Barry Jenkins

“I think it's really important to remind, reinforce people that their lives have value, you know? That their lives have worth.”

“Whenever I tell people I'm from Miami, they always ask me about the beach. But I can count on one hand the times I went there as a kid.”

“As a filmmaker whose first film was made with the DIY tools of digital cinema, I love how the democratization of the filmmaking process and platforms like YouTube enables people to tell stories that in previous generations simply could not be told.”

“It used to be that watching a film was a very special occasion, the same way flying was. Before, if you took a flight from New York to L.A., most of the windows would be open. Now, we get on planes and we just close them because we're so used to what it feels like. I think the same thing has happened with cinema.”

“My films are personal-voice-driven films about human characters and the place we live. Technically, I'm an independent filmmaker.”

“I'm very much a person of nurture over nature. When the world is not nurturing, it can really change a man.”

“I just came back from my hometown, making a movie about a kid who grew up just like me, and it was financed by white people in New York. Personally, I can't be angry. In my personal experience, the support was there.”

“I grew up really poor and have always been the type of person who will work earlier or work harder or more than the other person to even the playing field.”

“Making films. It gave me a voice. Legitimately saved me.”

“In hip-hop, sometimes that pace is so fast that you miss things. I don't mean literally miss lyrics; I just think there's an emotion in what these cats are saying that gets by you. When you slow things down, there's this emotion, this yearning.”

“I wasn't known as a neighborhood tough or anything like that. But yeah, I was, like, a scrappy kid. You know, I kind of kept to myself, you know?”

“Sometimes, how you ingest this idea of masculinity as projected onto you by the world could be the difference of life and death.”

“Cinema is a little over 100 years old, and a lot of what we do is built around film emulsion. Those things were calibrated for white skin. We've always placed powder on skin to dull the light. But my memory of growing up in Miami is this moist, beautiful black skin.”

“I'm always about, 'What is the most productive version of what I'm putting into the world?' Something that can be engaged by all folks. I don't have to change everyone.”

“There were times when we didn't have hot water or a phone line. But I guarantee you, we always had cable, and it was always on.”

“I didn't really want to be a filmmaker, growing up. Other than Spike Lee's movies, I would think, 'Where is a place for me?' We were so damn poor that it just seemed too far beyond.”

“Growing up, I wasn't the most vocal kid in the world. I feel like I learned through observation, and usually, when you're watching things, you're not speaking. That sort of metastasized in a way that I began to participate less and less in the world.”

“I worked for Oprah Winfrey for two years right out of college in 2004. I was a director's assistant on the film 'Their Eyes Were Watching God,' which Oprah produced.”

“As a filmmaker, I really want to utilize the tools to carry the voice - my voice, and the voice of the characters.”

“I've worked at this film festival in Telluride called the Telluride Film Festival. Been there since 2002. I used to make popcorn. I was an usher. Cleaned toilets, everything. Grew up there as a kid.”