We're trying to tell stories. We're a company that's concerned with global change and the effect of global cinema. We're not simply tied to the very limiting framework of U.S. film-making.

If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.

I try to find hope in struggle and resistance in small places as much as I can.

We're trying to tell stories. We're a company that's concerned with global change and the effect of global cinema. We're not simply tied to the very limiting framework of U.S. film-making.

When someone you know passes on, the only thing you can do is keep moving forward.

I remember when Langston Hughes used to write a column in black newspapers around this character Jesse B. Semple. He always used that as a voice, sometimes in comic ways, of having everyday people's voice come through this common folk hero, who was an ordinary working guy. He would talk about anything from police brutality to the Korean War. Those kinds of expression and identification are no longer prevalent in our popular culture.

Democracy is about criticism.