Takashi Miike

“I don't think about the audience, I don't think about what makes them happy, because there's no way for me to know. They think of the audience as a mass, but in fact every person in the audience is different. So entertainment for everyone doesn't exist.”

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

“Many people went to see MEMORIES more than once, and some returned as many as four or five times. That does not happen with many movies. It makes me think that the film hit its mark, which was, first and foremost, to communicate with the Cuban public, not with audiences from other countries. It achieved its goal in the sense that it disturbed and unsettled its audience; it forced people to think.”

Derek Jarman

“I wouldn’t wish the eighties on anyone, it was the time when all that was rotten bubbled to the surface. If you were not at the receiving end of this mayhem you could be unaware of it.”

Johnnie To

“Hollywood can't do this. But we can: we can change things whenever we want.”

Erich von Stroheim

“‎Lubitsch shows you the king on his throne, and then in the bedroom. I show you the king in his bedroom first so you know what kind of man he really is when you see him on the throne.”

Michelangelo Antonioni

“Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.”

Raúl Ruiz

“If you can make it complicated, why make it simple?”

Glauber Rocha

“Cinema Novo stood with the Brazilian utopia. If it is ugly, irregular, dirty, confusing and chaotic, it is also beautiful, disharmonic, luminous and revolutionary.”

Aki Kaurismäki

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

Mike Leigh

“The whole thing about making films in an organic film location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across”

Takeshi Kitano

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

Guy Maddin

“Whatever I do next, it'll be a horror film.”

Hou Hsiao-hsien

“The main thing is for the actors to forget the camera. They have to act as if they are working in a documentary.”

Jan Švankmajer

“I never call myself an animated filmmaker because I am interested not in animation techniques or creating a complete illusion, but in bringing life to everyday objects.”

Hany Abu-Assad

Kiyoshi Kurosawa

“I don’t start with a philosophical or thematical approach. Instead I often start with a genre that’s relatively easy to understand and then explore how I want to work in that genre.”

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.”

Hal Hartley

“Despite the fact that I love story, character and dialogue, when I isolate the primary elements of film I find photography, movement and sound recording — in that order. Only then do I consider dramatic action. Film is essentially graphic for me.”

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.”

Alain Resnais

“I'm always in search of special nonrealistic language that has musicality. ”