Tara Aquino | December 23, 2014 9:00 am

It’s time to hop on the Ava DuVernay bandwagon before it leaves you in the dust. Thanks to her gorgeous film Selma, which focuses on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the 42-year-ancient filmmaker just made history: DuVernay is now the first African-American woman to ever earn a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director. An Oscar nomination is sure to follow.

Before Selma hits theaters on Christmas Day, get to know all about this game changer.

DuVernay quit a successful career in publicity to pursue directing full time.
Although she dabbled in television journalism, at one point interning for CBS News, while going to school at UCLA (from which she earned a B.A. in English and African American studies), DuVernay immediately went into film publicity after graduation. After briefly effective for Savoy Pictures, she made her own company, The DuVernay Outfit, in 1999 with the mission to link with African-American audiences. That exposure to film the world, namely projects with Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, Clint Eastwood, Raoul Peck, and Gurinder Chadha, is what sparked her to pursue filmmaking. (According to the New York Times, she realized her marvel on the set of Collateral.)

“While I was constantly stressed out, I really loved [publicity]. It was that proximity to filmmakers, being on sets and considering how it was done that demystified the process for me,” DuVernay told Makers. “But when you’re really watching people that you represent, and that you’re accurate to make films, you’re like, ‘That guy’s a jerk. He’s making this film? I can do this.’ And so that is kind of how it started. And yeah. I just ran with it.”

Her directorial debut was the 2008 documentary This Is the Life.

Growing up in Lynwood and then Compton, Calif., DuVernay took an avid interest in the hip-hop scene, going so far as to make it the subject of her first film. In This Is the Life, DuVernay focuses on the development of the genre in the 1990s, specifically looking at the influence of emcees who came up through the legendary Excellent Life Shape Food Centre’s weekly open-mic.

In 2011, DuVernay founded the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM) to distribute select black independent films in theaters.
Rather than simply showing black-theme films at film festivals, AFFRM screens films in various cities with the promotion of festival organizations. The goal is to make sure viewers nationwide, not just cinephiles, have access to the movies. Through AFRM, DuVernay released her debut narrative feature, I Will Follow, in 2010, and her Sundance hit, Middle of Nowhere, in 2012.

Below, DuVernay discusses her personal connection Selma, and her excitement about the film’s release:

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Tags: Ava DuVernay, Oprah, Selma