Quote collection
111 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In documentaries, there's a truth that unfolds unnaturally, and you get to chronicle it. In narratives, you have to create the situations so that the truth will come out."
"When I look in the mirror, I see a woman who is happy."
"I soon found I could not talk about that in a vacuum without understanding the historical, cultural, political context, and giving it some legacy and some roots, and so then it just started to have tentacles that just spread out in all these places, and already a vicious project became pretty overwhelming in scope, and so it was a lot of diligent, day-to-day fighting with the footage, trying to get it down to a place where it was manageable and emotional."
"I love making films. I'm happiest when I'm doing it. For me, the fear is not being able to make the next thing and not being able, as a woman filmmaker and as a filmmaker of color, to put together the resources to make another thing."
"To pretend like Hollywood is anything other than that is disingenuous. #OscarsSoWhite is trendy, but for women filmmakers and filmmakers of color, it's not a trend. This is our reality, and it's important that we do something to change it."
"Those [old] days are gone... accept the reality and do it."
"I don't want to say that in a place that's negative about what the fear is. I just want to be a realist."
"Most of us think prison is a place where bad people go - which is what I thought for a long time - until you really start to look inside the system and you see, this is not right."
"I'm a huge Dirty Dancing fan. I feel like I should be reading [William] Shakespeare, but I'm watching Baby not be in a corner."
"Black people loving and losing is something we don’t see enough of. We’re always in these heightened situations like something big is happening, something funny or something violent. And you know what? Sometimes we die of breast cancer or a broken heart. Things happen that are just not being explored cinematically. It’s time we reinvigorated that type of film."
"I think good publicists are just like good mommies - always looking out, making sure folks are comfortable and making sure that folks are on time and making sure that folks are getting what they need and know what they need to do."
"I'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible."
"The idea that we criminalize fellow human beings based on optics, based on the need to progress in politics and gain power, and for economic reasons and financial reasons, for financial gains, and we throw out humanization for criminalization."
"True change is a long game, and it remains to be seen if this is change. We've had years before where there have been great years for filmmakers and performers of color, LGBTQ filmmakers and performers, women."
"I think when we get to a place that this is not the story, that everyone's story is a part of the story, then we can say this has changed. Until then, these are steps to change if they're consistent."
"[ Hollywood] is a patriarchy, headed by men and built for men."
"I always find it fascinating to ask people, why they've chosen to live their life as an artist? Why be an actor, a singer, an author, a filmmaker? I've heard such inspiring answers to that question."
"In addition to that, we have a woman post-production supervisor, a woman colorist, a woman first AD, a woman production supervisor... I think it's really sad when I hear so many shows are content to stay in a mono-cultural realm, not realizing how they are subtracting from their own greatness by not inviting women and people of color into the space - that seasoning that makes the recipe even more great. It was absolutely imperative for me. It's how I run all my crews."
"We've had these bursts of cool years here or there but that's not change. That's a trend. You only hope that this could be the beginning of true change."
"It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be."