Wim Wenders

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

Orson Welles

“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Bertrand Tavernier

“I rarely produce movies that go from shot, to reverse shot, etc. I always try to avoid that. Either I do a long take, a complex camera movement, or I will break the scene with an unexpected closeup. I try to work that way, to get away from the rules and be free from formal conventions.”

Martin Scorsese

“Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.”

Sam Peckinpah

“The end of a picture is always an end of a life.”

Sergio Leone

“In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life in jeeps and upset all my dreams.”

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.”

Stanley Kubrick

“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”

Buster Keaton

“I don't act anyway. The stuff is all injected as we go along. My pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind.”

Shôhei Imamura

“I show true things using fictional techniques but maintaining truthfulness — that's where my approach differs from Ozu. He wanted to make film more aesthetic. I want to make it more real. He aspired toward a cinematic nirvana. When I was his assistant, I was very opposed to him, but now, whilst still not liking his films, I'm much more tolerant. As for me, I'd like to destroy this premise that cinema is fiction.”

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.”

Jean-Luc Godard

“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order. ”

Marco Ferreri

“The values that once existed no longer exist. The family, the bourgeoisie—I’m talking about values, morals, economic relationships. They no longer serve a purpose. My films are reactions translated into images.”

Federico Fellini

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

Bernardo Bertolucci

“I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.”

Ingmar Bergman

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

Gianni Amelio