I have said no to many, many Day of the Dead projects in the past, about 10 or 15, because every time I heard a take it was from someone who didn't know the celebration.
Interpretation
Respecting cultural traditions is crucial when representing them in art.
Guillermo Del Toro emphasizes the importance of authentic representation in artistic projects, specifically highlighting that he has declined numerous opportunities related to the Day of the Dead because the proposed interpretations lacked a genuine understanding of the celebration's cultural significance. This statement underscores his dedication to preserving the integrity of cultural traditions in art, ensuring that any portrayal is both accurate and respectful.
In practice
During a panel discussion about cultural representation in film.
I don't try to sanction other people's joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy - you know, like fear, desire or laughter - create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films... The boundaries cannot be defined. It's to each his own.
As a director, I design every movie to be true to itself, and damn it if they like it, and damn it if they don't.
If you ask me, I alternate between truly bizarre, what you would call 'Hollywood' movies and truly bizarre, what you would call 'arthouse' movies.
But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.
The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.
When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.
The painter I really thought I could learn from was Cezanne - some sort of resemblance to oranges and greens and browns of the dry season in St. Lucia.
Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time.
When you have a large space to conquer, the curve is the natural solution.
The meaning of a theater event is that none of us could see something so clearly as with the new energy that is brought with the meeting of a theme, actors living it, and an audience gradually entering it to live it with them. At that moment, a certain light appears, revealing what we would never have thought of on our own.
I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.
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