When I'm marketing a film, whether its mine or someone else's, I work with a great deal of strategy and elbow grease until the job is done.

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

The documentaries were something that I could do for a small amount of money, and then I felt like as long as I found the truth in the stories I was telling as a doc, I could teach myself filmmaking through doc filmmaking.

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.

Is there deeply embedded change within our industry? And I would say, as a black filmmaker, it's easy for me to focus my attention on black work, but true change would include brown work, and it would include work by Asian-Americans, and it would include natives, and it would include women, and it would include more LGBTQ voices.

It was easy for me to show the films to the studio and the network and say, "This is who I'm hiring."

When I'm marketing a film, whether its mine or someone else's, I work with a great deal of strategy and elbow grease until the job is done. It's pretty simple really. I just dive in and start digging. Yes, I'm fortunate to know the in's and out's of a true studio-level marketing campaign. But really, anyone who is diligent and well-researched can pull it off too. Its easier for me, but it doesn't make it impossible for others.