Hollis Frampton

“This whole business of words – the whole sense of tense and complicated problems about knowledge, about making things in relation to all the things that were already made with words – seems to have fallen into film.”

Standish Lawder

Owen Land

“I think I applied a painterly way of thinking to film at the time. Let me explain what I mean. In painting you start with a blank canvas, you start with nothing and you create your image, particle by particle; whereas in film, usually, you just open your lens and you have a vast quantity of objects which become parts of your image. They are opposite processes. Being a painter, I wanted to create an image, to really make a film.”

Toshio Matsumoto

“What you think is reality is false, and what you think is fiction is real.”

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

“German intellectuals treat me as if I were the enemy. They do not want to hear about what I believe lies at the heart of German identity.”

Kurt Kren

Werner Herzog

“It is my duty to direct because the films might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.”

Marco Ferreri

“The values that once existed no longer exist. The family, the bourgeoisie—I’m talking about values, morals, economic relationships. They no longer serve a purpose. My films are reactions translated into images.”

Alejandro González Iñárritu

“(On why did he not record an audio commentary for 21 Grams) I don't like them. I feel that if you have to explain something it loses strength. It's like a magician trying to explain his magic, in a way.”

Pen-ek Ratanaruang

“In Last Life In The Universe we wanted the audience not to notice when the music comes in or when it goes out. It's there to create atmosphere. I'm drawn to any style of music as long as it's sad. I'm very fond of depressing music. I think it's beautiful.”

André Téchiné

“My inspiration is no longer drawn from the Cinema.”

Éric Rohmer

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

Dušan Makavejev

“You just see so many movies that at some point it becomes part of your life...Movies always follow us as reference material or as some kind of dreamlike material for dealing with things we don't understand in our lives. Movies give us solutions, or provide a whispering commentary on what is happening around us.”

Jacques Audiard

“I’m a long-term student but also a committed autodidact. Therefore I’m as much interested in the ways people learn things for themselves as in the way they do through dialogue and communication. I like to film the way someone moves who is acquiring a new skill or learning something about the world.”

Kenji Mizoguchi

“You must put the odor of the human body into images...describe for me the implacable, the egoistic, the sensual, the cruel...there are nothing but disgusting people in this world.”

John Cassavetes

“The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.”

Jules Dassin

“If there is anything I want to be remembered for, it is for fulfilling Melina's dream [the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece].”

Ken Jacobs

“In real life, there’s no stories. Everything is unending, confusing. Nothing starts and concludes. There’s no beginning, middle and end in the actual experience of our lives, and we want this kind of neat little package, and we make them for ourselves in our stories.”

Jonas Mekas

“In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don’t care about my cinema. In Europe they don’t know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!”

Bruce Baillie

“Being an artist in a cultural Stone Age, I have no income.”