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.”

Keisuke Kinoshita

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.”

Robert Bresson

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”

Masahiro Shinoda

“It is much more fun to look at evil than to look at good!”

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.”

Éric Rohmer

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

Masaki Kobayashi

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

Koreyoshi Kurahara

Jean Cocteau

“Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. ”

Jean Vigo

[on his film, Nizza] “In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial. The last gasps of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution.”

Wes Craven

“The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself.”

David Cronenberg

“Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing their whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.”

Charlie Chaplin

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

Samuel Fuller

“Movement should be a counter, whether in action scenes or dialogue or whatever. It counters where your eye is going. This style thing, for me it's all fitted to the action, to the script, to the characters.”

Adam Elliot

“All my films are essentially about difference and the way we perceive ourselves and others.”

Jean-Pierre Melville

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

Seijun Suzuki

“I was never rebellious, I was just mischievous!”

Jacques Tati

“Like a dancer learns to dance ... a visual comic learns to use his legs.”

Vittorio De Sica

“I've lost all my money on these films. They are not commercial. But I'm glad to lose it this way. To have for a souvenir of my life pictures like Umberto D. and The Bicycle Thief.”