I think it's a wonderful time to be a black woman who makes films. It's a good time to be an artist period. Traditional models of making and consuming art are breaking down and being rebuilt. I find that to be incredibly exciting as a filmmaker and film marketer.

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.

Because my mom always told me that I could. From a very early age, I felt comfortable leading.

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.

I always go into a blocking rehearsal with an anchor, with a blocking plan. And sometimes they'll step into the room and they'll be in costume and you're like, "That sucks, that's not going to work. Let's think of something new."

When you say cultural icon, I scrunch my nose.

If you have the ability to do something, you should do it.