You know, often films that are deemed positive, nobody wants to see them.

The traditional ways to make a film, the traditional ways to share a film, have all collapsed. There are no gatekeepers, per se, any more, and anything can be done. Truly, I feel that.

Most of us think prison is a place where bad people go - which is what I thought for a long time - until you really start to look inside the system and you see, this is not right.

On my very first show, my partners in it, Oprah Winfrey and her network, and studio, Warner Horizon, who doesn't get enough credit, said, "Lady, we're going to let you call the shots the way you want to."

I thing for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films. You see the statistics, and the dropoff on the second and third [films] , are dire.

Folks can look at this issue and read it and it can feel like medicine, it can feel epidemic. We wanted this to hit people in their gut, and the hope is that by doing that, we can get more people to think more deeply about these issues.

For far too long, independent voices have been relegated to places where these ideas are not seen on a mass level.