Having Selma’s Star ‘David Oyelowo‘ featured on the cover of the January issue of Variety Magazine alongside Media Mogul ‘Oprah Winfrey‘ and Director of the movie ‘Selma’, Ava DuVernay brings so much delight to the African folks!
The movie ‘Selma’ tells the story of how Martin Luther King’s efforts and other civil rights leaders to engage in a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama which led to a landmark piece of legislation in the United States was accomplished. Selma has been gaining a lot of waves since its limited release on Christmas day especially because of the “perfect timing” of its release, when considered in conjunction with the recent 2014 police brutality and killings experienced in the United States with some highly-publicized cases in which unarmed black men, including Eric Garner and Michael Brown were killed by police officers while the grand jury failed to indict the officers in the center of the killings.
Winfrey said in this recent interview: “The timing of ‘Selma”’was just right as it could not have been released at a better time like the present one: a time when the killings of Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Ezell Ford and countless other African-American men have sparked widespread outrage and a fierce national debate on racism, white privilege and the need for police reform. ‘Divine timing is what it is.'”
Click here if you missed our report on Oprah’s comments on the lessons that can be learnt from Selma in present times!
David Oyelowo’s comments on playing the role of Martin Luther King in the movie: “I was really drawn to this man — to the self-sacrifice, the notion of love in the face of hate,” ….. “As a man of faith, the things that he held dear were the things that lodged in my spirit.”
Also on Eric Garner, Oyelowo said “With Eric Garner, it’s now evident that what worked in Selma wouldn’t actually work today.”
Ava DuVernay who is widely speculated to be the first black woman to receive an oscar nomination as a director also said of the recent police brutality cases in the United States: “You had a media-capture of racism and the strangulation of this brother, and nothing happened. We’re trying to figure out how this all works together at this point. But there’s something brewing, this collaborative energy for change.”
Also, on landing the job of directing Selma, DuVernay comments were: “I was like, ‘Are these people really serious?!’ I didn’t have to pitch. (David) had done that for me.”
Photo Credit: Kurt Iswarienko for Variety
