Pier Paolo Pasolini

“The mark which has dominated all my work is this longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which doesn't lessen but augments this love of life.”

Reha Erdem

Man Ray

“It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.”

Maya Deren

“The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls.”

František Vláčil

“I never worked as anyone's assistant director nor did I ever study at any film academy, thus the Army Film Division was my 'trade school'.”

Philippe Garrel

“Cinema is Freud plus Lumière.”

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

“I, as a filmmaker, treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters. I don't care if people are fond of them or despise them, as long as I created them with my best intentions and efforts.”

Lucile Hadzihalilovic

“What justifies a movie? It’s the reaction it causes in people who see it, professionals or not – the “echo” it finds in certain people. But it is obvious that the critics and the prizes help a little in the visibility of films.”

Carlos Saura

“...my work has a coherence within its incoherence because I've decided to work with elements that I know to the core, to work with characters and settings I've lived with.”

Robert Bresson

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”

Jean Vigo

[on his film, Nizza] “In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial. The last gasps of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution.”

Kaneto Shindô

“My mind was always on the commoners, not on the lords, politicans, or anyone of name and fame. I wanted to convey the lives of down-to-earth people who live like weeds.”

Jan Švankmajer

“I never call myself an animated filmmaker because I am interested not in animation techniques or creating a complete illusion, but in bringing life to everyday objects.”

Yoshishige Yoshida

“I don’t think it’s possible to have an abstract idea of a man and an abstract idea of a woman and put those two characters in a story.”

Hirokazu Kore-eda

“I wanted to create a big lie, meaning the opposite of the documentary-style, naturalist, contemporary films I've been doing.... So far I've tried to use naturalism to search for reality, but now I will try total fiction to search for that reality. ”

Shûji Terayama

“Lying down in the attic, where angry waves sound very close, I make poetry my power.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

“Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.”

Hal Hartley

“Despite the fact that I love story, character and dialogue, when I isolate the primary elements of film I find photography, movement and sound recording — in that order. Only then do I consider dramatic action. Film is essentially graphic for me.”

Zoltán Huszárik

Sharunas Bartas

“Sadness is a much more stable emotion in people than happiness.”