Mikhail Kalatozov

Alain Resnais

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

Alejandro Jodorowsky

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

Aleksandr Sokurov

“The surface of the screen and that of the canvas are one and the same.”

Jafar Panahi

“In a world where films are made with millions of dollars, we made a film about a little girl who wants to buy a fish for less than a dollar.”

Wim Wenders

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

Charlie Chaplin

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

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.”

Peter Greenaway

“I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realizing all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.”

Jean Vigo

[on his film, À propos de Nice] “In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial. The last gasps of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution.”

Mike Leigh

“The whole thing about making films in an organic film location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across”

Aki Kaurismäki

“Cinema is dead. It died 1962, I think it was in October!”

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.”

Raúl Ruiz

“If you can make it complicated, why make it simple?”

D.W. Griffith

“A film without a message is just a waste of time.”

Monte Hellman

“I've been in love with the movies as long as I can remember.”

Věra Chytilová

“I have no desire to cuddle my 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.”

Maya Deren

“The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls.”

Marcel Duchamp

“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”