When you say cultural icon, I scrunch my nose.

I soon found I could not talk about that in a vacuum without understanding the historical, cultural, political context, and giving it some legacy and some roots, and so then it just started to have tentacles that just spread out in all these places, and already a vicious project became pretty overwhelming in scope, and so it was a lot of diligent, day-to-day fighting with the footage, trying to get it down to a place where it was manageable and emotional.

Historically, you've had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people.

I just don't think there's a lot of support for the woman's voice in cinema, and it becomes really difficult to raise that money and start again every time.

I'm not the most athletic gal, but because making a movie is very physical, I slow down on the Krispy Kreme and Ice Blendeds. I start to get leaner and more focused - like I'm going into a boxing match - because I'm about to really try to put this idea on its feet.

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.

There’s something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. It’s a different perspective. It is a reflection as opposed to an interpretation, and I think we get a lot of interpretations about the lives of women that are not coming from women.