As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
Interpretation
Film-makers seek shared experiences among cultures, while politicians often highlight divisions for personal gain.
Abbas Kiarostami emphasizes the role of film-makers in fostering understanding and unity among diverse cultures. Unlike politicians who may thrive on highlighting differences and conflicts, artists aim to uncover and celebrate the commonalities that connect humanity, suggesting that cinema can bridge cultural divides and enhance empathy.
In practice
This quote can be used in a film festival speech to encourage cross-cultural collaboration.
Digital photography is, by definition, unfinished. You don't feel that after every 24 or 36 shots you have to change your film - you know you can go on for ever if you want. You can see the result immediately, and find out if your original idea is worth going on with or not, whether it can be corrected, whether it can be improved.
When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness.
From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.
Good cinema is what we can believe, and bad cinema is what we can't believe.
Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.
The calling of art is to extract us from our daily reality, to bring us to a hidden truth that's difficult to access - to a level that's not material but spiritual.
Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
Maybe I don't need a relationship after all, she thought. Maybe thinking about these conversations was just as good as having them. She could sit in her Honda in the dark and experience whatever kind of life she wanted. Sometimes you think, Hey, maybe there's something else out there. But there really isn't. This is what being alive feels like, you know? The place doesn't matter. You just live.
And she thought then how strange it was that disaster--the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face--could be at times, such a thing of beauty.
As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.
You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language.
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.