Wonderful
news for your Friday! Writer/Director/Distributor Ava DuVernay recently announced that Bradford
Young will serve as Director of Photography on her upcoming feature film, Selma, starring David Oyelowo, produced
by Oprah Winfrey, Christian Colson, Pathe
UK, Brad Pitt’s Plan B, and distributed by Paramount. The film centers
on Martin Luther King Jr. and
the 1965 landmark voting rights campaign, regarded as the peak of the
civil rights movement.
DuVernay
and Young have worked on three previous projects together, most notably the 2012 indie hit Middle of Nowhere, for which DuVernay became
the first black woman to win the Sundance Best Director Award. Young has
amassed a stunning portfolio of narrative work over the years, mastering light,
color, and texture in painterly compositions that have elevated independent
filmmaking and techniques for photographing brown skin. A two-time Sundance Award-winner for cinematography, his noted works include Mother of George, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and Pariah, which we’ve covered
extensively on this site. In addition to DuVernay’s Selma, he’s also attached to Edward Zwick’s upcoming film Pawn Sacrifice.
We’re
excited to see the evocative images that DuVernay and Young create together
with Selma. This is a DP-Director team that may rival the
likes of Spike Lee and Ernest Dickerson, or Darren Aronofsky and Matthew Libatique. As the project moves through pre-production and
into production, we’ll continue to keep you updated.