Pedro Costa

“If you don't risk yourself and the people with whom you're working in almost every shot you make, it's not good, it's useless, it's just another film.”

Claire Denis

“Even if it's the dream of a voyage, I think it was very important for me that the film offer the two sides of the globe.”

Ann Hui

“The reason that I so often tell women’s stories in my movies is because I find it very easy to put myself in their shoes. For me, my identity as a woman does not mean feminism, but a way of thinking and a perspective of looking at the world. I cannot avoid that.”

Chris Marker

“Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.”

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!”

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.”

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Kira Muratova

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

Akira Kurosawa

“Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied...that's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.”

Forugh Farrokhzad

“Sound, sound, sound. Only sound remains.”

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.”

Aki Kaurismäki

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

Paul Morrissey

“Films are about personality: the better the personality, the better the film.”

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.”

Marcel Carné

“I don't know what they'll say when I die. I don't give a damn, but they'll probably cry.”

Fritz Lang

“I should say that I was a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or rarely, with my ears...to my constant regret.”

Bill Viola

“I like to keep the meanings in my work flowing and open.”

Víctor Erice

“I think that among the arts, cinema is the least known. Its history is generally ignored, and so is, above all, its real nature. As cinema is the most secret of all artistic languages, it is also the least understood.”

Maya Deren

“The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls.”

Stan Brakhage

“There are a lot of movies made for nobody.”