Friday, March 29, 2024

Ava DuVernay’s Distribution Co. ARRAY Honored at LA Film Festival

Director Ava DuVernay attends the 22nd Annual ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on October 19, 2015 in Los Angeles, California.
Director Ava DuVernay attends the 22nd Annual ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on October 19, 2015 in Los Angeles, California.

*Ava DuVernay’s film distribution company ARRAY was honored at the Los Angeles Film Festival with the Spirit of Independence award.

DuVernay founded her company in 2010, looking to cultivate an audience for a diverse range of films. According to The Hollywood Reporter, ARRAY is now planning to expand from two to six releases per year. The goal is to address the issue of certain films not being available everywhere DuVernay would like them to be, providing the example that there was no theater to see “Selma” in Selma and no theater in Compton for “Straight Outta Compton.”

“It’s not just the fact that a film can do well,” said the director, citing Compton’s negative coverage in the press. “It’s the fact that there’s community around it, conversation around it, that a film can push a national moment forward, can be a piece of art. All the things that surround films of color seem to be a surprise. It really is just a selective amnesia because it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”

DuVernay and her fellow ARRAY partners (executive director Tilane Jones and marketing and promotions director Mercedes Cooper), spoke about how their film distribution company cultivates audiences for a diverse range of films during Saturday’s LAFF panel. She also discussed the importance of African-American directors, including Ryan Coogler (“Black Panther”) and Rick Famuyiwa, (“The Flash”).

But she added that, unfortunately, “we make these projects within a system that is not built to support various voices. It’s not built to support them, to nourish them, to amplify them. When something does break through, it has to start all over again.”

Read full story at The Hollywood Reporter.

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