Dear Gossips,

Yesterday, on Martin Luther King Day in America, Ava DuVernay was named Entertainer of the Year at the NAACP Image Awards in Los Angeles. Three years ago, Ava’s film, Selma, was released to critical acclaim. In his review of the film, Wesley Morris wrote in Grantland that:  

This is a film about work: the work at hand, the work it takes to do the work, and, for an audience in 2015, the question of whether the work worked.

You could apply the same to Ava DuVernay’s career and what it’s about – the work, the work required to do the work, and, most certainly whether or not the work is working. She chooses the kind of work that gives her work meaning. She is using her work to create work for others, specifically women and people of colour who have not been afforded the same opportunities, and in her work she is challenging the systems and the processes that restrict opportunities to those who’ve always had the privilege to do more work. 

We are just two months away from the release of A Wrinkle In Time, the first film with a budget of $100 million directed by a woman of colour. That alone would have been reason enough for Ava to take the work. But, again, within Ava’s work there are always other layers of work. She sums it up perfectly with this tweet: 

And she looks amazing in this Greta Constantine jumpsuit, a Canadian label based in Toronto she’s worked with before. Greta Constantine is helmed by two men of colour, Kirk Pickersgill and Stephen Wong. See? Ava is always working, even in the fashion. 

I was not working yesterday because of a really gross cold which is still f-cking me up. So I’ll be in and out today but we’ll get to some of the holdover items from the weekend and a few new developments too. Sorry for the inconvenience. Hoping to be less foggy tomorrow. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey