All in a life's work

DuVernay laughs when she recalls her mother's delight at all that studying coming good. The night before was the London premiere of Selma, starring David Oyelowo as Dr King, and DuVernay, 42, is still on a high. She is right to enjoy the good times. Though it has been critically acclaimed, the film failed to get the number of Oscar nominations expected, including one for her as director, and for Oyelowo as leading actor, leading some to criticise the Academy, again, for being too white and too male. Then there was the attack from a former aide to President Johnson who accused the filmmakers of bias.

We'll come to those topics in a bit, after DuVernay explains why she thinks this is the first cinema film on Dr King.

"Part of it is that films with black protagonists in the lead, at the centre, are not priorities of the studios for whatever reason. You have a long time that goes by without it being a priority to make the film. Certainly issues of copyright with the material, challenges in the past with the estate, all feed into it as well. It's a complex stew."

Although the sweep of Dr King's life and achievements is vast, DuVernay homes in on the voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, in March 1965.

"The thing that fascinated me about Selma is the fact that you have a man who is at the height of his powers. He is not becoming a leader, he is the leader of a movement that has been full throttle at that point for more than a decade. We pick up the film when he has just won the Nobel Prize. He has already made his I Have A Dream speech, he could have done anything yet he chose to go back and work with the people in a grassroots way."

The film shows how the movement worked on several fronts to lobby for what eventually became the Voting Rights Act. As a film publicist before she became a filmmaker, DuVernay had a particular interest in this angle. "You had activists using that medium in the same way activists use the medium of the internet now, a way to get their message across, a way to amplify their demands."

Though DuVernay had won a best director's award at Sundance for Middle of Nowhere, she was relatively untested in big budget filmmaking. It was Oyelow, who starred in Middle of Nowhere, who suggested her for the job after several other directors had been attached. Her self-confidence, and a feeling that she was uniquely placed to tell this story, did the rest.

"I didn't feel daunted. I know the place of Selma, I focussed on what I knew. I knew my entry point was the place, I did not have to learn and visit and try to research what it feels to be black in the Deep South. My father, the man who raised me, is from that place. I grew up with a family history deeply steeped in that place." Her father, 11 years old at the time, recalls turning out to greet the marchers.

The standoff between the marchers and the police who refused to let them proceed became a global story, one that was keenly followed in the Oval Office. LBJ, played in the film by Tom Wilkinson, is seen as fighting Dr King over the Voting Rights Act. The reality, said former LBJ aide Joseph Califano Jr in The Washington Post last December, was different.

"Selma was LBJ's idea, he considered the Voting Rights Act his greatest legislative achievement, he viewed King as an essential partner in getting it enacted - and he didn't use the FBI to disparage him," wrote Califano, ending his piece with a plea for the movie to be "ruled out" during the awards season.

Asked about this, DuVernay responds: "Ultimately those were the opinions of a small group of people. Their job is to protect a certain legacy, my job is not to protect that legacy, my job is to tell the story as I see it. There is nothing inaccurate about opinions."

By her side when that row broke was Oprah Winfrey, who stars in the film and is also its producer. A good boss? "She is everything you see. All of the goodness, rootedness, grace, humour, determination, power, is real, and when it is directed towards you, you feel like Superman."

Winfrey was there, too, after the clutch of Oscar nominations failed to arrive. "It's lovely that people love the film so much that they are excited about what it should be and the accolades given or not given," says DuVernay. "I didn't lose a lot of sleep over it. I was really clear at the outset, I've been saying since October I didn't expect to be nominated."

She will admit, though, to being disappointed for Oyelow, whose performance she reckons will be talked about for many years to come.

"There's one way to do King where you are being very close to mimicry, you're just trying to get the speeches down, but we knew that the speeches were really the least of it. The humanity, the intimacy, the scenes with his wife, the quiet moments walking through the house with the weight of the world on his shoulders, the guilt of people being killed under your watch... we wanted to mine that humanity and David does it like no other."

The two will work together again on her next film, a murder mystery- cum-love story set against the background of Hurricane Katrina.

Whether it is the Oscars row or differences of opinion over LBJ, for DuVernay, it is all about the bigger picture. When you make a movie about people being shot over the right to vote, she says, at a time when black men walking unarmed on the street can be the victim of police violence, it seems "kind of trite" to complain about accolades. Watching Selma in the context of recent incidents in Ferguson, Missouri (the shooting dead of teenager Michael Brown by police) and other states, some might wonder whether much has changed in the half century since Selma.

"I can understand someone saying that but I would correct them and say many things have changed. I'm sitting here talking with you at a hotel in London I would not even have been allowed to step foot in 50 years ago. I would not have been allowed to make a film, pick up a camera, in this way 50 years ago. I would not be in the White House showing my work 50 years ago, there was no thought there would ever be a black president 50 years ago.

"There's a lot still to do but we have come far. It's just about continuing to march on."

[itals] Selma opens in cinemas tomorrow