13th
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Ava DuVernay is The First Black Woman To Have Her Face on Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream
It’s no secret that we all love Ava DuVernay, and now we get to try her new directorial debut, a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor.
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Ava DuVernay Receives Honorary Doctorate from Yale—and Yes, Her Mom Is Now Calling Her 'Dr. DuVernay'
Acclaimed filmmaker Ava DuVernay once helmed a film about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—and now she can add a similar honorific to her name. Esteemed Ivy League institution Yale University recently named this year’s honorary doctorate degree recipients and Ava is one of them! The award-winning director (Selma, 13th, When They See Us) has now…
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Ava Duvernay's ARRAY Partners With Spotify to Produce Scripted, Unscripted Podcasts: 'We Couldn't Be More Excited'
From Selma to Queen Sugar to When They See Us to whatever the hell else has dominated the pop culture landscape, Ava Duvernay has made it her mission to bang us in the head with an endless ARRAY— (see what I did there?)—of dope content. And after conquering the film and television industry, the 48-year-old…
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Who Could, Should and Will Win at the 89th Academy Awards
I have a complicated relationship with the Academy Awards. As I’ve said before, when we need the approval and validation of the dominant group in order for us to see our own work as valuable, we engage in a form of internalized racism that centers whiteness even as we engage in the subversive work of…
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Watch: Ava DuVernay on 13th, Her Life's Work and Magnifying the Beauty of Black People
Some might call Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th prophetic. In just over 90 minutes, DuVernay traces the decisions, going as far back as the end of slavery, that led to the creation of the monstrosity known as the prison-industrial complex—and, thus, explains how it is that modern-day slavery exists. Telling the stories of black and brown…
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13th and the Invisibleness of Black Women
Acclaimed filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th was released on Netflix last week. Masterfully produced and directed by DuVernay, it is a poignant documentary detailing white America’s continual, desperate and ever-changing attempts to maintain racial and legal domination over black people. What has emerged as common knowledge through the Movement for Black Lives is laid out clearly and…
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Watch: Ava DuVernay on Mass Incarceration, White Fear and Black Joy
White fear exists. It has been manufactured, encouraged and proliferated through the centuries. From it spawned a damning system based on inequality: the prison-industrial complex. “The reason that we have mass incarceration is because of white fear,” Ava DuVernay told The Root. DuVernay is a prolific director, and her latest project is 13th. The sobering documentary…