Barbara Hammer

“It’s pretty boring to think that you’re going to be cast as lesbian, or heterosexual, or bisexual for all your life. Why not just be known as a filmmaker? Why does it have to be ‘woman filmmaker.’”

Luciano Tovoli

Tomu Uchida

François Truffaut

“I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.”

Nelson Pereira dos Santos

“As I have said race is a theme that because of my upbringing is incorporated into my existence. The other great issue, poverty, which is very linked to race, is a permanent theme in all my films; it's not possible to think about national identity without including the very serious problem of absolute poverty in some parts of Brazil.”

Don Siegel

“Most of my pictures, I’m sorry to say, are about nothing. Because I’m a whore. I work for money. It’s the American way.”

Daniel Schmid

Robert Kramer

“Walk the Walk is built on the idea that the objects are much more imposing and permanent than our bodies; that our bodies are extremely fragile and transient against this monstrous cage that we’ve constructed for ourselves, made of all the machines and technology and objects that clutter the planet.”

Leo McCarey

“I love when people laugh. I love when they cry, I like a story to say something, and I hope the audience feels happier leaving the theater than when it came in.”

Éric Rohmer

“I do not say, I show. I show people who move and speak.”

Pascal Bonitzer

Alfred Hitchcock

“For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.”

Shôhei Imamura

“I show true things using fictional techniques but maintaining truthfulness — that's where my approach differs from Ozu. He wanted to make film more aesthetic. I want to make it more real. He aspired toward a cinematic nirvana. When I was his assistant, I was very opposed to him, but now, whilst still not liking his films, I'm much more tolerant. As for me, I'd like to destroy this premise that cinema is fiction.”

Sacha Guitry

“Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness.”

Chris Marker

“Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.”

Dudley Nichols

F.W. Murnau

“Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving picture...we are scientists engaged in the creation of memory... but our memory will neither blur nor fade.”

Raoul Walsh

“There is probably no moment in picturemaking that is more acutely essential to a director’s success than the instant of his choice of story material. For the director, that is the moment of conception.”

Ida Lupino

“I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power...I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right.”

Jean-Pierre Melville

“I believe that you must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage.”