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I've been through like everything,
like a whole bunch of like hot button issues and topics.
My father passed away from AIDS, my mother passed away from cancer,
drug addicts. People just don't know, if they know me.
And then they see Dependent' and they're like "Woah."
Growing up in Harlem in the 90's, and seeing where it went,
and my parents and my uncle being a microcosm of that.
The camera helped me explore what was going on because,
it's literally like a mirror.
Because first you have to record it and you have to be honest with yourself.
And then you have to take it back and edit it.
So you have to look at it again and again and again.
You have to begin to look at things critically.
It becomes a therapy, for me, anyway.
Going and presenting the material
is a story in and of itself. It's like I'm here, I'm presenting,
just the fact that I'm showing you this film
let's you know that I was successful in some kind of way.
So the one thing I want them to get is like, you're not your story.
Whether it be mass media, whether it be your parents,
you're not the person they say you are, you're the person you say you are.
You construct your own story.
And even then, after you construct your own story, you can still change.
We can tell our stories masterfully,
no matter what they are.