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Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood.

The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.

I think the whole stigma of 'black movies' is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like '12 Years A Slave,' to 'The Butler,' to 'The Best Man,' to 'Ride Along,' to even 'Think Like a Man' from last year - these movies are just good movies.

Just telling a story. That's cinema. It's not silent, black and white. It's a simple story that's well made.

If you are going to call a film a 'black film' then you have to make a film that represents everyone that's black, which is almost impossible. That is why white films are not called white films, they are just called 'films.'

I think it's important for anyone who takes cinema seriously not to limit yourself to just optimistic or happy movies. I think that's a problem. You've got to be willing to let the art of cinema take you into some darker places if you're going to make full use of it.

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

When movies first came out, maybe they were in black and white and there wasn't any sound and people were saying the theater is still the place to be. But now movies and theater have found their own place in the world. They are each legitimate art forms.

Cinema is about people, and we are a very emotional people. That is why you see those ups and those downs and those colours. That is what Indian cinema is about.

The problem with trying to make a film good and have it work for an audience is the problem of trying to tell a story well. The shape or the color of it doesn't matter.