At a recent media gathering in New York, DuVernay responded that Selma is her version of the events as she saw fit to tell it....
“I think everyone sees history through their own lens, and I don’t begrudge anyone from wanting to see what they want to see. This is what I see…That should be valid. I’m not going to argue history. I could, but I won’t. This film is a celebration of people who gathered to lift their voices—black, white, otherwise, all classes, nationalities, faiths—to do something amazing.”
She elaborated on the subject in an interview with Rolling Stone last week...
"Every filmmaker imbues a movie with their own point of view. The script was the LBJ/King thing, but originally, it was much more slanted to Johnson. I wasn't interested in making a white-savior movie; I was interested in making a movie centered on the people of Selma," she told the magazine. "You have to bring in some context for what it was like to live in the racial terrorism that was going on in the deep south at that time. The four little girls have to be there, and then you have to bring in the women. So I started adding women."
"This is a dramatization of the events. But what's important for me as a student of this time in history is to not deify what the president did. Johnson has been hailed as a hero of that time, and he was, but we're talking about a reluctant hero. He was cajoled and pushed, he was protective of a legacy — he was not doing things out of the goodness of his heart. Does it make it any worse or any better? I don't think so. History is history and he did do it eventually. But there was some process to it that was important to show."
Frankly, I didn't think there was any debate that Johnson needed to be encouraged to follow through on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after the struggle he went through on the Civil Rights Act just a year earlier. I think Selma reflects the back-and-forth between King and Johnson pretty well. We can argue about the specifics of the actual conversations they had, but it doesn't paint Johnson as a bad guy. It makes him look like a politician weighing his options, no more no less. Whatever one thinks about the issue, Selma is expanding into more theaters this Friday and you most definitely need to check it out. If you need any more motivation here are a handful of clips, including one much talked about scene featuring Oprah Winfrey. [Deadline]
Selma Movie CLIP - Bingo (2015) - David Oyelowo Drama by Trailer-Addict
SELMA (2014) APPLICATION by Movie Trailers
