Ava DuVernay on streaming, empathy, and Lenovo’s New Realities VR

Ava DuVernay knows the power of stories. Her Academy Award–nominated documentary 13th exposed the fundamental injustice of mass incarceration in the United States, her Emmy-nominated Netflix series When They See Us reframed the narrative for the unjustly convicted men known as the Central Park Five, and the continued breadth of her work stands as proof of her dedication to film as a world-changing medium.

DuVernay is also the spokeswoman and “champion” of Lenovo New Realities, a film series that used Lenovo’s 360-degree Virtual Reality cameras and headsets to allow viewers a first-person look at the  lives of young woman who have found a way to use technology to change their life and communities. These women include Noi, a Japanese student who derives inspiration for robotics from her dozens of pets, to Ashwini, an Indian daughter of farmers who went from having zero access to technology to pursuing her education and becoming the only woman in the series to shoot her New Realities video without a backup crew. 

Other subjects have created job training apps for African migrants to Italy, founded educational workshops for underprivileged students in Mexico, and helped increase tech literacy among Ivorian communities in France. 

Lenovo’s New Realities, which are viewable on Lenovo’s website without a VR headset, were created in conjunction with Girl Up, an organization created by the UN Foundation to promote women in STEM, and DuVernay’s film distribution company ARRAY. DuVernay spoke with Mashable via Zoom about her role as a spokeswoman for the project, VR storytelling, and how technology has influenced her career as a filmmaker. 

Mashable: For girls like Ashwini, who went from not knowing she could check an email on a cell phone to shooting her own New Realities video in 360, being exposed to technology changed the course of her life. What moments in your life felt like a “game changers” in terms of discovering or trying a new technology? 

AD: One of the things I love about this program and these girls is they are able to grasp these life-changing moments around technology at such a young age. I didn’t start making films until I was in my thirties. I’d never even picked up a camera, so the idea of these young women are empowered with the tools and this immersive technology through Lenovo and Girl Up to go from zero to 100 so quickly in terms of their knowledge is extraordinary, and then to see what they did with it.

For me, it was when I started to work with digital cameras. [It was] just in the advent of digital filmmaking when I started and I don’t think I would be a filmmaker if it wasn’t for digital cameras. They gave the ability to make something that looked beautiful for a very low cost, whereas before to a filmmaker you had to have very specific kinds of film cameras that were hard to access, hard to shoot with, film costs more money than digital tape does. So it was really the advent of digital cameras that changed my life. 

The parallel question to that is: you mentioned how exposure to stories is key in fostering empathy, which you’ve done with your own work. Which stories impacted you the most in terms of changing your mind or exposing you to something you never thought about before?

When I was in college I had the opportunity to see film as a window to the world because I grew up in Compton and they had no movie theaters in Compton. The only way to see a film at a theater was to take the bus or get driven to a movie theater in a mall. And, you know, you get a steady diet of what the studios provide but it’s not really that window to the world. It wasn’t until I got to college, I was almost 20 years old, and I was able to see films from other countries and hear films in other languages — Polish films, Iranian films, Japanese films — that made me connect to people who were unlike me. 

The first time I saw Native Americans was in a film called Smoke Signals — I mean gosh, to think that you can see and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes through cinema. To really allow with these cameras to open up a world that we may never go to but we can know those people are there and they’re like me or if they’re not like me is really the magic and the miracle of films and why I hold them so dear. 

This has been a year when access to smart technology has been more important than ever for keeping people connected for education, socialization, and information. We’ve changed the way we interact kind of under duress but are there elements of this new online reality that you think are worth keeping?

Yeah, I think certainly with the whole Zooming of it all. We would just do a conference call real quick, you know everybody just does a conference call in my world. That’s how my industry was gathering, tons of phone calls. Now if you offer a conference call to someone they’re offended they’re like “you don’t want to see me?”

The whole “I put on makeup for this” thing.

I know, exactly! So I think Zoom and seeing each other in a meeting is probably here to stay. The other thing for me as a filmmaker is the idea that a film can be a film if it’s not in a theater. That’s a tough thing to reconcile because we love theaters and we want them to survive but we also have the opportunity to open our arms to different ways to consume films so that more people can enjoy them. 

For example, there still is no movie theater in Compton. I was born in 1972 and there still to this day in 2020 is not a movie theater in Compton. We need to make it so people don’t have to take the bus or drive out of town to see a movie, that they can see it in their own community and if they can’t, that they can see it in their own home. That’s something that’s really been proven during this time. You can have major films that are embraced at home. 

That really allows more people to participate in film, it democratizes film. It doesn’t mean that we don’t love theaters, we want that too. We should be able to have two things at once and I think this time has helped us see that clearly. 

A common theme in the videos is these girls working to improve access to technology to build and improve their communities all over the world. How do you think your involvement with Girl Up and New Realities can clear some of the roadblocks girls like them experience in the future?

I think just bringing awareness to this. This is an artistic celebration of these young women. We want to shine a light on the fact that you can use smart technology — they’re telling stories about where they are but this kind of technology can open up in all kinds of ways. The main thing is it’s fostering empathy. You can’t watch these films and not feel connected to the women who are making them. 

When you can look in a 360 environment I can just move my phone around or my headset around and see what’s behind her, what’s around her, what she’s looking at. I can look at the ground and see where she’s walking, I can walk around myself, and you immerse yourself in this first-person storytelling. That’s an empathy machine and that’s powerful beyond personal story, it’s a cultural story, a political story, community stories, social issues, social justice. So there’s so many implications to it and I think this is only the beginning. 

You can’t empathize with something you don’t know about.

That’s right. 

So it’s really about exposing people to different stories. Which segues into talking about the VR technology used in New Realities, which is meant to immerse viewers in the lives of these girls like you just said. What, to you, are the most exciting possibilities for filmmaking using VR? What do you think its wider impact on your craft could look like? 

We’ve seen filmmakers playing with the technology. I think it’s really got to get to a place where moviegoers, people who love story, are seeking out and are able to easily access the tools that allow them to go on these extended journeys. Once we can bridge that gap, we’re going to be in a place where these tools are like I said, empathy machines. 

We’ve seen films where 360 technology and immersive storytelling is used at migrant camps where you can understand the journey of an immigrant. We’ve gone into factories and seen what it’s like to be an immigrant on the floor of a factory. We’ve gone into hospitals and seen what it’s like to be a first responder in the moment. The question is, what is the impact of this in the hands of narrative storytellers? I think there’s a great power there where you can move from some of the beautiful documentary work that we’re seeing into narrative. That’s going to be the future of it. 

Is there anything about the Lenovo New Realities film series or Girls Up that either someone has not asked you or you don’t anticipate being asked, but you think people should know about the project? 

I don’t know if folks are talking about the women who have been given a voice by this and all of the countries that they’re from. This is a really expansive project and I haven’t been asked yet about the countries, it’s Brazil, China, the UK, Mexico, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, France, here in the US. This is a real global effort on the part of Lenovo and Girl Up and Array, my organization. It’s just to try to hold hands with the world. That would be what I want people to know. 

Lenovo’s New Realities short film series is available to screen in 360 video and VR at Lenovo.com/NewRealities