Shukhrat Abbasov

Peter Tscherkassky

“I refer to my work as being cinematographic poetry and that’s why I love that layering, those superimpositions, right from the beginning of my filmic work.”

Larisa Shepitko

“Any interference by society in an adult’s personal life will be extremely dangerous until society itself becomes ideal. But in the ideal society interference in personal life will obviously be unnecessary.”

Sergei Dvortsevoy

“Documentary for me is like some kind of absurdity. The worse for people it is, the better for the director. At the same time, the most interesting films you see are on the borderlines. Documentary is only on the borderlines for me.”

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.”

Boris Barnet

Lisandro Alonso

“If tomorrow I have to quit filmmaking, I will. I’m not going to sell my house for a project, that’s for sure. If I have to go back and work on my family’s farm, fine. I don’t have any problem with it. But I would cry a lot.”

Robert J. Flaherty

“Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.”

Ilya Khrzhanovskiy

“Although I hardly believe in the educational power of art, I firmly believe that art (and cinema in particular) has to address the most vital, the most painful, the most relevant topics.”

Kira Muratova

“What is most important to me is to please myself.”

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.”

Shirin Neshat

“My only advice is to spend less time on thinking about success and put all the energy in making art itself. Otherwise your relationship to your art changes. It becomes less genuine and honest. Art should not be born from a pressure of becoming successful but something deeper. This is always a danger and the cause for mediocrity in art.”

Tsai Ming-liang

“The body always plays an important role in my films. You could say the body is the most beautiful thing we have or you could say it’s the ugliest thing we have. We can sell bodies, we can adore or worship bodies.”

Hayao Miyazaki

“Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.”

Sergei Parajanov

“I believe you have to be born a director. It’s like a child’s adventure: you take the initiative among other children and become a director, creating a mystery. You mould things into shape and create.”

Artavazd Peleshian

“For me, distance montage opens up the mysteries of the movement of the universe. I can feel how everything is made and put together; I can sense its rhythmic movement.”

Carl Theodor Dreyer

“Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.”

Ingmar Bergman

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

Carlos Reygadas

“Theatre is interesting as a catharsis for actors because it's the only way you can be idiotic and get away with it. I really, really don't like theatre and I feel so far from it.”

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

“In my films the landscapes connect the characters to a sense of something cosmic. I try to recapture those moments in life where you suddenly feel that connection to a wider universe.”