Award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay has been on a media tour to promote her new movie “A Wrinkle In time.” On Tuesday’s episode on “The Real” DuVernay explained the importance of representation of women and people of color in cinema and television.
In her new film “A Wrinkle in Time”, she told Vulture how she purposely chose to cast Storm Reid as the character Meg Murray, because of her natural hair and what she represents. She also went into depth about the depiction of natural hair in film and how she’s doing away with the European standard of beauty or “my hair needs to look like a Caucasian woman’s hair: straight.” Duvernay who has always worn dreadlocks, said ” hair is a big deal for black women” and her style is sort of like “an act of rebellion in a society that says,’You would look better if you looked like us,” she said.
DuVernay described this message to “The Real.”
“We should have images that reflect the real world. All of the heroes in a film shouldn’t look one way, they should not be Caucasian boys, they should be girls of color, we just want everyone to see themselves.”
The “13th” filmmaker also spoke on “The DuVernay Test” titled after herself and proposed by New York Times reporter. It’s a way to measure or monitor racial diversity in Hollywood.
“Manohla Dargis, at The New York Times, decided that she was going to name this test after me – an honor, but you really hope that people will take these kinds of things under consideration,” DuVernay said. “When you’re directing – [you] look around and say, ‘Wow – be nice to have some people of color in this scene!'”
