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.
Set against the backdrop of the rapidly changing cultural landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, this miniseries chronicles the life of Doris Coley Kenner Jackson. As one of the founding members and lead singers of the Shirelles, Doris made history as part of the first all-female group to achieve widespread success in the male-dominated music industry. The series begins with Doris's early life in Passaic, New Jersey, and her fateful collaboration with friends Shirley Owens, Beverly Lee, and Addie "Micki" Harris. Together, they navigate the challenges of fame as Black women in a segregated America, scoring hits like “Dedicated to the One I Love” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” The narrative explores Doris’s complex relationship with her fellow Shirelles, her decision to step away from the group in 1968, and her personal journey of love, family, and faith through two marriages. Her eventual return to the Shirelles in 1975, after Shirley Owens’ departure, reveals the unbreakable bond between the women and their shared legacy.
