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 Keys of Freedom: The Jimmy Yancey Story
Suggested by kamsismith
Set in the smoky clubs of early 20th-century Chicago, Keys of Freedom is a riveting biopic miniseries chronicling the life of Jimmy Yancey, the unsung pioneer of boogie-woogie piano. Through his electrifying music and quiet determination, Yancey transformed the pulse of American music, influencing countless musicians while navigating the struggles of a rapidly changing world. The series delves into Yancey’s humble beginnings in a family of vaudeville performers and his journey from a child prodigy to a trailblazer in a genre that bridged blues, jazz, and the roots of rock ‘n’ roll. Against the backdrop of Chicago's vibrant South Side, viewers witness Yancey’s rise as a working-class hero who balanced a day job as a groundskeeper with nights igniting piano keys. Through the lens of his relationships—with his wife, Estelle "Mama" Yancey, a blues singer who shared his passion for music, and his contemporaries like Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons—Keys of Freedom captures the personal and professional challenges of a Black artist thriving amidst racial segregation and the Great Depression. The series doesn’t shy away from the bittersweet realities of Yancey’s life, including his late recognition and enduring influence on American music.
