Quote:
"And I thought, What's the best way to talk about racism in a documentary [Ninth Floor]? You've got that central metaphor. Those guys were under surveillance for no reason other than the colour of their skin. That era was also a great time in cinema where you had the paranoid trilogy from (American director) Alan J. Pakula, and The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974). There was this beautiful marriage of what was happening cinematically language-wise in American cinema at the time and also what was happening with the student protest movement. So I decided that a way to try and tell this was to make us feel like we're being watched."
-- Mina Shum

Source:
Conner, Shawn. "In new doc, riot gets its due." Interview with Mina Shum. Vancouver Sun, January 7, 2016.