--- title: Ava DuVernay on Storytelling and What Gives Her Hope description: Ava DuVernay writes about what gives her hope: to know that this present moment will be the past soon and the future is what we will make it. canonical: https://time.com/5087372/ava-duvernay-on-what-gives-her-hope/ author: Ava DuVernay article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-01-04T12:04:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-12T23:12:19.000Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Ava DuVernay on Storytelling and What Gives Her Hope og:description: Ava DuVernay writes about what gives her hope: to know that this present moment will be the past soon and the future is what we will make it. og:url: https://time.com/5087372/ava-duvernay-on-what-gives-her-hope/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc7d85cbee596265/6988f636929fad7aa9beefe1/optimist-issue-ava-duvernay-what-gives-her-hope.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: optimist-issue-ava-duvernay-what-gives-her-hope og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ava DuVernay on Storytelling and What Gives Her Hope twitter:description: Ava DuVernay writes about what gives her hope: to know that this present moment will be the past soon and the future is what we will make it. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc7d85cbee596265/6988f636929fad7aa9beefe1/optimist-issue-ava-duvernay-what-gives-her-hope.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Ava DuVernay on What Gives Her Hope > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=8dad7875-3268-4101-a888-8a474f836a5b&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Influencers- Nancy Gibbs and Bill Gates [Watch (HLS stream): The Influencers- Nancy Gibbs and Bill Gates](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ODjHuYQj.m3u8) (4:43)  _Published 2018-01-04. Nancy Gibbs sits down with guest-editor Bill Gates to discuss optimism in technology and the news._ by [Ava DuVernay](https://time.com/author/ava-duvernay/) ## Ava DuVernay Updated: Dec 12, 2023 11:12 PM UTCPublished: Jan 4, 2018 12:04 PM UTC by [Ava DuVernay](https://time.com/author/ava-duvernay/) ## Ava DuVernay Updated: Dec 12, 2023 11:12 PM UTCPublished: Jan 4, 2018 12:04 PM UTC I marvel at the times in which we live. A time that will be long-remembered. A time that will be long-studied. The question is: remembered for what? The answer is up to us. As an artist, I’m grateful that I live at a time when access to cameras and distribution platforms and ways to reach audiences outside of the normal Hollywood infrastructure are more possible for me, a black person, a woman, than ever before. My voice as a storyteller and vision as a filmmaker can be amplified without the permission of the privileged few who have held marginalized creators at arm’s distance for decades. There is fresh air circulating, powering a new perspective. It’s not just artists that find ourselves in more dynamic positions of amplification. New platforms have expanded for everyone thanks to a free and open Internet. Right now, if you want to share your opinion, you don’t have to gain access to a reporter and solicit a newspaper article–a long shot by any means. Today, you’re able to express yourself through words and images on a variety of public platforms and make yourself heard and seen. These moments of visibility are vital as we encounter an era of uncertainty, divisiveness and leaderlessness. As a student of history, what gives me hope in these tenuous times is the knowledge that there is precedent for change and there’s precedent for hope. Hope has bred change again and again. To be hopeless is to disregard history. It is to foreground the present moment in a distorted way, one that is pedestrian and unelevated. For we know that the world isn’t only happening now. Everything has happened before. And everything will happen again. And so that’s what gives me hope: to know that this present moment will be the past soon and the future is what we will make it. A future of voices lifted and visions realized. A future of declaring our presence and sharing our opinions unfiltered and unafraid. A future built on reclaiming what has been taken and what has been lost. A future shaped by our striving to answer to the question “remembered for what” with the very best within us. _DuVernay, an Oscar nominee, directed_ Selma_,_ 13th _and the forthcoming_ A Wrinkle in Time ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] So we're pretty sure this is the first time in the nearly century old history of Time, that we have turned over our pens and keyboards to a guest editor. I was thrilled to get the opportunity and, you know, I think people will be a little surprised. What we're trying to tell them. [ MUSIC ] Well this is weird time to be talking about optimism when we have levels of pesimism in division in this country atleast, so where does your counter programing in your hopefullness come from? Well things are. Very different than several hundred years ago. A life span has more than doubled over that time. And even if you take a shorter time frame, say, 30 years ago. Our understanding of treating women properly, of providing gay rights. We are far better off today and our focus is on those things that remain to be done, and there's certainly tons and tons of those. But only by seeing that we've made progress in taking the lessons of where that's gone faster than we expected, where it's gone slower, can we actually accelerate And reduce these huge problems that still remain. What makes you optimistic about the role that technology is gonna be playing in the future of work, for instance? A- I is going to be changing the job market, but in market capitalism, there's always big changes. I don't think there's really anything in the sense of a, you know, problem solving that the machine won't be able to do. I mean, computers are still very weak when it comes to understanding. They can't process a textbook and use the knowledge the way that humans do, but that's being worked on. Do you worry at all about the amount of time either you or all of our kids spend on their screens? Well certainly you can do a lot of things on your screen some of which, you know like if you get playing the same video game again and again, That's not well- balanced. It's probably not gonna develop your capacity fully. There needs to be discipline. Anytime we give somebody a new tool, like when Microsoft Windows had lots of fonts and there were a few years there where people used way too many fonts. Now people have kind of calmed down. It's kind of rare somebody You know is goofing around using some new font. So the discipline about hey when a family is at the table he knows the phone allowed to buzz or not. When a kid goes to bed at night we say, hey the phones on the charger which happens to be outside the bedroom which is a visible fact. Kids. And even adults aren't gonna be perfect at managing the new opportunities. But I think that's all solvable stuff. The normal sort of parental advice and even a few rules will make it so you're mostly getting the benefit. Now you could argue that our. Failure to focus on what's getting better actually suggests that the media generally is missing an enormous story, that there's a bias against the positive. Do you think that's true, and where does that come from? Well news, by its nature, is about A surprise. Which day do you cover malaria deaths being cut in half? Which day do you cover workplace accidents, you know, down by a factor of 50 over the 50 year period? It's society doing what it's supposed to do, and not The kind of shocking airplane crashed type story that people expect. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] It's a lot of fun to give more light to these things, and I enjoyed that a lot. Curating things. Making sure they fit together, trying to expose people to something they might not otherwise see. It's a real privilege. Well, 100 million readers thank you for everything that you've done. Both in this project but obviously much more broadly in so many critical arenas. Well, thanks. 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