Kelly Reichardt

“I like working in a really private way. I mean, we got as far as a cut of [Old Joy] without speaking to any kind of lawyer or anything. We got into Sundance before we thought we should form a company. Aside from a lot of sound work and stuff still to go, it was all very private, and that’s a dream for me.”

Nicolás Pereda

“My concern in constructing such a film (Summer of Goliath) is to understand and ultimately to evoke the experience of the everyday within this environment, and to convey through film –albeit a visual medium- a physical sense of feelings, place, and culture.”

Ben Safdie

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.”

Hal Ashby

“Hitchhiked to Los Angeles when I was 17. Had about 50 or 60 jobs up to the time I was working as a Multilith operator at good old Republic Studios.”

Robert Altman

“Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.”

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.”

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.”

Béla Tarr

“I think censorship is always there. Then it was the censorship of the state and now it's the censorship of the market.”

Shyam Benegal

“I don’t know why our industry and media gives so much importance to the Oscars. You see it’s very important for Hollywood and foreign films because once one of their films receives an Oscar it goes on to become a big commercial success. Our films won’t get that sort of benefit.”

Éric Rohmer

“I do not say, I show. I show people who move and speak.”

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.”

Edward Yang

“I was the leader of the Taiwanese new wave. All these guys would just gather in my house, talking and laughing and drinking: Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wu Nien-jen — just about all of them. You could just push open the door. Everyone just wanted to do similar things. We weren’t allowed to, and no one was willing to give us any money to, but we shared all these idealistic thoughts.”

Jia Zhangke

“I believe that it doesn't really matter how large an audience my film gets; as long as my films can be shown in China, and there can be any kind of real market for them here, that would be hugely significant for me personally.”

Josef von Sternberg

“I care nothing about the story, only how it is photographed and presented.”

Hong Sang-soo

“When I finish a film, I feel like I have overcome a certain hurdle. It's really good for me as a human being, and I hope that for some people, my films will do the same thing.”

Lisandro Alonso

“If tomorrow I have to quit filmmaking, I will. I’m not going to sell my house for a project, that’s for sure. If I have to go back and work on my family’s farm, fine. I don’t have any problem with it. But I would cry a lot.”

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.”

Nagisa Ôshima

“My hatred for Japanese cinema includes absolutely all of it.”