Nathaniel Dorsky

Charlie Chaplin

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

Jeanne Liotta

Ben Russell

Abel Ferrara

“I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself...you're taught not to think too deeply about things.”

Olivier Assayas

“With Irma Vep, all of a sudden I decided that it was okay to mix genre, to mix cultures, and that movies sometimes could be experiments, that within the format of modern cinema, within the format of narrative, you could experiment by mixing elements.”

Chantal Akerman

“When people ask me if I am a feminist film maker, I reply I am a woman and I also make films.”

Philippe Grandrieux

“I never watched any rushes. Because I frame the shots and operate the camera, the images are directly inscribed on my retina.”

Philippe Garrel

“Cinema is Freud plus Lumière.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

Abbas Kiarostami

“But in all, I don't like to engage in telling stories. I don't like to arouse the viewer emotionally or give him advice. I don't like to belittle him or burden him with a sense of guilt. These are the things I don't like in the movies.”

Robert Bresson

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

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.”

Nicolas Roeg

“You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.”

Stan Brakhage

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

Luis Buñuel

“If someone were to tell me I had twenty years left, and ask me how I'd like to spend them, I'd reply 'Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.'”

Roberto Rossellini

“I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.”

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.”