, DuVernay became the first African-American woman to win the best director prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her second feature film, “Middle of Nowhere.” This year, DuVernay became the first black female director in history to be nominated for Best Documentary feature at the Oscars.
Although DuVernay has earned many nominations and made history with her films, she has been overlooked by the award committees and often her films are snubbed.
According to Vogue.com, DuVernay says the recognition is nice but not a real change.
“It’s not enough to have roses thrown at my feet, or Ryan Murphy’s feet, or the woman who’s doing ‘Jessica Jones,’ Melissa Rosenberg, because we decided to have more women directors,” said DuVernay. “That’s not enough.”
DuVernay isn’t the first African American female director and she certainly isn’t the last but she is one of the greats that has slowly broken boundaries for our generation to watch before our eyes. As DuVernay has already established herself in the industry in such a short period of time, one can only expect nothing but more from the director.