Ava DuVernay Quotes

I didn't have a lot of independent film connections. It really took until the digital film revolution came along that I realized that I could do it myself.

I want to venture into film more, and I think that a nice way to transition into doing that would be a documentary. I think it would be interesting to find one person that really fascinated me or maybe a band and travel with them, but I don't think I could do it like I used to do it.

When I was 25 years old and had no money - and didn't know how to make movies and had no experience - I was able to get $25,000 together, and that film was 'The Brothers McMullen.'

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

I made three short films of my own which I wrote, produced, directed... you did everything in those days. My favourite one was something I shot on VHS... a little documentary.

My dream is just to make zero-budget movies for the rest of my life, because I love that environment.

People look to cinema to spread the word and to tell these wonderful, outrageous stories or true-to-life documentaries.

There's something about the lack of certainty with a documentary, which is exhausting if you do three in a row. It's nerve-wracking.

A documentary film-maker can't help but use poetry to tell the story. I bring truth to my fiction. These things go hand in hand.

I didn't go to film school; I studied fine art - I learned how to be a filmmaker on everybody else's money.

I've documented a lot of things myself as a filmmaker. If you want a rockumentary, that's in there.

I'm not an activist at all. I'm a filmmaker, and I wanted the people involved to tell their own story.

It's really quite an interesting dynamic. I wanted to play to the truth of who Manute was in the first film, while it's also a prequel and the originator [of the story]. It was an interesting dynamic to work with, definitely. I haven't seen the film yet, but the way it felt when I was doing it, it felt like it worked.

Making movies that are really cheap and that can be owned and that you maintain your control of is really exciting.

Full stories are as rare as honesty.

Innovation comes spontaneously. I don't know if I've done anything new. If I have, it's just because I had begun to feel for some time that I couldn't stand certain films, certain modes, certain ways of telling a story, certain tricks of plot development, all of it predictable and useless.

As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true.

To make a low-budget independent is not easy work.

He says every story has at least some truth in it, even if most are made up.

When you're making a real documentary, you shoot it and the movie happens. You don't make - this sounds corny - you don't make a documentary, a documentary makes you. It really does.

I miss directing. I see stories in images and music more so than in dialogue.

I've had frustrated storytelling juices that have been lying dormant for a long time, and I guess the documentary was a way of me telling a story that I felt most qualified to tell. And I loved it, and I'd love to do something else someday, probably more narrative-based. But I'm in no rush.

I'm just thinking of 2001, which I think is the most expensive independent film ever made - which is great, someday I hope I will do one. But I know the parameters when I got onto this project - I have to take care of everyone, make sure that they are all on board, and this process interests me.

I need very little to work, because I learned how to make movies on tiny movies. It's all kind of easy for me.

I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.