Barry Jenkins

You walk on a set, and you have no idea - that's why I don't storyboard. It's all possible.

I love production. I could do it 365 days a year. Post is different. It's just too slow, and everything is very finite.

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.

My first job was cutting grass. In Miami, this grass grows everywhere. You just get the lawn mower out, walk down the neighborhood, cut grass.

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.

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.

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

I used to be obsessed with race. I'm more obsessed with class now.

As a person of color from the South, San Francisco was the first city that really made me feel like an other.

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.

We are carrying these images out into the world, and we can't control how people contextualize those images no matter how virtuous our aspirations and our intentions are.

How did I feel as a guy who was making a movie about a single mom who's a crackhead? That - I was scared. I mean, it was scary. But part of that's because it was so personal and real to me.

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

Because I'm so in the eye of the hurricane, I don't have a really good perception of what's happening. I'm in a room talking to people, and that's all I know. But sometimes I go out of these rooms - I live in L.A., and every now and then, maybe twice a week, I'll be somewhere, and someone will say, 'Hey, are you the guy that made Moonlight?'

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.

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.

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

Until 'Moonlight,' I had never seen one black man cook for another on screen. But I wanted the characters to be free of 'groundbreaking' or 'never before.' We were ascribed those things. They weren't the point.

I'm process-orientated. Awards, by their nature, are results-orientated.

I really sort of kept to myself. I kind of just watched the world. And I think to keep people from messing with me, yeah, you know, I went out to run track. I went out for the football team. Not because I love track or love football.