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.

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.

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.

I have always felt that documentaries are an opportunity for me to witness a world that I know nothing about.

My favorite film is "Meshes in the Afternoon," a short avant garde film directed by Maya Deren. This was the first film that I saw that was actually directed by a woman.

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 I was growing up in the '50s, I had never heard of a "woman film director," so I did not consider it as an option. But I was fortunate that in the late-'60s and '70s, because of the feminist movement, women were stepping into all sorts of careers that had been closed to them in the past and film was one of them.