Jacques Rivette

“What's important for me in a film is that it be alive, that it be imbued with presence, which is basically the same thing. And that this presence, inscribed within the film, possesses a form of magic. There's something profoundly mysterious in this.”

Louis Malle

“You must find the note, the correct key, for your story. If you find it, everything will work. If you do not, everything will stick out like elbows.”

Souleymane Cissé

“Every nation has the right to be represented by the cinema.”

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.”

Djibril Diop Mambéty

“The word griot... is the word for what I do and the role that the filmmaker has in society...the griot is a messenger of one's time, a visionary and the creator of the future.”

Parviz Kimiavi

Agnès Varda

“I'm not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman - not unless she is looking for new images.”

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.”

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.”

Wong Kar-wai

“Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things that we get, but not the things we wish we had.”

Georges Franju

“Surrealism had taught me that reason comes after creation, and creation is a true deflagration when confronted, not with a solution, but an obstacle.”

Aki Kaurismäki

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

Howard Hawks

“I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move! ”

Kamran Shirdel

Jean-Pierre Melville

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

Lotte Reiniger

“I love working for children, because they are a very critical and very thankful public.”

Asghar Farhadi

Rafi Pitts

“I’m more interested in the human condition than in governments and the politics they do.”

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.”

Nina Paley

“The humour isn’t ‘added,’ it’s an integral part of my take on things. I was just trying to be honest. Years of cartooning have taught me that the truth is funny enough. I try to avoid "gagging”; any humor in my work comes from my honestly finding life funny. In fact the more painful it is, the more funny it is. ”