And also, that's the kind of wonderful thing about film culture, is the interaction between films and who works on what, where they were before, and now what they're doing now, and that inevitably informs how people view a film.

One of my favorite vampire movies is 'Nosferatu,' which has a palpable sense of dread that's a pre-war dread.

I like film because it brings you very close to the absurd reality that you might spend a day shooting and not get a single image that you like or works, and you won't really know for a few days at least as you wait. It connects you and grounds you to a material reality and a patience that seems lost with digital. I also think the grain texture remains forever different, and in my opinion, what I find to be more beautiful.

I love academics, theory and all that. I love and admire that and try to do as much reading as I can.

I'm actually embarrassed to tell people I'm Russian these days, because it's become such an awful place.

There's only a handful of people I trust completely, and I know who they are. Other than that, I pretty much don't trust people.

I think the beauty of images is that they are by definition fetishes and every image (banal or not) as a fetish holds within it the promise of a sensuousness that (without generalizing) at least I, as a human being, am drawn to.