Quotes from Yance Ford

There is nothing quite as exciting as watching a master at work.

I love marching bands.

Violence against the other, and the way we otherize people out of fear, has to be examined across the board.

Black lives are too easy to take in America because we don't want to question why people are so afraid of black and brown people to begin with. And that's what I want 'Strong Island' to do.

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

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

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

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.

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.

White people get to do that all of the time. They get to engage in bad behavior, even felonious behavior, but they rarely wind up in jail. But as a black person, losing your temper can cost you your life. Or insisting on your rights can cost you your life.

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.

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

There are people who get to be three-dimensional humans in the United States, and there are people who do not.

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

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.

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

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

I would hate for people to think that 'Strong Island' is just about a family's grief. It is about a family's grief, yes, but it is also an interrogation of our criminal justice system.

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

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.

Being nominated is such a tremendous honor. An Oscar win for me and for the 'Strong Island' team would be the cap to an incredible journey. But it would also mean that my brother will not disappear from history.

'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.