Quotes on Film

Because of 'World War Z' and 'The Walking Dead,' I can't pitch a modest little zombie film which is meant to be sociopolitical.

I didn't go to film school. I got my education on the set as a niche publicist in the film industry.

But I'd be lying if I didn't say that every time you go to make a film, you're desperate to either do it better than you did it last time or to not repeat yourself.

I want young Indian composers to be able to do more than just film music. I want to give them the skills that will enable them to create their own palette of sounds instead of having to write formulaic music. It doesn't matter if they become sound engineers, producers, composers or performers - I want them to be as imaginative as they like.

When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.

No matter how many times you do it, you don't get used to the sadness - for me at least - of coming to the end of a film.

Theatre is liberating because it only works if it's truthful, That's what it requires. That's not true of film: the camera does lie.

I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it.

I like to act in films, I like to shoot 'em, I like to direct 'em, I like to be around 'em. I like the feel of it and it's something I respect. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a crappy film or a good film. Anyone who can make a film, I already love. But I feel sorry if they don't put any thought in it because then they missed the boat.

If you give an answer to your viewer, your film will simply finish in the movie theatre. But when you pose questions, your film actually begins after people watch it. In fact, your film will continue inside the viewer.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.

My father was a certain kind of man - I saw how he treated my mother and his family and how he treated strangers. And I vowed I would never make a film that would not reflect properly on my father's name.

When people ask me if I am a feminist film maker, I reply I am a woman and I also make films.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

Art is inherently political. Even trying to make a film that has nothing to do with politics is, in and of itself, a political act.

You could make the most beautiful film, and that weekend it's raining too hard on the East Coast, and no one goes out. Artists should have a chance to do it again. That's the challenge: Women artists don't get a second chance. People-of-color artists don't get a second chance. You're put in director's jail, and that's a wrap.

You can always make a film somehow. You can beg, borrow, steal the equipment, use credit cards, use your friends' goodwill, wheedle your way into this or that situation. The real problem is, how do you get people to see it once it is made?

I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I'm not afraid of a big studio film; I trust my instincts. But for me, it's not really about box office. It's about looking back on your work and not having to apologize for it.