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Next week, award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay is releasing her new movie Origin, based on the impossibly profound, non-fiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson.
Against everyone’s advice, Ava took a seemingly unadaptable book and wrote the screenplay based on Isabel’s quest to understand the caste systems in India, Germany, and the US and dissect their impact on our connections and relationships. As Ava describes in multiple interviews, caste is the practice of human hierarchy: one person is categorized as better than another based solely on a set of random traits. Why this project? Ava reflected earnestly, “Reading Isabel’s book allowed me to excavate who I am in the world and explore who I could be. What if we all addressed caste in our own lives? A world without caste would set everyone free and make us collectively better.” As part of the movie release, Ava is launching The Seat 16 Program, which has a goal of gifting 10,000 teenagers with a ticket to see the movie plus a one-year pass to access MasterClass, a platform offering lessons from experts in various fields. “Let’s help them change the world!” her website urges. To secure that partnership with MasterClass, Ava agreed to lead a class entitled “Reframe your Thinking,” to share how filmmaking skills can be applied to life goals. Why all of this trouble? Why not just make a movie and sell it to Hollywood? Because Ava didn’t just want to produce a film. She wanted to start a conversation, one steeped in the possibility of a more just world. And that requires engaging many people in that conversation. Similarly, you could launch a mentoring program or a mentoring relationship that starts a new conversation, one that:
It just depends on how passionate you are about sparking that conversation and changing your world. Ava’s easy-to-follow formula: Don’t just hope that things will change. Inspire others to create that change with you! Ava received a 9-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival for Origin. Imagine how long your standing ovation will be! © 2024. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved. ps. Have you registered yet for our 2024-Q1 complimentary webinar? |