I started to read James Baldwin very early on in my life. At a time, as a young adult in the Sixties, when there were not that many authors in whom I could recognize myself, he was an important guide and mentor to me as he was to many others. He helped me understand who I was and decipher the world around me. He gave me the words to defend myself and the argumentative rhetoric to master discussions with others.

The system gives you two minutes to phrase a whole history.

James Baldwin is one of the greatest, North American writers of the second half of the Twentieth Century. A prolific writer and a brilliant social critic, he foreshadowed the destructive trends happening now in the whole Western world and beyond, while always maintaining a sense of humanistic hope and dignity. He explored palpable, yet unspoken, intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies and the inevitable, if unnameable, tensions with personal identity, assumptions, uncertainties, yearning, and questing.

It was really always about bringing back [James] Baldwin's words in all their rawness, in all their impact - in the way he analyzes not only this country but also the history of this country, the images that this country is fabricating through Hollywood, and what consequence that has in our imagination.

I just hope that my films will survive me.

I think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time... not just African-American. He singled-handily revolutionized the political, artistic and historical discourses about America. He created his particular and original language.

[James] Baldwin is needed even more today because he helps you focus to the essential, to what is important.