When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980.
Interpretation
Film history often feels like it begins anew for contemporary directors, sidelining earlier influential works.
Jacques Rivette highlights how newer generations of filmmakers may disregard the rich tapestry of film history, focusing instead on the cinematic innovations and movements that emerged after 1980. This observation suggests that each generation tends to forge its own narrative, often viewing historical context through a lens that prioritizes more recent trends and styles over foundational influences.
In practice
This quote can be used in a film studies lecture to discuss the evolution of cinematic styles.
In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.
The poet is never inspired, because he is the master of that which appears to others as inspiration. He does not wait for inspiration to fall out of the heavens like roasted ortolans. He knows how to hunt...He is never inspired because he is unceasingly inspired, because the powers of poetry are always at his disposition, subjected to his will, submissive to his own activity.
Emerald as heavy as a golf course, ruby as dark as an afterbirth, diamond as white as sun on the sea.
Elvis Presley was the big bang. He was the most influential single figure in the history of American pop culture. He changed the way we looked, thought, dressed, held a guitar. He didn't invent rock & roll, but he defined it in a way that everyone who followed him owes him a debt.
My boobs are fake, my hair's fake but what is real is my voice and my heart.
I'm interested in designing for posterity.
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