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 Jesse Belvin: The Ballad of a Dreamer
Suggested by kamsismith
"Jesse Belvin: The Ballad of a Dreamer" is the untold story of one of the most gifted yet tragically overlooked pioneers of rhythm and blues. This biopic follows the life of Jesse Belvin, whose smooth tenor and heartfelt lyrics captivated audiences in the 1950s. Known as the "King of the Ballads," Belvin wrote and performed some of the era's most enduring love songs, including the iconic Goodnight My Love, a timeless classic. But behind the velvet voice was a man struggling with the weight of fame, racial injustice, and personal loss in an America still divided. From his humble beginnings in the segregated South to his rise as a celebrated artist on the West Coast, the film traces Jesse’s path through the music scene of the 1950s, where he collaborated with legends like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson. But as Jesse’s career flourishes, so too do the pressures and dangers of his success. A groundbreaking African-American artist during the golden age of R&B, Belvin faced constant racism and threats from an industry that saw his success as a challenge to the status quo. At the height of his career, Jesse Belvin's promising life was tragically cut short in a car accident at just 27 years old. In a bitter twist of fate, his death has remained shrouded in mystery, with suspicions of foul play and conspiracies that left a lasting impact on the music world.
