Marcel L'Herbier

“There was one thing I detested more than anything, and that was money; first of all, because I was bankrupt; then, because I had been seeing so many examples all around me where money had played a fatal role.”

Germaine Dulac

Aleksandr Medvedkin

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.”

Masaki Kobayashi

“In any era, I am critical of authoritarian power.”

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.”

Fritz Lang

“I should say that I was a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or rarely, with my ears...to my constant regret.”

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.”

Federico Fellini

“What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one...”

Walter Ruttmann

Gustav Machatý

Lev Kuleshov

“Editing a film is like constructing a building.”

Leni Riefenstahl

“I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I have looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life. ”

Erich von Stroheim

“‎Lubitsch shows you the king on his throne, and then in the bedroom. I show you the king in his bedroom first so you know what kind of man he really is when you see him on the throne.”

Bertrand Blier

“The relations between men and women are constantly evolving and it’s interesting to show people leading the lifestyle of tomorrow.”

Miklós Jancsó

“An artist should be able to create his own autonomous world, but making a film depends on so many extraneous factors that I don’t really think it’s an authentic form of art.”

Peter Greenaway

“I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realizing all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.”

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.”

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.”

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

“It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful...it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.”