With Origin,Ava DuVernay is hoping to get audiences to see caste as the starting point of so many of our experiences.
When Ava DuVernay arrives in Toronto during early winter, her voice is raspy and well worn, but it’s the only indicator of how exhausted she is. Clad in flowing black pants, a turtleneck and a sprinkle of gold jewellery, the acclaimed director looks impossibly chic as she rises from a leather club chair in the green room at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre to warmly welcome me.
The film and the theatre’s namesake make a beautiful pairing, considering that Viola Desmond is a Canadian icon—a Black Nova Scotian who refused to leave her whites-only theatre seat in her home province in 1946. And Origin is helmed by DuVernay, an Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated Black director, stars Black actor Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and is based on a book written by a Black Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.
I reach into my bag and pull out the 2020 book that has brought us together today and sheepishly confess that I haven’t gotten through all 400-plus pages. DuVernay checks where my bookmark is and graciously tells me, “You’ve done the work right there!” She then admits that it took her reading Caste several times before she truly understood it. “When I got to the end of the book, I still couldn’t quite articulate what caste is,” she says.
, but as it was a massive project with a large cast, the director felt like she didn’t get a lot of time with Ellis-Taylor, though she could sense that the actor was a singular talent and wanted to work with her again.
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