In these turbulent times the desire to do something can be overwhelming. At the same, time many of us can feel powerless against the actions of Trump, Sessions, and the rest of their brigade of assholes. This, as “Wrinkle in Time” helmer Ava DuVernay remarked in an Adweek interview, is why we need artists and activists, who are often one in the same. “Activism is inherently a creative endeavor,” DuVernay proclaimed, “it takes a radical imagination to be an activist, to envision a world that is not there. It takes imagination and that’s not far from art.”
The “Selma” director said that artists have expressed resistance and political ideals throughout time, pointing to the Suffragettes, the civil rights movement, and other moments of great upheaval in history. “The challenge with people is that we always think the world is only happening now. All of this that we’re experiencing has happened before,” DuVernay observed. “To say that creativity and activism is more prominent now is to disregard, oh my gosh, civil rights movement artists, artists of the Vietnam protest era, the Suffragette movement, Japanese internment, Native Americans, people who were enslaved. The intertwining of art and resistance [has been happening] even before people came to this country, before this country was born, and things that are happening in other countries much older and much more mature than ours,” she explained, “so I think it’s not happening now more than ever, it’s just evidence that it is always intertwined.”
Activism has definitely been an integral part of DuVernay’s own work. Her breakout directorial effort, “Middle of Nowhere,” tackled incarceration and the toll it takes on prisoners and their loves ones; “Selma” follows Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; and her OWN family drama series, “Queen Sugar,” explores myriad topics, including police brutality, social and economic disenfranchisement, and the struggles of ex-convicts.
DuVernay also talked to Adweek about hiring solely female directors on “Queen Sugar” — Julie Dash, Victoria Mahoney, Patricia Cardoso, and Cheryl Dunye among them. “I’ve just tried to make sure that I’m not the only person in a given room who looks like me,” she said. “The idea is that we are correcting past errors and that if we have the opportunity to make sure there are more kinds of people invited to this table called Hollywood that we do what we can to make it so.”
“Queen Sugar” recently returned for its third season. DuVernay became the first black woman to helm a $100 million movie with “A Wrinkle in Time,” which was released in March. She’ll take on another big budget pic with “The New Gods,” a DC Comics adaptation about a group of deities who come into existence after the gods of classic mythology are killed. A Netflix miniseries about the Central Park Five and a TV adaptation of Octavia Butler’s “Dawn” are also among DuVernay’s upcoming projects.
The filmmaker recently served on the Cannes jury alongside Cate Blanchett, Kristen Stewart, and Léa Seydoux, and participated in a protest march at the fest. Eighty-two women ascended the steps of the Palais de Festival to represent the 82 women directors who have walked the steps as directors with films in competition, as compared to the 1,688 men.
