Manoel de Oliveira

[Answering the questions: what keeps you going?] "There is no secret – it is work! It is doing something, it is a natural impulsion. My life is so complicated – I need space around me, I have so much going on and my house is small, and I need breathing space. I cannot seem to sort it out. I cannot either stretch time, or enlarge the house. That would take up precious time which I cannot afford."

Alain Cavalier

Jean-Luc Godard

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

Michael Snow

“If there are ‘narrative cinema’ elements in my films I don’t want them to take you ‘elsewhere’ but to keep you here watching the film, a construct, an artificiality.”

Valeska Grisebach

Eugène Green

Wang Bing

“Every film is a hard and painful process, and very tiring and difficult. And even when it’s finished, I never really feel, “This is great, I’m happy and satisfied.” With "West of the Tracks", I never felt great satisfaction when I was done. The hard truth is that for me it’s very hard to actually get a feeling of relief and satisfaction from completing a film.”

Frederick Wiseman

“There are lots of different ways to make film. I don’t believe there has to be any orthodox way to making movies, or any rules. It’s what works for the filmmaker, and, theoretically, the audience.”

Chantal Akerman

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

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.”

Jean-Marie Straub

“It is the dividing lines that make one’s public. And the dividing lines end up in one way or another being lines which correspond to the lines of class, and class struggle.”

Nobuhiro Suwa

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.”

Angela Schanelec

“For me it is something special, not to be alone. I’m interested in what people do in order not to be alone, what burdens they carry.”

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.”

Harun Farocki

“Ten years on it’s always the article on the back of the newspaper cutting that’s of interest, but half a column is missing.”

Rithy Panh

“It is symbolic for us – because the Khmer Rouge did not only kill people but they also destroyed identity and memory.”