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" I don't feel like a hero. "

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" 'Strong Island' has been a labor of love and dedication on the part of so many people, that it's just an incredible recognition to be honored. And to be the first trans director - and, I believe, the first African-American trans director - to be nominated for an Academy Award is incredibly, incredibly special to me. "

" What 'Strong Island' does is bring a historical perspective and help people understand that what we're treating as a modern-day phenomenon is actually not modern. It's actually quite old. "

" It's important that people understand that 'Strong Island' is just as much about this claim of reasonable fear and our need to interrogate reasonable fear as it is about my family's grief. "

" Our blackness and how to survive being black in America was something that our parents instilled in us extraordinarily well. "

" I have a lot of surrogate parents, but there's no one like your mother. "

" When I use the word 'buzz' in successive sentences, it's clearly time for me to stop writing. "

" I think fear has been racialised. When you get someone who says 'I was afraid' of a big black guy, that's enough to say, 'Okay, not guilty,' or, 'No indictment.' It's persisted over generations, and it needs to stop. "

" I worked at 'POV' for five years before I told one person about my brother. "

" Grief is a very complicated monster. There's no real exorcising of it. It has a different form every day. "

" If I can help one family embrace their child and not displace them and throw them out, I'm happy about that. "

" I don't think I present as gender-conforming on screen, but some people need a little extra information. "

" I will never understand how so many young women can go out in the freezing cold wearing so little clothing. "

" I remind audiences that I'm in the fortunate position to make a film about my family. "

" We have to deal with the way that race influences our criminal justice system. "

Criminal Justice

" I'm incredibly proud to be the first trans director to be nominated for an Oscar. "

" The justice system isn't meant to work for people of color in this country. "

" When I was making 'Strong Island,' it was very clear to me that my brother's death was a point on a line that stretched back into the 1940s and beyond in my family - and in the nation. "

" Grief, for me, is a moment-to-moment experience. "

" It would be easier for people to grasp that gender, sex, and sexual orientation are different things if we had as much imagination in real life as we do when we are making our movies. "

" It would have been tough for anyone to adapt 'Push' - an amazing but wrenching novel by Sapphire - for the screen, and I think director Lee Daniels made interesting choices, particularly with Precious' fantasies. In my view, some of them work and some do not, but they are definitely provocative directorial choices. "

" If my making history makes it easier for a trans kid at home somewhere to feel more at home in their skin, then I'm so excited about that. "

" My brother's death picked up my life and put it down somewhere else. I had an image of myself in my mind as a working artist, and when he died, all of that changed. "

" White communities - and I exempt poor white communities from this - have power over their representation. White people have the ability to define themselves, to exert their agency in a way that they get to be believed. No one believes black people. No one. Until a white person vouches for them. "

" I love marching bands. "

" What little return documentary filmmakers get often comes in the form of recognition by their peers and the critics who influence doc audiences around the country. "

" The quality of festival Q&As is often a matter of chance. Sometimes the lights come up on movies I loved, and not a single meaningful question is asked. Sometimes it's the opposite. "

" I had a list of 10 rules when we started 'Strong Island,' and one of them was, 'Yance will never appear on camera with sync sound.' "

" 'Trumbo' is conventional in its structure, mixing interviews with archival footage. What I enjoyed most about the film was its liberal use of his own personal letters to friends and family, performed dramatically by well-known actors. "

Friends And Family

" People come up and say, 'Thank you' for showing a black family loving their masculine-presenting child and for undoing the myth of black people as being rabidly homophobic. "

" My impression is that the Academy is really sincere about moving toward a more inclusive and representative Hollywood. "