Learning how to do some of the technical work on the film can be helpful too and allows you to start the film on your own. However, if you are passionate about an idea, just begin.

I am particularly pleased to see that there are so many women working in documentary film.

Even after forty years of directing, shooting and editing films, when I collaborate with a male partner, people still perceive the man as the primary filmmaker.

It's always been difficult for me to find funding for a story that I want to follow in real time. Financiers are hesitant to support a project when they don't know the outcome.

I was inspired by Maya Deren because she was the first woman filmmaker whose films I saw. I also loved Fellini and Goddard because they were so different from Hollywood films. But when I saw the cinema verite films that were made by Drew Associates with Leacock and Pennebaker I found my passion.

When Steve Wise told me that he intended to argue in court before a judge that an animal could be a "legal person," it seemed like a novel, possibly far-fetched idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I became intrigued.

I have always thought that if you can give viewers the sense of being there a story can be very compelling.