The Black Lives Matter movement has to, by its very nature, be intersectional because of the complexities of who black people are in this country and throughout the world.
All of the films that I've made are about the country I live in and grew up in... And I think if you're going to put an artist's eye to it, you're going to put a critical eye to it. I've always been interested in the gray area that exists between the black and white, or the red and blue, and that's where complexity lies.
Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.
I sit my three sons down and say, 'Listen to me. When the police stop you, immediately comply. Don't walk away, don't smart-mouth; get your hands up and get down on the ground.' If you're not black, you might not have to have that conversation, but I go over and over it with them because I don't want that phone call.
Sidney Poitier and Sidney Lumet were instrumental in helping me get started as the first black composer to get name credit for movie scores.
We talk too much of black art when we should be talking about art, just art. Black composers must be free to write rondos and fugues, not only protest songs.
To be a black person is to come from a long bloodline of survivors and storytellers, with a resilience that people can't even comprehend.
We believe it is comprehensive international sanctions against the white regime that will save us from the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of South Africans, black and white.
When I was in my 20s, I was out of control in terms of what I would do to defend my vision. There are black film-makers and storytellers who take a back seat to just get it done. It's good, but it's not right there. It's been compromised.
My comrades would call me a 'black capitalist.'
Have you ever heard of Irish, Poles, Germans, Italians and Jews being integrated? They go anywhere and just enjoy their rights. Why call it integration when black folks do the same thing? It's a con job.
Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.
Does a black person make them an African American? No. There are Hispanics that are very, very dark skinned so the word has lost its meaning, it's not a very concise or proper word to use even today and it wasn't then.
All lives matter, including black lives, which is a value we should be striving for rather than condemning.
Usually, 'All Lives Matter' comes as a response to 'Black Lives Matter'; it doesn't exist in a vacuum. So when people say 'Black Lives Matter,' a lot of times the response 'All Lives Matter' can seem very condescending, dismissive to 'Black Lives Matter.'
I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.
John Howard, willing to apologise to home owners for rising interest rates, would not say sorry to Aborigines. He refused to condone what he referred to as 'a black armband version' of history, preferring a jingoistic nationalism.
I can't be in an environment that is not conducive to me as a black woman.
Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief.
Far from ending, systemic racism reinvents itself to conform to what is publically acceptable, leaving the quality of black life diminished and more permanently fixed with each passing decade.
