Representation in Film Quotes

There is so much incredible talent in Hollywood, and it's crazy to me that we see the same people over and over again in projects.

Part of the reason everyone is freaking out over 'Black Panther' is because we've never seen it. We have two thousand years of stories, and we've never seen it.

Back in the 1970s, it was mostly all-black audiences coming into the theaters. So, we presented stories they could relate to.

For me, we've been singing diversity in movies for 16 years, so it's just beautiful to see the rest of the world finally catching on and they're making it a point to do it.

'Black cinema' I don't even know what that means. It's just cinema. When Paul Thomas Anderson makes a movie, we don't just say it's 'white cinema.'

I'm still trying to do films about black women.

I think the world is ready for people of color to take on more heroic and leading roles, and not always be the sidekick, the nemesis or any sort of stereotype of what a person of color can play typically in a Hollywood picture.

In the '70s, with movies like 'Little Big Man,' westerns began to have a little different flavor, and I think casting people and filmmakers began to realize, 'Hey, maybe we can get a little more authentic in terms of who we cast here.' That kind of opened up the gates.

I started a production company out of necessity, the need for great narratives for actors of color.

I'm just honest. They [asians] don't want to see black people generally in their movies.

I feel like part of my journey as a filmmaker is to tell different stories, whether they are just a black perspective on things that aren't necessarily hood movies, or Tyler Perry movies or Ava DuVernay movies. Love all those people, but that whole thing has been sowed up already.

I absolutely believed Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger loved each other in 'Brokeback Mountain.'

The only way I get a leading role in a studio picture is if Ryan Gosling can't play it, which is clearly the case with 'Selma.' If this was a non-colour-specific character, it wouldn't be me. It just wouldn't.

I think that there's room to grow, as far as being a person of color in film. I went to the theater the other day, and there's a whole bunch of Valentine's Day movies coming out. And the only ones that you see a lot of us in are us goofing off and clowning around; it's this kind of pseudo-romantic comedy kind of thing.

There’s something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. It’s a different perspective. It is a reflection as opposed to an interpretation, and I think we get a lot of interpretations about the lives of women that are not coming from women.

I landed the role of Bravo 5, the only female fighter pilot in 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.' I did my bit and fired my guns, but I haven't a notion of which side I was on or who I was firing the guns at.

Luckily, there is a wind of change happening in Hindi cinema. Good work is coming to people who are not conventionally good looking like Ranbir Kapoor or Akshay Kumar.

There are so many things I'd like to change in the industry. Everything from the reliance of style over substance to their reluctance to hire me for big budget blockbusters, but the thing I would love most would be if they understood people don't have to be Hollywood beautiful to be sexy or interesting.

I think it's a wonderful time to be a black woman who makes films. It's a good time to be an artist period. Traditional models of making and consuming art are breaking down and being rebuilt. I find that to be incredibly exciting as a filmmaker and film marketer.

When you start making a movie, people want to know: Who's the star power? And very early, I realized there's not a lot of 26-year-old black actors who have been given the opportunity to be the lead of a film. It's, like, Michael B. Jordan, and then we're done.

I think people do like extremes in cinema. There are very few films told about everyday middle-class couples, which is odd to me, as there are a lot of everyday middle-class couples.

Cinema is a little over 100 years old, and a lot of what we do is built around film emulsion. Those things were calibrated for white skin. We've always placed powder on skin to dull the light. But my memory of growing up in Miami is this moist, beautiful black skin.

Give more acting roles to 48-year-old half-Lithuanians who just don't want to be pigeon-holed as bakery presenters.

Very often the people who are shooting your film do not look like you if your film is brown-centric in some way. What is very interesting is to be going through these scenarios and turning around and looking at so many faces that are not yours. Even though those faces are looking at you in love, it puts you in a space when you are on a plantation in that condition. I think that it allows you to see further into possibly what that place really was for someone else, except thank God we're with people who love and respect us.

During the last decades, films about the black experience have been produced, directed, and even scripted by white men. Some of them are excellent. But most reflect George Bernard Shaw’s warning that 'if you do not tell your stories others will tell them for you and they will vulgarize and degrade you.'