The film industry’s systemic struggles with hiring non-white actors have been well documented, but director
Ava DuVernay knows that what’s in front of the camera is only half the battle. It’s important that attention be paid to diversity efforts on film crews, as well.
Through her nonprofit company Array Alliance, DuVernay has created a diversity database that studios like Warner Bros., Disney, Netflix, and Sony have invested in. The aim is to widen the insular circles that form in the production world and letting more women and people of color onto the playing field.
The Los Angeles Times spoke with DuVernay and Warner Bros. Television Group chairman
Ava DuVernay and Peter Roth Announce Array Crew, Promoting Diversity Below-the-Line
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Ava DuVernay and Peter Roth have a plan to diversify film crews And Hollywood is on board
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Ava DuVernay and Peter Roth have a plan to diversify crews And Hollywood is on board
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To hear Peter Roth tell it, friends, including J.J. Abrams, had been insisting he needed to know Ava DuVernay long before their first meeting.
So when the longtime Warner Bros. TV executive found himself across from the filmmaker at the Los Angeles offices of Oprah Winfrey’s cable network, OWN, to discuss collaborating on DuVernay’s Louisiana-set television drama “Queen Sugar,” the creative connection, as they say, was instant.
“I’ve never had the experience of being so closely connected with someone who’s probably, just on paper, the polar opposite of me not a woman, not Black, not my age and certainly not anyone with as much power as Peter has,” says DuVernay. “It serves as a model for the kinds of relationship[s] that we can be in, in our industry.”