The role of the artist is to not look away.
Interpretation
Artists have a responsibility to confront reality and showcase the truth without avoidance.
This quote by Akira Kurosawa highlights the duty of artists to engage with the world around them, especially its harsh realities. Instead of ignoring difficult truths or turning a blind eye to the suffering, artists are called to observe and reflect these experiences through their work, provoking thought and inspiring change in society.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of contemporary artists in social issues.
Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one... ...I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I've liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favourite author, and he is the one - I still think - who writes most honestly about human existence.
I can't afford to hate anyone. I don't have that kind of time.
For me, filmmaking combines everything. That's the reason I've made cinema my life's work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.
A truly good movie is enjoyable too. Thereβs nothing complicated about it.
but ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.
The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something. What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.
Painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but blue and red ones.
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
I'm happy to stick with my persona. There are themes of love lost and love regained, but the main themes of all poems are basically love and death, and that seems to be the message of poetry.
Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art.
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