*Ava DuVernay’s Array media company has launched the Law Enforcement Accountability Project, or LEAP, designed to hold police officers accountable.
During an appearance on Monday’s “Ellen,” the filmmaker described it as a fund focused on storytelling around police violence and abuse that’ll commission projects across multiple media formats, including film, literature, theater, dance, fine art and music. LEAP is designed to empower activists to pursue narrative change and is envisioned as a two-year project to launch at least 25 works of art.
DuVernay told Ellen DeGeneres, “I’ve been thinking a lot about my own rage. My own emotions. When I look at George Floyd’s tape, I see my uncles. Not just in a general sense, but he looks like people in my family, like literally the facial features. Every time that that video plays on CNN or anything else, I see people that I love on the ground begging for their life.”
“There’s a sense of those images, what we’re asking of each other and the storytelling around these instances, the stories that we’re telling each other, that’s what I’ve been really interested in interrogating. We need to change what those stories are and change the way that we tell them.”
Below, DuVernay tells DeGeneres that video of Floyd’s murder brought the realization that the officers who commit brutal acts are usually faceless, nameless, and let off the hook to rejoin society. She believes that by allowing their invisibility, it tells an incomplete story, and leads to the lack of accountability in a broken criminal justice system. Watch below:
Below, DuVernay talks about LEAP.
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