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 Echoes of the Mall: The Music Tour Phenomenon
Suggested by kamsismith
"Echoes of the Mall" is a dynamic and nostalgic journey through the evolution of the music mall tour, showcasing how malls became the epicenter of youth culture, where fandom, fame, and commercialism collided. Each episode of the series focuses on a different key artist, band, or genre that used mall tours as a stepping stone to superstardom, and later became an iconic part of pop culture. Starting in the 1980s with the emergence of teen idols and new wave bands, we’ll follow the rise of the mall tour as a must-do promotional stop. Think Tiffany, New Kids on the Block, and Debbie Gibson, all creating an unforgettable whirlwind of excitement and chaos as fans lined up in droves for a chance to see their heroes up close. The malls, once seen as mundane retail hubs, were transformed into meccas of pop culture, where crowds gathered in awe of their idols and sometimes even changed the trajectory of an artist's career. As the series progresses into the 1990s, we’ll dive into the explosion of boy bands, girl groups, and hip-hop artists that defined the decade. The malls continued to be a battleground for attention, with the likes of Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, and TLC bringing their tours to the masses, creating a new wave of fandom and media frenzy. The youth-driven mall tour culture became a key part of shaping the music industry, forging deep connections between artists and their fans in ways the internet and social media hadn't yet.
