SXSW Keynote: Ava DuVernay
For her 2014 film Selma, DuVernay was the first black female director to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Her SXSW appearance came less than a month after the Academy Awards ceremony, at which Selma won only the Best Original Song leading to the trending Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. She continues to be a prolific film and TV director and received a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination for 13th in 2017.
Ava DuVernay
Director, DVA/AFFRM.
Winner of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Best Director Award and the John Cassavetes Independent Spirit Award for her second narrative feature Middle of Nowhere, Ava DuVernay is a writer, producer, director and distributor of independent film. Her upcoming film Selma, nominated for four Golden Globe Awards including Best Director, chronicles the historic 1965 voting rights campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. DuVernay is founder of AFFRM, a film distribution collective dedicated to African-American cinema.
