As long as you are in that white privilege bubble, you don't need to see the world differently. You don't need to see the world through the eyes of minorities or women.
I started to read James Baldwin very early on in my life. At a time, as a young adult in the Sixties, when there were not that many authors in whom I could recognize myself, he was an important guide and mentor to me, as he was to many others. He helped me understand who I was and decipher the world around me.
I have refused money sometimes for a film. I have refused films when I felt that it was not for me. When it was just a job or just about making money, I said no. I wanted to make every film count, and when you are true to yourself, this gives you a certain integrity and a certain reputation.
Right now, the machine keeps us totally busy. If you don't react against it, you'll end up letting yourself go and become the perfect consumer. That's what they want.
If there is something that determines my motivation in the work I do, it's the sense of injustice.
I never wanted to be current in the sense that I follow the news, I follow the historical moment of the day. It was always, for me, to go back to the fundamentals.
We forget that everything has a meaning, everything has an impact on you. It's what we call soft power today. Nothing is innocent.
We need to learn how to organize, not just to let our anger explode. We need to have organization for the long run, not for one issue, not for one murder, but for everything coming to us in the next 20, 30 years.
James Baldwin is probably, for me and for many other people, one of the most extraordinary authors in this country, black or white. And he is somebody who changed my life.
We ignore our own history. We ignore all these values and valuable people who really changed everything, who sacrificed their own lives for a better America.
The only direction I can give to an actor, a good actor who knows his skills, is, 'Here are those words. They're yours. Make them yours. Don't tell the text but be the text.' That means you have to be the emotion of the text.
A black character is much more than just a black character; he's a character, period. So show the world as it is. Even with all your artistic license, you make a political choice.
When you stand up in the morning, you look in the mirror and say, 'I'm black.' No. You wake up and you see yourself as a human being in the world, but you raise discussion and raise aggression, the anger that you confront every day of your life, whether you want to or not.
You face the reality, whether it's hopeful or hopeless. What's your alternative? To lie down and die?
Sometimes people ask me, 'Are you an optimist or a pessimist?' It doesn't matter. Whether I have a future or not is for me to decide.
I refuse to make films where the audience comes for consumption. I make films where you know you are also part of the process.
I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.
I have to make sure, when you start seeing a film, you are going to see it until the end. I have to, of course, entertain you a little bit. The real question is how far do I go?
When I started this profession, I wanted to make films that entertain but that have content. When I went to film school, they made me believe that the two could not mix.
I just hope that my films will survive me.
