Ava DuVernay finished shooting Selma, her film about the civil rights protests led by Martin Luther King Jr, in July last year. A month later, an unarmed man named Michael Brown was murdered by police in Ferguson, Missouri, leading to months of civil unrest.
“As opposed to just the hit with the baton, I want to see what that does to the person who’s been hit. So to do that, Bradford Young, my cinematographer, and Spencer Averick, my editor, and I were really looking for ways to pay homage to, be respectful for, the humiliated, the broken, the damaged. So the crux of our approach was always an awe for life. The instances in Selma where we slow it down and force you to look, it was always with an eye to demanding that you bear witness to this damage.”
Her response is so eloquent it changes my view entirely. The next day, I watch the film again, and instead of thinking of those moments as Selma’s problem, I find them to be its core and guiding principle.
For instance, there’s a curious detail in crucial scenes in the film. The marches all focus on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which crosses the Alabama river. It was on the other side of this bridge that armed officers met protesters, and, in the case of Bloody Sunday on March 7 1965, drove them viciously back to the other side.
In archive footage shown in the film, the bridge is bright white and fairly new (it was built in 1940). In the film itself, the bridge is emphatically shown as it is now: rusting, the black letters of Pettus’s name dripping their deterioration for all to see.
Why? If DuVernay wanted absolute historical accuracy, she would have had it painted, or built a version of that bridge on a set. But the fact of making the film is as much a part of Selma’s story as the tale told within it. In 1965, the protesters passed not far from DuVernay’s father’s family farm. Last year his daughter’s crew shut down traffic while making a film about those very protests. The cast marched, as others had before them. The mayor of Selma was an extra. They weren’t shooting in Canada, or in a studio, because they were doing more than making a film: they were bearing witness. Edmund Pettus was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and now the bridge named after him is rotting.
The fact that Selma was released in the US at the end of a year in which Michael Brown was murdered in Ferguson and Eric Garner was killed on Staten Island may serve as a reminder of how little things have changed, I suggest.
But DuVernay won’t accept such easy logic. “The fact that the film is speaking so directly to this cultural moment even though it chronicles something that happened 50 years ago is saying a couple of things,” she counters. “It’s saying how much things have changed: the fact that you and I can sit in this room together without fear of someone coming in and saying this can’t happen, the fact of you as a white woman sitting unchaperoned in a room with this black man, could not have happened 50 years ago in comfort and in safety. The fact that he and I are even in this hotel: a lot has changed.”
She pauses. “But there’s still a way to go.” — The Daily Telegraph
- At this stage there are no plans to screen Selma in East London.
Mixed response to King biopic
“As opposed to just the hit with the baton, I want to see what that does to the person who’s been hit. So to do that, Bradford Young, my cinematographer, and Spencer Averick, my editor, and I were really looking for ways to pay homage to, be respectful for, the humiliated, the broken, the damaged. So the crux of our approach was always an awe for life. The instances in Selma where we slow it down and force you to look, it was always with an eye to demanding that you bear witness to this damage.”
Her response is so eloquent it changes my view entirely. The next day, I watch the film again, and instead of thinking of those moments as Selma’s problem, I find them to be its core and guiding principle.
For instance, there’s a curious detail in crucial scenes in the film. The marches all focus on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which crosses the Alabama river. It was on the other side of this bridge that armed officers met protesters, and, in the case of Bloody Sunday on March 7 1965, drove them viciously back to the other side.
In archive footage shown in the film, the bridge is bright white and fairly new (it was built in 1940). In the film itself, the bridge is emphatically shown as it is now: rusting, the black letters of Pettus’s name dripping their deterioration for all to see.
Why? If DuVernay wanted absolute historical accuracy, she would have had it painted, or built a version of that bridge on a set. But the fact of making the film is as much a part of Selma’s story as the tale told within it. In 1965, the protesters passed not far from DuVernay’s father’s family farm. Last year his daughter’s crew shut down traffic while making a film about those very protests. The cast marched, as others had before them. The mayor of Selma was an extra. They weren’t shooting in Canada, or in a studio, because they were doing more than making a film: they were bearing witness. Edmund Pettus was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and now the bridge named after him is rotting.
The fact that Selma was released in the US at the end of a year in which Michael Brown was murdered in Ferguson and Eric Garner was killed on Staten Island may serve as a reminder of how little things have changed, I suggest.
But DuVernay won’t accept such easy logic. “The fact that the film is speaking so directly to this cultural moment even though it chronicles something that happened 50 years ago is saying a couple of things,” she counters. “It’s saying how much things have changed: the fact that you and I can sit in this room together without fear of someone coming in and saying this can’t happen, the fact of you as a white woman sitting unchaperoned in a room with this black man, could not have happened 50 years ago in comfort and in safety. The fact that he and I are even in this hotel: a lot has changed.”
She pauses. “But there’s still a way to go.” — The Daily Telegraph
Would you like to comment on this article?
Register (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Trending Now
Latest Videos