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.”

Morris Engel

“Our New Wave would never have come into being if it hadn’t been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production with his fine movie, Little Fugitive.” [Francois Truffaut]

Victor Sjöström

“The thing that brought me into filmmaking was a youthful desire for adventure and a curiosity to try this new medium.”

Joseph Cornell

“Shadow boxes become poetic theaters or settings wherein are metamorphosed the element of a childhood pastime.”

Yasujirô Ozu

“I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others… For me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength.”

Philippe Garrel

“Cinema is Freud plus Lumière.”

Peter Hutton

“Practice, practice, practice and the camera becomes your eye and not so much this complicated technological thing to mediate to get an image.”

Don Hertzfeldt

“Some people can do great things with CG, but that world just doesn’t interest me or inspire me. I’ve never felt really creative or intuitive using software. I like paper and pens and paint. I need to angle real lights on my artwork and work with my hands and build props. Computers just take all that fun out of it.”

Jay Rosenblatt

Liu Jiayin

Aki Kaurismäki

“Cinema is dead. It died 1962, I think it was in October!”

Buster Keaton

“I don't act anyway. The stuff is all injected as we go along. My pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind.”

José Luis Guerín

“I don’t see cinema in terms of Spanish, French, European or American. I think we should see cinema as a separate continent; the only continent I understand is the continent of cinema.”

Joris Ivens

Yuriy Norshteyn

“Never allow oneself to remain the same – like a river, always renew yourself. I’m always wondering about the paths that would open animation to become a real dramatic art.”

Wladyslaw Starewicz

Charlie Chaplin

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”

Georges Méliès

“We sat with our mouths open, without speaking, filled with amazement.”

Abbas Kiarostami

“But in all, I don't like to engage in telling stories. I don't like to arouse the viewer emotionally or give him advice. I don't like to belittle him or burden him with a sense of guilt. These are the things I don't like in the movies.”

Jean-Luc Godard

“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order. ”