Filmmaker Quotes
-
The filmmakers I really love are the ones that let me look through their eyes for a while. They have an aesthetic and social point of view.
-
A filmmaker should never assume he's superior to his subject. I often find that even the simplest topic remains an enigma. The best film portraits not only evoke that enigma but ingest it in a process that renders what's invisible visible.
-
Definitely it would be foolish to try and make my Czech films here in America, as foolish as it is when some Czech filmmakers try to make movies of America in Czechoslovakia. It was always abysmal stuff.
-
I learned that you have to say that you're a filmmaker. You're not a screenwriter; you're not a director for hire. You've got to take charge. You're a filmmaker, and you're going to make a film.
-
It's always important to understand as filmmakers that we're not making a documentary and it has to look good. It has to entertain, because otherwise your audience will switch and watch another series. It has to look better and larger than life.
-
I started to write because of my dream to become a filmmaker. I got to know about a film school in Paris and it was my goal to get there. To do that I knew I had to learn French. In order to practice I started to write journals in French. The effort I made to master what I regarded a bad thing - a language owned by the rich Moroccans - brought me the ability to write.
-
I don't see myself as a crusading feminist filmmaker. Not at all. I have the luxury of coming from New Zealand and I've had moments in my life where being female is considered to be a tremendous advantage - emotionally, career-wise. Personally, I have nothing to prove. But I'm tremendously curious about human nature. Female life is so incredibly underexplored in cinema, so these stories feel very exotic.
-
At some point, you have an opportunity to not be a first-time filmmaker anymore. You can embrace the genre and show the world how you can tell stories on a bigger scale.
-
If you have to become a filmmaker, find a story that takes you away, and tell that story. Don't think about whether it's going to sell, or whether it's going to make money, or whether it's going to appeal to distributors. Do something from the heart that really matters, and then you'll do something good.
-
It was never a deliberate decision to make films about the 'woman experience'. Having said that, we are all many things - for example I'm Igbo and Nigerian, a director, a filmmaker etc., but I feel what affects me the most, especially the way people/society view or treat me, is the fact that I'm a woman, and I'm fascinated by that.
-
You have to be able to feel like you can play way outside of the box. If you're with a great filmmaker and someone you can trust, that's encouraged, and Seth was that kind of filmmaker and co-star.
-
There are some filmmakers like the Coen brothers that are very precise. They make shooting boards, they do it shot by shot, and they follow every single line in their own script. They make amazing movies, and I admire them so much, but I can't do that. I have no idea how the movie will exactly be. While shooting, I just try to create an accident that I don't control very well - grabbing things from different sources and ideas, and then having a sensation somewhere that it will make sense.
-
The whole thing of working in collaboration with filmmakers is the thing that I love the most, and possibly the thing I do the best.
-
I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.
-
I think the purpose of test screenings is different for the studio and for the filmmaker. For the studio, I think they want to know whether the film works or not.
-
There are a lot of filmmakers I love whose work doesn't inspire mine at all. For example: Quentin Tarantino. From his films you can see that he has a wicked sense of humour, and I love that!
-
I encourage first time filmmakers to be ambitious and take chances and risks, because you never know where your career is going to go.
-
Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can't be done.
-
In any art movement, the art has to move into a new phase - a filmmaker has a desire to make a film that is not like a previous film.
-
I would certainly say that films like Time Code and the Loss of Sexual Innocence were far more rewarding to me in terms of being able to move forward as a filmmaker.
-
I just like good stories. I like really interesting scripts, I love really great filmmakers. And I'm open to all genres and all stories. But, there's certain ones that attract me, and I don't really sort of look at what I think is going to be successful, I look at more so, you know, is this what I want to do regardless of what everybody else thinks?
-
To me, not every black filmmaker who is making black films is trying to make black cinema.
-
There are certain filmmakers I'd like to work with that I don't think would take a risk with me, because I could be distracting in their film. It'll take a couple films to prove to them that it's worth the risk.
-
If you want to be a filmmaker, ask yourself if you could imagine doing any other job. If you can, that’s a script!
