Engage your fans and turn your fans into your community. Realize that we all have failures and can turn those failures into successes through tenacity and through being open to changing.

I am very much a woman, but I never consider that I am when I go and make films. I don't check into the world as a woman everyday. I check in first as an artist and mother, then as a daughter sister, and friend - but always as an artist.

First of all, being a woman is an incredible asset in many ways in making documentaries. You can be less intimidating, you have a heightened emotional sensitivity and you have the ability to listen to multiple conversations at one time and multi-task.

Engage your fans and turn your fans into your community. Realize that we all have failures and can turn those failures into successes through tenacity and through being open to changing.

I feel if you hold yourself as an artist first and foremost, the barriers of gender come down.

I do feel my fan base, my community understands me and appreciates me very deeply, and that is the wind in my sails to keep doing what I am doing. I know that my work really inspires people and they tell me that all the time, and so that's wonderful.

I never really make a film unless I feel like it's going to be personal and intimate, but also relevant to the audience.