Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life

I make home movies-therefore I live. I live - therefore I make home movies.

Yes, I got my first Bolex camera a few weeks after being dropped in New York by the United Nations Refugee Organization. That was on October 29th, 1949. With my brother Adolfas, we wanted to make a film about displaced persons, how one feels being uprooted from one's home.

I began writing poetry when I was about 10. Bad poetry, but you start with bad poetry.

The deeper I went into culture, the more confused I got. So I needed something more real. I said, "Okay, from now on, my country will be cinema."

An adventurer can always return home; an exile cannot. So I decided that my home would be culture.

As a film-maker and a poet, I feel it's my duty to be an eye and an antenna to what's happening around me. I always felt a solidarity with those who are desperate and confused and misused and are seeking a way out of it.