Paul Sharits

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!”

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.”

Robert Altman

“Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.”

Lars von Trier

“I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.”

Francis Ford Coppola

“I'm in a unique situation. I'm like now an elderly retired guy who made a lot of money, and now I can just, instead of playing golf, I can make art films.”

Satyajit Ray

“What is attempted in these films is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.”

Chantal Akerman

“When people ask me if I am a feminist film maker, I reply I am a woman and I also make films.”

Götz Spielmann

“There is, behind all the conflicts and painful things I show in my films, a fundamental spark of optimism - the conviction that life isn't a mistake, that it all somehow makes sense.”

Cristian Mungiu

“I believe in the joy of little things. I enjoy walking and observing things, noticing details about people and the space I'm in. We live in the movie of our own life and we seldom pay attention to it. ”

Billy Wilder

“If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.”

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

“I, as a filmmaker, treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters. I don't care if people are fond of them or despise them, as long as I created them with my best intentions and efforts.”

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.”

Kenneth Anger

[On unemployed filmmakers] "It seems much easier for these people to rent my films, look at them and make notes, than to give them a job."

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.”

Michael Haneke

“Every film is manipulative, raping the viewer. So the question is: Why do I rape the viewer?”

Quentin Tarantino

“I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience.”

Stanley Kubrick

“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

David Lynch

“I don't think about technique. The ideas dictate everything. You have to be true to that or you're dead.”