Women's Pictures - Ava DuVernay's Selma

Nothing about Ava DuVernay’s career up to 2014 suggested the epic sweep of Selma. I Will Follow and Middle of Nowhere are both quiet dramas, focusing on one central character and a handful of supporting players as they navigate a major, life-altering event. Race is the background against which these stories are set - coloring a heated music discussion, or shading the convict’s biased parole hearing - but racism isn’t explicitly addressed. This changes dramatically with Selma. In a year that has seen protests in Ferguson and serious discussions about diversity in the Academy, Selma has been called everything from controversial to current to incorrect. For its director, it’s proof that 6 years and 3 movies can rapidly mature a talent.

When telling the story of Martin Luther King’s 1965 protest march in Alabama, DuVernay focuses not on a man, but on a movement. She studies the Civil Rights movement as if it were a character, following not only Dr. King’s glossy speeches, but also the many behind-the-scenes maneuvering. King’s arguments with President Johnson, Johnson’s arguments with Governor Wallace, the student organizers’ arguments with King’s men, even quieter discussions between Coretta Scott King and Malcolm X expose the precarious balance between ideology and strategy that's needed to succeed. DuVernay manages to write her characters with humanity as well, populating the film with people, not symbols. Early on, Dr. King (dignified David Oyelowo) comments lightly that the reason he's in Selma is because he needs a bully to catch national sympathy, and the racist sheriff is that man. As men start dying, those words hang over King's head like a cross.

If I have one complaint with Selma, it’s that the violence is too beautiful. DuVernay deftly stages the action of hundreds of protestors for the camera, and re-teams with cinematographer Bradford Young. The result is similar to Raging Bull: every protest is shot differently, so that each violent outbreak feels fresh. If the night march feels familiar to 2014 audiences, if the first march feels claustrophobic, if the violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge looks like a hallucinatory war film, that’s not unintentional. In Selma, Ava DuVernay has matched epic sweep with humanity and brutal vision. It’s a hell of an achievement for a third film.

This close to the Oscars ceremony, reviving the question of whether Selma was snubbed is pointless. But regardless of Sunday’s outcome, Ava DuVernay has joined a different illustrious company: unnominated female directors whose films were nominated for Best Picture. In an attempt to divine DuVernay’s future, I did some research, and discovered a pattern: Of these nine female directors, seven are still directing. Of those seven directors, four (including DuVernay) are now working in TV.

As anyone with a remote or a streaming subscription knows, we are currently in a second Golden Age of television. This is due in no small part to the diversity of creative talent. Every year, more shows are created by, directed by, and starring women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. In this increasingly colorful TV landscape, Ava DuVernay will be a welcome addition when she launches her show on OWN. But at what cost to film?

2014 has been widely criticized as the whitest, most male-dominated year of the Oscars in a long time. As much as I would like to blame our old scapegoat, the White Male Voter, this is also because of the homogeny of the films being offered to the Academy. When we can count the number of Oscar nominated female directors on one hand--likewise for directors of color--we should be shouting for more of these voices in film, instead of celebrating when the ones who’ve already proven themselves move to television (where they can get snubbed by the Emmys instead). I love Ava DuVernay’s work. I can’t wait to see what she creates with Oprah’s blessing. But surely I’m not alone when I say: Ava DuVernay, please come back to film soon.

 

Thus concludes our first month of Women's Pictures. Next week will be a vote to choose our next female filmmakers. Who do you want us to cover? If you have suggestions for future Women’s Pictures directors, post them in the comments or find Anne Marie on Twitter!

Belated Thoughts on This Weekend's Unintentional Selma / Birth of a Nation Confluence

We're Living History Right Now

 I meant to post something this over the weekend but kept freezing from indecision and confusions about what to write. If you were offline this weekend, you might have missed that one of the most important films of all time, Birth of a Nation (1915) hit its Centennial anniversary. As you know we love to celebrate centennials at TFE but how to even deal with that one? Hideously racist though it was and is, D.W. Griffith's blockbuster informed and shaped much of this artform, the movies, that we all love today. I first saw it in an Introduction to Film type class in my freshman year of college and as creepy as it was to see the lovely crucial silent superstar Lillian Gish used as a pawn to trump up its racial hatred as she is saved from a rapist (a white actor in blackface) by the Klu Klux Klan, it was also startling to see what a technical and narrative leap it was in terms of early cinema.

And the exact same weekend that that film, which has long been a (deserved) target of the NAACP was hitting 100*, The NAACP was holding their annual Image Awards. Selma won big at  (but let's pretend that bizarre director snub -- the guy who made The Equalizer beat Ava DuVernay? -- didn't happen. But the NAACP hasn't been the only group cheering Selma on. It's been enjoying a very healthy if unspectacular box office as a Best Picture Oscar nominee, Ava received a historic Folden Globe nomination late last year, and her films Original Song "Glory," also Oscar nominated, was performed at the Grammys yesterday.

At first I was all... this is such a gross coincidence and I'll just send people to fine articles at the New York Post and Vulture.  But then I realized how beautiful the juxtaposition was in terms of progress.

100 years of tumultuous history have passed between those two films and when the smoke clears we see that America has come a long long way. These battles for basic human dignity and equality are never fully won of course (Black History is hardly the only history plagued with civil rights violations and demonization of "the other") and you have to keep fighting them. But for all the nostalgia the past can bring to people, sometimes the now is vastly preferrable.

'Selma' beauties enjoying their big NAACP night

And, wouldn't you know it... Martin Luther King Jr said it best himself.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice

* There are different dates online for when Birth of a Nation premiered. Wikipedia says February 8th, the bulk of internet articles about its Centennial appeared on February 7th, but a lot of articles on the film mention a March 3rd premiere.

Women's Pictures - Ava DuVernay's "I Will Follow"

Anne Marie of "A Year With Kate" fame returning to TFE with a new series!

Welcome to Women’s Pictures, a new series dedicated to celebrating female directors. From the matriarchal melodramas of the 50s (from which this series draws its name), to the 90s chick flicks, to the surprisingly durable stereotype that female filmmakers aren’t mainstream enough for “big” pictures, films for women or by women continue to be ignored or maligned. To this I say: Screw that! Women directors are as varied and interesting as the many movies they make.

Each month, we will examine four(ish) movies by a female director in chronological order. All genres, time periods, creeds, colors, and languages are open for examination. We’ll meet auteurs we might have missed, shine a light on corners of cinema previously obscured, and maybe even redefine what “Women’s Pictures” means.

This month, in honor of Black History Month, Selma’s two Academy Award nominations, and the recent happy announcement of a new TV series, our first female filmmaker is Ava DuVernay! (You may recall that Nathaniel met her at AFI Fest this year. She'd been up for 48 hours editing Selma, but still managed to be gracious and charming.) Her story (self-starter-publicist-turned-self-starter-director) is by this point well known, even if the two feature-length narratives she made before Selma were only recently made available VOD. Before Oprah, Oscars, or a seven figure budget, DuVernay made her first film, I Will Follow, in 2010 for $50,000.

So, what kind of a first film is a former publicist going to make? A very personal one...

Click to read more ...

Thin Skins and The Art of Being Snubbed

I've been sitting on half formed think pieces about this one for a couple of weeks deciding whether to publish but here goes...

A very recent article at Wired about journalist behavior at Sundance made a lot of journalists angry. I agree that a lot of movie journalists are jaded (I think that about other Oscar bloggers all the time who don't see to love it like I do). The piece isn't really fair because there are a lot of terribly behaved people of all types of badges at festivals. The type of badge you wear does not influence your behavior, your character influences your behavior. Still there's so much online response and twitter uproar about this that it reminded me of all the potshots taken at Birdman's depiction of a critic (in a movie that is not meant to be taken literally at that). In short: a lot of media writers have thin skins. I'd include myself here I must say but I think it's better to take your lumps quietly than protest too much. (Movies.com had a similarly themed piece on bad movie etiquette but it was more generous and didn't point too specific a finger.)

The uproar over these pieces reminded me of my own discomfort about the way people react to Oscar snubs (or omissions if the "s" word offends you). This season in particular, the Selma situation has provoked a lot of criticism,...

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What Link Gets Wrong About Blog

AV Club deep screen capture to reveal how well constructed shots in Divergent dont make for a good film
BuzzFeed great essay on the current relevancy of Before Sunrise (1995) and instant nostalgia
Heat Vision Tyrese Gibson obsessed with playing Green Lantern in a film that's at least 5 years away based on a character already ruined by the movies 
Decider 10 essential movies about nuns from our beloved Black Narcissus to less impressive but famous offerings like Doubt

HuffPo Adam Scott and Jason Schwarzmann discuss their prosthetic penises in The Overnight. (Takeaway: no actor will ever truly be naked again onscreen. That's only for actresses) 
THR talks to the director of Book of Life - though disappointed by the lack of an Oscar nomination, he cherishes stories from fans about how it effected their families
Towleroad arts teacher in Texas does "Uptown Funk" with students. Cute. But I only share it because I love Uptown Funk because you know why (first verse) 
Playlist Paul Thomas Anderson loves Edge of Tomorrow and The Grand Budapest Hotel
THR Why Me and Earl and the Dying Girl did not choose the highest bidder at Sundance 

This Week's Must Read
You undoubtedly know already that Mark Harris is one of the best writers on movie culture and the awards beat in general (if for some insane reason you haven't read his first book Pictures at a Revolution, it's the most invaluable Oscar book since "Inside Oscar") but I think his latest column for Grantland is one of his all time finest. He goes deep on "How Selma Got Smeared: Historical Fiction And Its Malcontents" I only wish this essay had broken sooner before Oscar nomination voting.  Now you may be thinking 'please, Nathaniel, I have read enoug about Selma's LBJ problem' and you may even be thinking (as I have been) that complaints about Selma's "Oscar snub" are starting to feel weirder and weirder as the season progresses. Fact: Selma will now go down in movie history as a Best Picture nominee, something only 8 movies from hundreds and hundreds released in 2014 can claim.  But trust me you need to read this anyway.

Here's a part I particularly love (bold is mine) that is really illuminating about historical fiction:

About a third of the way into Selma, Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo) has a private meeting with Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch) in an Alabama church (this is not an invention of the movie; the two met in Selma on February 5, 1965, two weeks before Malcolm X was assassinated). The scene is introduced with a shrewd recurring device — an onscreen teletype legend that tells moviegoers what’s happening, but only through the warping prism of FBI surveillance. “C. King in Selma to meet with Negro militant Malcolm X. 03:46 p.m. LOGGED.” The description denotes the assumption of white law enforcement that a conspiracy of one kind is taking place — a clandestine meeting in which King may be moving closer to throwing in with a more militant, potentially violent faction of the movement. In reality, the “conspiracy” that’s unfolding is exactly the opposite; Malcolm tells the wary Coretta that he is not in Selma to impede her husband’s work, but to allow himself to be used, even to be misrepresented, to further King’s goals.

...

DuVernay’s view of the uses of history and of (mis)representation is not careless in this scene or in the movie; it’s clearly thought through. The onscreen typed summary is a perfectly deployed example of how something can be factually correct (meeting with a “Negro militant” is, literally, what Coretta King is doing) without being true; the movie, by contrast, finds many ways of being true without being strictly factual. That is exactly what good historical drama must sometimes do, and must be given permission to do, including in this scene itself, in which DuVernay has a character express an understanding that his presence and his motives may have to be slightly distorted in order to achieve a greater truth and justice.

And Harris illuminates it, strategically, in a scene not even involving LBJ.