It's rare in a documentary film that you have a repetitive act. So when you do, you can shoot it in different ways so that you have more choices when you're sitting down to edit that sequence six months later.

Of course there's conscious manipulation! Everything about a movie is manipulation ... If you like it, it's an interpretation. If you don't like it, it's a lie - but everything about these movies is a distortion."

It is always a problem to know what an image means.

I am bad at cultural generalizations but I would venture to say that by a wide margin there is less hypocrisy about sex in France than in America.

I do not think that my films or films by any other filmmaker represent "THE TRUTH." I do not feel the need to categorize my films or anyone else's.

It's rare in a documentary film that you have a repetitive act. So when you do, you can shoot it in different ways so that you have more choices when you're sitting down to edit that sequence six months later.

One's relationship to time is complicated, and sometimes a day will drag on forever and sometimes it'll be over in a flash. When you look back, "I'm old," after 40 or 60 years, I can't believe I'm as old as I am.