July 8, 2020

Ava DuVernay at the Vanity Fair Oscar party this year.Michelle Groskopf for The New York Times

By Emma Goldberg

“An artist and an activist are not so far apart.”

— Ava DuVernay, award-winning writer, producer and film director

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They might depict scenes from decades past, but movie sets featured in films by the director Ava DuVernay are starting to look a lot like the United States today.

For “Selma,” her 2014 film about the 1965 marches for voting rights and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s part in them, Ms. DuVernay directed hundreds of Black and white actors in a restaging of civil rights protests. “When They See Us,” her mini-series on the wrongful conviction of teenage boys known as the Central Park Five, released last year, had her grappling with the injustices Black men experience at the hands of the police. And her Netflix documentary “13th,” from 2016, traces the legacy of American slavery to the present day criminalization of Black communities.

As hundreds of thousands across the United States march for Black Lives Matter, Ms. DuVernay’s films about Black histories and experiences have come to feel more essential than ever.

But there aren’t enough Black directors telling those stories.

For decades, few Black women have had access to the resources and platforms to make major motion pictures. In 2018, Hollywood saw a record high number of top films from Black directors — and it was only 14 percent. Only one of them was a woman, and she was Ms. DuVernay.

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The calls to break up Hollywood’s entrenched disparities are building. Five years ago, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite put a spotlight on the industry’s lack of diversity, and its following has since continued to hold Hollywood to account for its lack of representation. Two years later, the #MeToo movement erupted and dozens of women exposed the film titan Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuses.

Today, industry leaders are listening to people of color protesting films that romanticize the slavery era. For a brief moment, “Gone With the Wind,” the highest-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation, was removed from HBO Max. (It was later restored with additional videos offering historical context.) Filmmakers, like Ms. DuVernay, are working to ensure the momentum does not subside.

Last month, Ms. DuVernay’s media company ARRAY introduced the Law Enforcement Accountability Project in the wake of George Floyd’s killing while in police custody in Minneapolis, with the goal of commissioning, funding and amplifying works from Black and female artists that focus on police violence. One of the goals, she said, is to consider who is writing the history of this moment.

Ms. DuVernay spoke with In Her Words about the role she sees for artists in a time of widespread unrest, and whether problematic films — like problematic statues — should be removed to make space for new voices.

The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

We’re in a moment of upheaval — hundreds of thousands marching, a pandemic, an upcoming U.S. presidential election. What’s the role of storytelling in this moment?

The story has been told from one point of view for too long. And when we say story, I don’t just mean film or television. I mean the stories we embrace as part of the criminalization of Black people. Every time an officer writes a police report about an incident, they’re telling a story. Look at the case of Breonna Taylor and her police report. They had nothing on it; it said she had no injuries. That is a story of those officers saying, “Nothing to look at here, nothing happened.” But that’s not the story that happened because if she could speak for herself, she would say, “I was shot in the dark on a no-knock warrant in my bed.”

So when you think of her story and multiply that times hundreds of thousands of people over the years in communities of color, specifically Black communities, a single story line has led the day and we need to change that story line. And to do that, you have to change who the storytellers are.

Ms. DuVernay with Storm Reid on the set of the Disney film “A Wrinkle in Time.”Atsushi Nishijima/Disney

This is a moment of grief and rage for so many. How can those emotions be translated into art?

The answer to your question for me personally was the creation of our Law Enforcement Accountability Project — LEAP — which uses art to hold police accountable.

It links to the idea that an artist and an activist are not so far apart. Whether you call yourself an activist or not, artists use their imagination to envision a world that does not exist and make it so. Activists use their imagination to envision a world that does not exist and make it so.

Today’s movement against police violence was, in large part, prompted by the killing of George Floyd when it was captured on video. When did you first make the connection between film and social action?

I began to make the link between art and social action in high school when I went to my first Amnesty International concert. It was the first time that I, a girl from Compton, started to link the things that I was experiencing to the wider world through music, and what was being said in those lyrics. And then as I got to college, I started to watch films like “The Battle of Algiers” and the work of Haile Gerima, an Ethiopian filmmaker, and started to see the link between images, film and social justice, and what’s possible in storytelling.

Ms. DuVernay on the set of “Selma.”Atsushi Nishijima/Paramount Pictures

You were nominated for an Academy Award for best picture the same year that you helped start the movement #OscarsSoWhite. What are the challenges of changing an institution or community that you’re deeply a part of?

It’s a system that I work within. It’s not a community as it relates to the problem you’re talking about. It’s a system like the criminal justice system. It’s a system like the health care system, the education system. It is the Hollywood system, the entertainment system, the way we create images. It’s a system that is over a hundred years old, and it’s built on a foundation of racism, exclusion and patriarchy.

So, at this point, I think of it less like “rally the community,” or “how do you change people’s minds.” Changing people’s minds doesn’t matter if those changed minds are working within a system that’s still diseased. It’s just a Band-Aid. So the way I approach it is, yes, you want to create awareness, you want to educate people, you want to make people be less ignorant to the nuances of living in skin of color and as a woman — but, ultimately, the systems that we all work in are harmful to a healthy industry. We need to be thinking more broadly about how we not just reform that system but rebuild the system.

You once called Hollywood “a patriarchy, headed by men and built for men.” One year after you said that, the #MeToo movement was introduced to take down some of Hollywood’s worst abusers. Are you optimistic about the industry’s future?

I’m hopeful about everything in the world because I believe in the power of people. I’m a student of history, and there’s too much precedent to be hopeless. I understand there is a way forward, and the way forward is as a united front. You’re seeing some of that right now. Whenever you get enough people with enough energy behind it, that’s power exerted.

Let’s talk about “Gone With the Wind.” Statues are being torn down. Should films like this be erased from the canon, or are they important in some way?

I don’t think the film should be erased from the canon, because then you erase past sins — those cannot be erased. The damage that was done, the foundational elements of that film that seeped into cinematic culture worldwide, I don’t think you want to erase those. But I do think you need to give context to them so that they aren’t used as propaganda for ideas that are poison to our culture. They’re really a lesson on our dark past and what we need to do to get past it. So I feel like contextualizing these films is important.

Now film is different from statues commemorating murderers and traitors to the country who wanted to see human beings enslaved. An artist who decided to promote a certain narrative about the inferiority of certain people is different from a monument to murderers. I think these monuments should come down and the films should have context.

Many people in the United States are just beginning the fight for racial and social justice. You’ve been in this battle a long time. What’s your advice for sustaining the fight long term?

The battle is ongoing whether you keep it going or not. The question is how are you going to react to it? That’s up to everyone to decide for themselves.

But the battle is not by choice. I would rather not do any of it. I’d rather just make my films and go about my day. But if I don’t buy into the fight then I don’t get to make my films. That’s what privilege is.

What else is happening

Here are four articles from The Times that you may have missed.

Nimo Hashi represented Kentucky in the 2019 Miss Muslimah USA pageant, whose participants must be practicing Muslim women.Farah Al Qasimi for The New York Times

“I am here to prove you wrong.” Miss Muslimah USA, a beauty pageant for young Muslim women, offers a fresh take on the well-worn event format, one that lies at the intersection of American cultural identity and religious freedom. [Read the story]
“I chose this.” Peggy Johnson, who led Microsoft’s business development, will take over the struggling virtual reality start-up, Magic Leap, in August. She is the latest experienced female or executive of color brought in to turn around a struggling company, a phenomenon that researchers have called the “glass cliff.” [Read the story]
“Germany is lucky to have such an experienced leader in times of corona.” As Germany emerges from the pandemic with a notably low fatality rate and a high-functioning test and trace system, the popularity of Chancellor Angela Merkel has been revitalized. [Read the Opinion piece]
“There’s nothing special about my story. That’s the point.” Lacy Crawford, author of the forthcoming memoir “Notes on a Silencing,” writes of the hurdles that victims face when trying to tell their stories of rape. [Read the Opinion piece]

Today’s In Her Words is written by Emma Goldberg and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Sandra Stevenson.

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