Thanks to this interview podcast on Fresh Air, we learned about Ava DuVernay and through her we learned about @AFFRM (click the banner above to go to their site, and be sure to read her interview with Director Spike Lee). DuVernay is a cultural entrepreneur, par excellence, and we salute her sense of community and collaboration:

Before she started making movies a few years ago, DuVernay made a name for herself through her marketing and publicity firm DVA Media + Marketing, which has handled films by brand-name directors like Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg.

She says that her movie publicity work gave her close proximity to filmmakers and allowed her to watch the mechanics of making movies. “For me as person who loves movies and thinks that they’re magic, to watch the magic happen, it was a demystifying of the idea that only certain people can do it, and that this was a world being created outside of my reach,” she says.

DuVernay’s mother also changed careers later in life — from a human resources executive at a hospital to a preschool director — and inspired DuVernay to think that she could do the same.

But it hasn’t been easy for DuVernay in an industry where she says common wisdom is that black audiences only want to see comedies, historical dramas and blockbusters, while on the other hand: “We’re told that independent film lovers … folks that are used to watching art house films, won’t come out and see a film with black people in it — I’ve been told that in rooms, big rooms, studio rooms, and I know that’s not true.”…