I really do not care what the white world is doing. I care about black people building the monument on slavery.

You have to be willing to put everything you've got towards the project. That to me is very important. And it may not be part of the fad, being the clichéd kind of film that's going to be successful.

To me, entertainment is really the new plantation. It's the new sugar, the new cotton, that black people work for somebody else to be richer than them.

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.

For me, I think [art] exists in a cave. I am in a cave. I have my own editing place, but I'm not powerful enough to amass the resources to keep doing movies every two or three years.

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.

I think once you have films in certain festivals you begin to have name recognition, and there are possibilities. Especially for independent filmmakers, it's always good to try the international market because it doesn't have the same kind of baggage.