The system knows how to cherry pick black people. It's like affirmative action - once a year, one is recognized. But what has to occur is self-emergence so if they ignore you, you don't have to disappear.

When the system does not recognize me I'm not devastated.

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.

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.

I think not many young people are willing to pay the price of telling their own story.

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.

I am not interested only in telling a story, but I want to tell it my way. I don't want my accent, my temperament, my narrative style to be compromised to fit into a mold of the Hollywood type.