As a Black woman filmmaker I feel that’s my job: visibility. And my preference within that job is Black subjectivity. Meaning I’m interested in the lives of Black folk as the subject. Not the predicate, not the tangent.[These stories] deserve to be told. Not as sociology, not as spectacle, not as a singular event that happens every so often, but regularly and purposefully as truth and as art on an ongoing basis, as do the stories of all the women you love.
All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.
It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be.
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.
I know that sounds a little bit corny, but I've found some solace in that. I hope art can continue to do that for people, I really do.
I feel mushy these days when I think about art and artists and the work that lies ahead for us. There's good work to be done and there's joy to be found in it, I think.
I mean, if this [film Age of Trump] wasn't on Netflix, it would be playing at some lovely art house theater on the West Side once or twice or for a week or maybe two weeks if I was lucky and then it would go away, and I'd be lucky if I could sell the DVDs off my website.
