Ulrich Köhler

Christian Petzold

“I always like it when people play something, when they believe that they have to play the role of father or daughter, but then they lose control over the staging. Those are the best moments.”

Josef von Sternberg

“I care nothing about the story, only how it is photographed and presented.”

Angela Schanelec

“For me it is something special, not to be alone. I’m interested in what people do in order not to be alone, what burdens they carry.”

Nobuhiro Yamashita

Catherine Breillat

“When I shoot a film, I always project myself into one of the characters, at once into either a man or a woman...”

Ken Russell

“Life is too short to make destructive films about people one doesn’t like. My films are meant to be constructive and illuminating.”

Gregg Araki

“I couldn’t make movies like this if I started to worry about what Jerry Falwell is going to have to say about it.”

Jacques Rivette

“What's important for me in a film is that it be alive, that it be imbued with presence, which is basically the same thing. And that this presence, inscribed within the film, possesses a form of magic. There's something profoundly mysterious in this.”

David Lynch

“I don't think about technique. The ideas dictate everything. You have to be true to that or you're dead.”

Paul Verhoeven

“People love seeing violence and horrible things. The human being is bad and he can't stand more than five minutes of happiness. Put him in a dark theater and ask him to look at two hours of happiness and he'd walk out or fall asleep.”

Douglas Sirk

“If I can say one thing for my pictures, it is a certain craftsmanship. A thought which has gone into every angle. There is nothing there without an optical reason.”

Nicolas Roeg

“You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.”