US filmmaker Ava DuVernay talks to directors Angela Patton and Natalie Rae about their Oscar-shortlisted feature documentary Daughters, screening on Netflix, in which four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington D.C. jail.
DuVernay opened the chat by stressing how Daughters has been her favourite documentary of the year, before asking the co-directors how they got together in the first place. It was after Angela Patton gave a TED talk on the programme that Rae made initial contact, the pair remember.
“Yeah, the famous Ted Talk,” says Rae. “I was living in Toronto, Canada, at the time, and my best friend sent me Angela’s TED Talk, and it’s going to be 10 years ago this January I [sent] my initial email to Angela…I just was so moved by her words and the story and her belief in the wisdom of these girls and what could happen if we really listened to young female leaders. And it’s just such a powerful, powerful story. So I reached out to her and asked her for coffee and she told me there was dozens of filmmakers hitting her up and trying to chat and [I was] very grateful that she had me come to Richmond and have coffee with her and it started there.”
And did Patton remember clearly the contents of Rae’s opening email to her?
“Yes, I remember it because it was the only email that centred the girls,” Patton replies. “Several filmmakers had reached out to me immediately after I did the TED Talk. Some in person, some over email, some with letters in the mail. And I just wasn’t interested because they wanted to tell a jail story, a very typical prison story and focus on the sheriff or the men that were incarcerated and why.
“And Natalie was the only one that actually answered the call that I was waiting for – and that was to centre the girls. And so that’s why I accepted the invitation for her to come to Richmond and to have that coffee. And from there we definitely hit it off immediately around this shared vision for the film.”
Click on the link above to watch the entire conversation between Ava DuVernay, Angela Patton and Natalie Rae.
