Power is knowing your past.

It gets dangerous when you start allowing people to validate your work.

I think black people have to be in control of their own image because film is a powerful medium. We can't just sit back and let other people define our existence.

If people go to IMDB, they will see that I'm very comfortable with independent cinema, and doing studio films too. For me this is not an either/or situation.

Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith.

And one thing Hollywood does well is sequels.

American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.