To make films, you have to have something to say. To have something to say, you have to be a student of life. And to be a student of life, you have to be feeding yourself with what life, politics, society, and your family fuels you with.
Interpretation
Creating films requires deep life understanding and learning from various aspects of existence.
This quote by Mira Nair emphasizes the interconnectedness between filmmaking and life experiences. To create meaningful films, one must not only have a message but also engage deeply with the world around them, drawing from diverse influences such as personal experiences, societal issues, and family dynamics. This continuous learning and openness to life’s lessons are what fuel authentic creative expression.
In practice
During a film class, a professor could use this quote to inspire students to find meaning in their life experiences.
It gave me a lot of pleasure and pride that 90 percent of the crew for 'Monsoon Wedding,' and most of my film, are women. We get the work done, you know, much lesser play of ego... And I really believe in harmony, I believe in working in a spirit of egolessness and that the film is bigger than all of us.
Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.
If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will.
I think there's a level of ignorance, when, in the callowness of youth, you imagine that you are inventing the world for the first time. You imagine that your parents don't know what it feels like to fall in love.
Every film is a political act; it's how you see the world.
A graphic designer, you know, who understands ideas and understands that ideas are what makes the world go round, could change the world with a magazine. If one talent could do it right now, and everybody would stop saying it's the death of magazines.
To express your emotions, you have to be very loose and receptive. The unconscious will come to you if you have that gift that artists have. I only know if I'm inspired by the results.
Ah, music, sacred tongue of God! I hear thee calling and I come.
An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.
In the Led Zeppelin shows of the Sixties and Seventies, it was the same numbers every night, but they were constantly in a state of flux. If I played something good, really substantial, I'd stick it in again.
In the marginalia ... we talk only to ourselves; we therefore talk freshly - boldly - originally - with abandonment - without conceit.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.