Andrzej Wajda

“When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it.”

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.”

Jesús Franco

“I feel that cinema should be like a box of surprises, like a magic box. And in that world, anything is allowed to enter, as long as it's always treated with a spirit of 'Pop!'.”

Alain Resnais

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

Ernst Lubitsch

“There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one.”

Pedro Almodóvar

“I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.”

Sadao Yamanaka

Barbara Loden

Steve McQueen

“My influences come from real life. I’m not interested in cinema for cinema’s sake. I’m interested in life—what one does and how one interacts.”

Walter R. Booth

Arnold Fanck

Pipilotti Rist

“Knowledge and art can enlighten people and make them think democratically and makes them less vulnerable to power misuse. I want to contribute a centimetre to that tendency.”

Shane Carruth

“It was a huge risk. I quit my job that paid fine. I could have had a family and probably survived as a software engineer pretty well. But I quit all that to do this.”

Charles Burnett

“The impetus was the whole Civil Rights Movement and we felt we had a responsibility to reflect reality, tell the truth about the black community. To help, however we can, to march the social movement forward.”

Mikio Naruse

“From the youngest age, I have thought that the world we live in betrays us; this thought still remains with me.”

Joris Ivens

Wim Wenders

“Any movie that has that spirit and says things can be changed is worth making. ”

Jacques Tourneur

“I look for very strong visual unity by using a type of framing and camera movement that is very simple. Everything must come from inside. It mustn’t be superficial. I hate weird camera angles and distorting lenses.”

Louis Feuillade

“French production is not definitively outclassed by the Americans and that we are not henceforward going to be reduced always to be following in others’ footsteps.”

Juraj Jakubisko

“The visual aspect of my films is very important and in three feature films I did the photography myself, and I'm not even talking about the documentary films that I made. I must admit I never wanted to be a director.”