10 Things We Learned From Ava DuVernay's #ARRAYToday Live Chat

Photo of Ava DuVernay courtesy of ARRAY Now.

There is a certain segment of Twitter that currently has bloodshot eyes and wrist cramps from participating in #ARRAYToday, a 12-hour tweet-a-thon organized by Ava DuVernay to drive attention to the work of women directors and her film distribution company, ARRAY.

ARRAY, which started out as the African American Film Releasing Movement in 2010, is dedicated to amplifying the work of women and filmmakers of color around the world. Past releases include Restless City, Echo Park, Mississippi, and DuVernay's own Sundance hit, Middle of Nowhere.

#ARRAYToday essentially served as a real-time master class on navigating filmmaking as both an art and a business. 30 women filmmakers, including Amma Asante, Mira Nair and Julie Dash, answered questions from cinephiles that revealed both surprising and inspiring details about their respective careers.

Below are some of the highlights from Wednesday's tweet-stravaganza.

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Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust, The Rosa Parks Story) shared a tidbit about shooting her seminal film:

Tanya E. Hamilton (Night Catches Us) shared an inspiration outside of filmmaking:

Mira Nair (Queen of Katwe, The Notebook) shared lessons in hardship:

Christine Swanson (Love Under New Management: The Miki Howard Story) is working on a new project that sounds amazing:

Amma Assante, (Belle, A United Kingdom) shared hardships she’s faced:

Photo of Tina Mabry courtesy of IMDB.com.

Victoria Mahoney (Yelling to the Sky) revealed an unlikely ally in the industry:

Tina Mabry (Mississippi Damned and Queen Sugar) shared her vulnerability around her first feature:

Kat Candler (Hellion and Queen Sugar) finds inspiration in the messiness of life:

Tina Gordon (The Peeples) shared what motivates her writing:

Chloé Zhao (Songs My Brothers Taught Me) had an insightful response about budgets and resources:

Danielle A. Scruggs is a Chicago-based photographer and writer who runs the website Black Women Directors and is also the Director of Photography at the Chicago Reader, an award-winning alt-weekly newspaper. Follow her on Twitter at @dascruggs and view her site at daniellescruggs.com.