Some black filmmakers will say, "I don't want to be considered a black filmmaker, I'm a filmmaker." I don't think that. I'm a black woman filmmaker.

Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn't done when they lock picture. We must see our films through. Studios no longer do this for a large percentage of films. The odds that your film will get a major campaign are dim these days. So you must find and nurture your own audience and make sure your film has a life.

Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.

We have to find new ways to work without permission, new ways to turn corners and go through doors that are closed off to us to create our own audiences and our own material independently.

We [Americans] know Martin Luther King Jr. as a statue. We know him as a holiday. We know him as a speech. We don't know him as a man. Most people don't even know the whole speech, just "I have a dream." They don't know what his speaking voice was like, how he looked at his wife, or that he had four kids.

The fact that we have people who have headed up oil corporations now assigned to places in cabinet.

I feel mushy these days when I think about art and artists and the work that lies ahead for us. There's good work to be done and there's joy to be found in it, I think.