When it's time to let go, I don't look back, and I start another project as soon as possible. One thing I remind myself is that I don't want to Photoshop my past.
Wong Kar-WaiRead
What makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable.
Interpretation
International cinema showcases the unique sensibilities of different cultures, which can resonate universally despite language barriers.
Wong Kar-Wai emphasizes the richness and diversity of international cinema, highlighting how each region's cultural sensibility contributes distinct flavors to its films. Despite the variations in language and storytelling methods, successful films manage to convey universal themes and emotions, allowing audiences from different backgrounds to connect and understand them on a deeper level.
In practice
Using this quote in a film festival discussion about diverse films.
When it's time to let go, I don't look back, and I start another project as soon as possible. One thing I remind myself is that I don't want to Photoshop my past.
To make films, it always begins with two words: what and how. First of all, you have to find a story, or what are you going to tell? And you have to find a way to tell it visually.
This is what the difference is between Hong Kong and Chinese cinema - Chinese cinema was made for their own communities. It was for propaganda. But Hong Kong made films to entertain, and they know how to communicate with international audiences.
Sometimes, when you're on the streets, certain music inspires you, and then you have a vision. But, at the end of the day, it's a synthesis of visions, so you have to think, as a director, of a scene, or how to deliver a line, or how do this visually.
Chinese martial artists consider themselves to be gardeners, and it's an honor for them to take care of this garden, to better it and hand it over to the generations that follow. I think that's a very important message in a time when personal achievement seems to be the only criteria of success.
My films are never about what Hong Kong is like, or anything approaching a realistic portrait, but what I think about Hong Kong and what I want it to be.
And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well.
There must be so many people who have various artistic talents that, for whatever reason, just have no way of expressing them. Either they have no support from their family or they live in a part of the world, maybe they've never heard a piano or seen a piano.
My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.
Why should the lamp or the house be an art object but not our life?
A story is not like a road to follow... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside it altered by being viewed from these windows.
I like to be the right thing in the wrong space and the wrong thing in the right space. But usually being the right thing in the wrong space and the wrong thing in the right space is worth it, because something funny always happens.
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