Black Filmmakers Quotes

Spike Lee made such a difference in terms of black filmmakers, the subtleties - those authors, those writers who write from love, and those who write from that lofty position of superiority.I felt he took aspects of the black experience in America and held it up for us to see. He tried to put it in perspective. He did put it in perspective in his unique way.

When you're first starting out, you want to keep making good movies. When you're young and you're black, you do a bad movie and you're through.

One picture and one win cannot right a million wrongs. It's a step in the right direction.We have to get to a point where a movie like "Moonlight" winning [Oscar] or Barry Jenkins being nominated and winning, you know, for a screenplay or being nominated for best director - that it's just commonplace. They shouldn't be a novelty.

Hollywood, it seems, recognizes black film and black filmmakers, but like a distant lover, never close enough or long enough to forge a meaningful relationship.

Time will tell ... whether folks want to point and stare at the black woman filmmaker who made a certain kind of film, and pat her on the back, or if they want to actually roll up the sleeves and do a little bit of work so that there can be more of me coming through.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

Many times, I get young people asking, 'What do you think about black movies?' And I say, 'What are you talking about? You mean Hollywood movies that have black people in them?' It's gone back to that, and that's not the same thing as a black movie.

The reality is, because of access to film, you don't have a lot of black people who want to go behind the camera. We raise our children to want to be in front of the camera and shine, and that's on us.

I think a lot of black filmmakers have done very well.

I am admiring of my fellow peers, black filmmakers and black actors and actresses.

Black filmmakers - I'm grateful for them.