Quotes on Films

I get unhappy doing things that I'm not passionate about. Because I feel like I'm squandering this incredible gift I've been given to finance films. As soon as my name alone was enough to make this happen, I vowed to myself that I was going to work with directors who were changing cinema, doing something important, you know?

I often make films about subjects I don't really know much about. Maybe it's laziness, but I don't go in there having done a tonne of research; the research happens while I'm making the film.

I financed and made my own films from the start. My path has been autonomous and independent, so I don't have any horror stories about glass ceilings and expectations and tense studio meetings.

I want to make films without a single clear message, and films that are as close as possible to what it feels like to be alive. At least to me.

There's really no precedent for someone like me gaining clout in the space that I'm in - a black woman directing films in Hollywood.

I hope we see more avenues for representation. More TV shows and films starring queer people, especially QPOC and nonbinary folks, more mainstream press coverage of our artwork and fashion, and more representation of our interests within politics.

Those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are niche experiences - they are not. Audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them.

The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.

Too many films today feel formulaic and familiar. I prefer it when the familiar is made to feel strange.

To make films, it always begins with two words: what and how. First of all, you have to find a story, or what are you going to tell? And you have to find a way to tell it visually.

In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel.

The thing that's made me open my eyes to what was happening to the environment and climate was films and documentaries.

Some of my films are known for the depiction of violence. I don't have anything to prove with that any more.

Perhaps when I have 10 films behind me, I will have something worth saying.

Is it possible to reproduce, later in life, the impact that books, records, and films have between the ages of fourteen and seventeen? The periods of my adult life that have been most miserable have been those in which I lost fidelity to what I discovered then.

As a filmmaker, I believe in trying to make movies that invite the audience to be part of the film; in other words, there are some films where I'm just a spectator and am simply observing from the front seat. What I try to do is draw the audience into the film and have them participate in what's happening onscreen.

To make films, you have to have something to say. To have something to say, you have to be a student of life. And to be a student of life, you have to be feeding yourself with what life, politics, society, and your family fuels you with.

I find it very interesting: when 90 percent of the critics that review films are men, how is that helpful when trying to create stories from a feminine point of view?

Many really good films allow us to empathize with other lives.

I often find in the film world, that it's very self-referring. If you talk to someone about films, they talk about them in terms of other films - rather than as something that happened to them in their life. And I'm really keen to get back to film as a reference to real things, not necessarily to other films.