Quote collection
111 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The fact that's why the prisons and stock in private prisons rose the very day after the election results [for Donald Trump] were announced. The fact that progress that was made for people of color, for women, for LGBTQ people, are all at risk."
"The fact that we have people who have headed up oil corporations now assigned to places in cabinet."
"I know that sounds a little bit corny, but I've found some solace in that. I hope art can continue to do that for people, I really do."
"I feel mushy these days when I think about art and artists and the work that lies ahead for us. There's good work to be done and there's joy to be found in it, I think."
"On my very first show, my partners in it, Oprah Winfrey and her network, and studio, Warner Horizon, who doesn't get enough credit, said, "Lady, we're going to let you call the shots the way you want to.""
"Is there deeply embedded change within our industry? And I would say, as a black filmmaker, it's easy for me to focus my attention on black work, but true change would include brown work, and it would include work by Asian-Americans, and it would include natives, and it would include women, and it would include more LGBTQ voices."
"I think there are pieces of the film [Age Of Trump] that are even more emotionally resonant and more vital to talk about than ever."
"I mean, if this [film Age of Trump] wasn't on Netflix, it would be playing at some lovely art house theater on the West Side once or twice or for a week or maybe two weeks if I was lucky and then it would go away, and I'd be lucky if I could sell the DVDs off my website."
"More people have seen 13th on Netflix than have seen all my films put together between the Sundance winners and Selma, and the whole international distribution of film."
"I feel like it had an impact, in that it started the attention that has been paid to what was happening. It started to get us into this whole conversation about prison reform, the whole bipartisan dialogue that's been happening over the past five, six years about this, where you have a Van Jones and a Newt Gingrich, and you have the Rick Perrys and so forth getting up and talking about the need to reform."
"When I went out to shoot for the first time, I thought this was going to be about the prison industrial complex, purely about prison for profit and the ways in which there's an industry making money and profiting off punishment."
"A lot of work was done with one of my best friends and editor, Spencer Averick, who's edited everything I've ever made from the very, very first documentaries; the very, very first films I made were docs, so we learned the form together."
"I know how to make films and now I'm able to make films with the resources and the tools that match my imagination, and what filmmaker doesn't want to do that? I feel very fortunate to have that. I don't take it for granted."
"I think there are a lot of people in this industry that have the ability, that have the position, they have the opportunity, they have the privilege to call the shots and could do it too."
"There's no reason not to employ, seek out and take a chance on a woman filmmaker that you might not have been looking at her direction. She's not done it before because you've not given her the opportunity to do it before, and I'm just happy that folks like Jessica Jones' Melissa Rosenberg and folks like Ryan Murphy are also embracing this idea."
"When you force sleep, it doesn't happen."
"It was easy for me to show the films to the studio and the network and say, "This is who I'm hiring.""
"All these women had directed movies that I loved on the film festival circuit, but couldn't get a job making television. That's how locked down TV is."
"I just remember not having access to films as a young person who loved films but living in Compton."
"My parents [are my hero]. They've helped me be who I am."