Success is really when you create a space, a piece of art, and people come in and say, that's my story - when they claim it.

There's no other way but struggling, forging ahead to do the film.

I'm organizing documentary films, and whenever scriptwriting gets too tedious I go to my editing room and start to edit the documentary, even if I don't have the full funding yet. So you have to keep yourself busy, you have to like the subject matter.

To me the industry has always said that the lovers and haters and principal characters will always be white in Hollywood, and black people will always be appendages of those kinds of dramas, or they will be comedic outlets. It will never change.

There has to be consistent emergence of two or three films - narratively, stylistically, consistently demonstrating you are here to go on. And on that kind of basis, I'm not seeing much. I'm just waiting to see.

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

Success is really when you create a space, a piece of art, and people come in and say, that's my story - when they claim it.