A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are good or bad, it seems to me that I have an abundance of stories to tell. And the things I see, the things that happen to me, continually renew the supply.

Take Einstein; wasn't he looking for something stable and changeless in this enormous, constantly changing melting pot that is the universe? He sought fixed rules. Today, instead, it would be helpful to find all those rules that show how and why the universe is not fixed - how this dynamism develops and acts. Then maybe we will be able to explain many things, perhaps even art, because the old instruments of judgment, the old aesthetics, are no longer of any use to us - so much so that we no longer know what's beautiful and what isn't.

Another reason for switching to color is world television. In a few years, it will all be in color, and you can't compete against that with black-and-white films.

Today we no longer know what to call art, what its function is and even less what function it will have in the future. We know only that it is something dynamic - unlike many ideas that have governed us.

The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.

In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about.