Most young people now are very vulnerable as to what the American film aficionados are going to say. They care too much about a system that has no room for them. It's really a serious issue for me, because to me it's, how do I survive beyond a film that was disgraced or praised?

When you don't work together you can't emerge as a force. It becomes what some call a "lonely struggle" and individual self-destruction.

The true story is that black people need to tell their history. Very few films are made by black people about slavery. That itself is a crime because slavery is a very important historical event that has held our people hostage. Forget white people's role in it. In the end what's important is black people remain and live with the scars and psychological issues.

Most, especially the young filmmakers, do not see strength in communal or collective existence. They just think they're going to conquer the world as individuals. There is no world like that. In cinema it's always, even in Hollywood, a collective surge.

For any movement to emerge, it has to be innovatively independent from the mainstream cinema, and I don't see that much.

A lot of young black people in America, and even in Africa and Brazil, would say that they are telling their story, but most of the films are like application forms with the formulaic ideas of Hollywood.

If you never did anything for your own freedom, you're not worth a human being in my view.