Kevin Macdonald Quotes
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I've fallen out very badly with some of the subjects I've interviewed, because they see their lives a certain way; to step into a cinema and see your life depicted in another way can come as a terrible shock.
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If you want to do 'Sword & Sandals' movies, people think that means it equals 'epic.'
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Although 'The Anderson Platoon' was what we would now call an 'embedded film' - with all the ambiguities that term implies - somehow Schoendoerffer got away with showing things as they really were from a grunt's perspective.
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For me, what works well about 'Life in a Day' is that it's emotionally affecting without being manipulative. It really does make you think about the connectivity of the world, the similarities and differences. It shows the experiences we all go through: birth, childhood, falling in love, having kids, getting ill, dying.
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People who die in an untimely way who are artists, somehow that validates their art, we feel. Why culturally we feel that, I don't know.
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I went to see 'Francis Ha,' which I could certainly relate to. She ends up wandering the streets of Paris all alone - something I've ended up doing a number of times in capital cities around Europe.
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Every film that is made about the past is always a reflection of the present.
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I think the parallels of a giant power with overwhelming military superiority and might, with America and Rome, it seems obvious to me.
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In my early career as a documentarian, I suppose I was trying to make films which - where it was all about making a big cinematic statement, and I think with 'Marley,' I slightly changed my direction and adopted a more mellow approach.
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The thing with newspapers is that they are a filter. We're relying on the editors of that paper to be a filter and to tell you that this is worth reading about, this is quality, and this is quite reliable.
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The submarine genre is a category with all its own rules. But shooting on water is famously tough.
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Like a lot of expatriate Scots, when you want to be called Scottish, it's useful. I see myself as being without nationality, as a European: my region is Scotland; my nationality is European - isn't that a very Alex Salmond thing to say?
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The only obligation you have as a film-maker is to tell your version of the truth and to use your film to illuminate reality. Whatever that means.
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There were many times during the filming of 'Touching the Void' when I wondered why I had ever thought I wanted to make this film.
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What got me into making movies was that I wanted to be a journalist.
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Despite the limitations of the bulky 16mm camera and 10-minute film magazines, 'The Anderson Platoon' feels as spontaneous and fresh as any films that have come out of the Afghan or Iraq wars.
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People think that the Italians invented neorealism, but actually, Humphrey Jennings did. He was revolutionary in using non-professional actors in his films, and he got extraordinary performances out of them.
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It's so nice to be totally artistically free.
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We should not confuse having a Flip camera with making a documentary.
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The things that are hardest to shoot are the things where you want people just to feel very natural, and you want to do love scenes, and you want to do just kids hanging out and trying to get them to relax.
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I went through a period of not watching fiction.
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I did not want to depict Al Gashey as evil. I wanted him to come across as someone who did what he did for reasons that were compelling. Whether or not we agree with him is a different matter.
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The great thing about making a film on a submarine is that it's kind of like making a play. You've got this limited environment.
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When you're trying to make a film, you're trying to find a way to love your subject, and you want your audience to love your subject.