January 2022: Netflix Picks
By: Kassidee Toguchi
With the new year comes a new month of H3R's Netflix favorites! Bruised and Inspector Koo are our top female-centered picks of the month. If your New Year involves hosting more dinner parties or exercising your body and brain, Salt Fat Acid Heat and The Mind: Explained will be next on your watchlist.
H3R’s Watchlist: Ava DuVernay
DuVernay’s theatrical film debut came in 2011 with I Will Follow. The film, influenced by her aunt's breast cancer diagnosis, took only two weeks to film. I Will Follow won Best Screenplay at the African-American Film Critics Association Awards and appeared at the AFI Fest, Chicago International Film Festival, and RiverRun Film Festival. Following the release of her movie, DuVernay left marketing to focus on filmmaking full-time.
The following year, DuVernay released her second narrative film, Middle of Nowhere, which was based on her personal experience growing up in the Compton community, where she knew women with incarcerated family members. This film made DuVerney the first Black woman to win the Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival. DuVernay also took home the 2012 Independent Spirit Awards' John Cassavetes Award.
In 2014, DuVernay's Selma made history as the first-ever feature film to portray Martin Luther King Jr. Selma, which centers around the 1965 voting rights march in Alabama, was nominated for Best Dramatic Motion Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor at the Golden Globe Awards.
DuVernay’s latest film, 13th, references the 13th amendment by highlighting incarcerated people of color and ultimately proposing that slavery within the United States has been replaced by the prison system. At the 2017 Academy Awards, DuVernay became the first African American woman to be nominated for Best Director. Later, in 2018, DuVernay’s movie adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, made her the first woman of color to direct a $100 million budget film.
H3R’s Watchlist simply cannot summarize all of Ava DuVernay's outstanding accomplishments in one space; we can't wait to see what she has in store next! □
Article Credits
https://www.vulture.com/2014/12/ava-duvernay-on-the-long-road-to-selma.html
http://www.agoralumiere.org/FILMS/SATURDAY.htm
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/movies/ava-duvernay-and-middle-of-nowhere.html
https://www.narrativemuse.co/movies/i-will-follow
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ava-duvernay-sundance_n_1241286https://www.essence.com/awards-events/red-carpet/spirit-awards/ava-duvernay-wins-independent-spirit-award-middle-nowhere/