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 Blue Nocturne: The Nat Jaffe Story
Suggested by kamsismith
"Blue Nocturne" takes audiences back to the smoky jazz clubs of 1940s New York City, where the rhythmic pulse of swing and bebop filled the air, and musical genius emerged from both the light and dark corners of the stage. This biopic delves into the tragically short but remarkable life of Nat Jaffe, a gifted jazz pianist whose music echoes a vibrant yet tumultuous era. Raised in Berlin, shaped by his family's journey to America in the shadow of pre-war Europe, Jaffe found his home in the underground jazz clubs of Harlem, where he became a powerful voice in the American jazz scene. The film follows Jaffe’s rapid rise as a pianist who brought a haunting lyricism to swing, breaking boundaries with every chord and riff. Jaffe's performances with jazz greats like Billie Holiday and his deep, yet understated influence on the evolution of jazz are vividly depicted, showing a prodigy caught between the demands of his art and the instability of a world at war. At its heart, however, "Blue Nocturne" is the story of Jaffe’s love affair with singer Shirley Lloyd, a love that thrived in jazz’s frenetic, unpredictable world. Their partnership fueled some of his most passionate work, but it also exposed the strains of a life spent chasing fame, struggling with personal demons, and facing the limitations of time.
