Age: 53
female
Ava Marie DuVernay (/ˌdjuːvərˈneɪ/; born August 24, 1972) is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. She is a recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, a BAFTA Film Award, and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as a nominee for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. In 2011, she founded her independent distribution company ARRAY. After making her directorial debut with I Will Follow (2010), DuVernay won the directing award in the U.S. dramatic competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her second feature film, Middle of Nowhere, becoming the first black woman to win the award. For her work on Selma (2014), a biopic about Martin Luther King Jr., DuVernay became the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director; the film went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Her other film credits include the Academy Award-nominated Netflix documentary 13th (2016) and the Disney fantasy film A Wrinkle in Time (2018), the latter making her the first African-American woman to direct a film with a $100 million budget. In 2023, she directed the biographical film Origin based on Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). DuVernay's television credits include the OWN drama series Queen Sugar (2016) and two Netflix drama limited series: When They See Us (2019), based on the 1989 Central Park jogger case, and Colin in Black & White (2021), based on the teenage years of NFL player Colin Kaepernick. In 2017, DuVernay was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2020, she was elected to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences board of governors as part of the directors branch. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ava DuVernay, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Ava DuVernay
Director
for Director in Blind Lemon: The Blues Legend
Suggested by kamsismith
In the early 1900s, a young blind man from rural Texas named Lemon Henry Jefferson defied every expectation. Despite being born into hardship and blindness, his soul-stirring sound would echo through the hearts of millions, changing the face of American blues music forever. Blind Lemon: The Blues Legend is the untold story of a raw, unapologetic talent who captured the heart of the world with nothing but his voice, his guitar, and his unwavering spirit. Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South, this biopic traces Lemon’s rise from humble beginnings in the segregated streets of Wortham, Texas, to becoming the “Father of Texas Blues,” one of the most influential figures in the birth of the genre. As a pioneering force in the world of acoustic blues, Lemon’s mesmerizing melodies and evocative lyrics spoke to the deepest struggles and joys of Black America in the early 20th century. His story is not only one of musical genius but of resilience, love, and the fight for identity. Audiences will witness his evolution as an artist—his haunting hits like "Matchbox Blues" and "Black Snake Moan" capturing a world of emotions, from heartbreak to hope, and his influence on later generations of musicians, from Robert Johnson to B.B. King.
