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.”

Amit Dutta

Louis Malle

“You must find the note, the correct key, for your story. If you find it, everything will work. If you do not, everything will stick out like elbows.”

Georges Méliès

“We sat with our mouths open, without speaking, filled with amazement.”

Salvador Dalí

“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

Éric Rohmer

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

Jean-Luc Godard

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

James Ivory

“All my life, I’ve liked to travel and make movies and I’ve been able to combine the two. But I can’t look at the other cultures through their eyes, I can only look at them through mine, which are the eyes of an American of my generation.”

Michael Haneke

“Every film is manipulative, raping the viewer. So the question is: Why do I rape the viewer?”

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.'”

Woody Allen

“Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”

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.”

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.”

Wes Anderson

“I know that feeling of looking back and thinking, that part I'd like to fix. So I obsessively try not to compromise.”

Guru Dutt

Steven Soderbergh

“To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.”

Mrinal Sen

“Not many, but happily quite a few of my films have satirical kicks, because it is a tremendous force…not just in literature and drama, but indeed in cinema as well. Think of Chaplin, he’s a master.”

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.”

Satyajit Ray

“What is attempted in these films is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.”

Federico Fellini

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