Andrei Tarkovsky

“Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.”

Ermanno Olmi

“...our wars of machines and technology make 'progress' ever more impersonal and deadly - a 'progress' that has not guaranteed man's human, moral, and civil growth.”

Hong Sang-soo

“When I finish a film, I feel like I have overcome a certain hurdle. It's really good for me as a human being, and I hope that for some people, my films will do the same thing.”

Robert Altman

“Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.”

Takeshi Kitano

“Sword fighting in film is not about how good the fighter is, but how good the actor receiving the blows is.”

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Béla Tarr

“I think censorship is always there. Then it was the censorship of the state and now it's the censorship of the market.”

Jean Eustache

“The films I made are as autobiographical as fiction can be.”

Aki Kaurismäki

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

Jia Zhangke

“I believe that it doesn't really matter how large an audience my film gets; as long as my films can be shown in China, and there can be any kind of real market for them here, that would be hugely significant for me personally.”

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.”

Charlie Chaplin

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

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.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini

“The mark which has dominated all my work is this longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which doesn't lessen but augments this love of life.”

Billy Wilder

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

Robert Bresson

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

Federico Fellini

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

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.”

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.”

Yasujirô Ozu

“I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others… For me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength.”