A Thousand And One director joins Ava DuVernay in award season frustration: "We're not even given a shot"
Ava DuVernay previously called out how difficult it was to get people to even watch her film, Origin
Award season is in full swing, which means we tend to see some of the same titles—Oppenheimer, Killers Of The Flower Moon, Poor Things, etc.—over and over. Much ink has already been spilled over this cycle’s biggest sweeps and the shows they consequently shut out, but even when mourning those baffling snubs, it can be easy to forget that all of these pieces of art are benefitting from being talked about at all. Many aren’t so lucky.
Ava DuVernay recently called attention to this disparity in an emotional Instagram post illuminating how hard it’s been to get people to even watch her latest film Origin, much less nominate or vote for it. In a video, she revealed that the film’s star, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, spent the day of the Golden Globes handing out postcards for the movie to people walking outside a local Los Angeles AMC. Neither Ellis-Taylor nor DuVernay were nominated for the film, which takes inspiration from Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents, and explores racism in America as an aspect of the caste system.
“I see this – and my heart aches,” DuVernay wrote of the video. “I wish she had commercials and magazine covers and all the things that are arranged for the actresses we are supposed to pay attention to in the awards season. I wish she felt the recognition and praise that swirls around her peers in big studio films. I wish the world for her.”
In a separate interview with Vanity Fair, DuVernay suggested that this lack of eyeballs is at least partly due to the fact that Origin is a movie created by Black artists that centers on the Black experience in America. “[It’s] unfortunate because we (Black people) watch films from all over the world that have nothing to do with me, and we watch it because we don’t have to be centered, we are used to that because we are so often not centered,” she said. “I don’t want this to be misconstrued—I’m just saying certain people need a certain kind of invitation, and those of us who are perhaps used to not being centered don’t need that invitation or else we wouldn’t be watching anything.”
DuVernay isn’t the only one director who feels left in the cold by the Academy. A.V. Rockwell, who directed the Teyana Taylor-starring A Thousand And One, is currently experiencing a similar sort of pain. “It can be very disheartening and draining because it’s like we’re not even given a shot,” she said of the film (via Vanity Fair), which has failed to generate buzz in recent months despite winning Sundance’s prestigious Grand Jury Prize. “Even with all the love that’s out there, I think people are kind of set in only certain movies, or only certain filmmakers, getting a chance to be a part of certain conversations.”
“People just have such a bias, and have such an expectation—or lack of expectation,” Rockwell continued. “It was incredible that we came out of Sundance on the high that we did, but I’m not convinced that people, including critics, really gave our movie a chance just in watching it.”
These dynamics, of course, are nothing new. DuVernay’s and Rockwell’s experiences—along with the countless number of artists and creators we’ll never hear from because they weren’t given even this level of access in the first place—are a salient reminder that even though Hollywood is taking strides towards true equity, it still has a long way to go. This year’s Emmy Awards broadcast is being hailed as one of the most diverse ceremonies of all time. Until people actually watch all the films and series that are up for awards, it will never be enough.