A particular type of film emerged from World War Two, with the Italian neorealist school. It was perfectly right for its time, which was as exceptional as the reality around us. Our major interest focused on that and on how we could relate to it. Later, when the situation normalized and post-war life returned to what it had been in peacetime, it became important to see the intimate, interior consequences of all that had happened.

You can't go to an LSD or pot party unless you take it yourself. If I want to go, I must take drugs myself.

I'm not rich and maybe I'll never be rich. Money is useful - yes - but I don't worship it.

Before each new setup, I chase everyone off the set in order to be alone and look through the camera. In that moment, the film seems quite easy. But then the others come in and everything becomes difficult.

The family today counts for less and less. Why? Who knows - the growth of science, the Cold War, the atomic bomb, the world war we've made, the new philosophies we've created; certainly something is happening to man, so why go against it, why oblige this new man to live by the mechanisms and regulations of the past?

I didn't like university life much at Bologna. The subjects I studied - economics and business administration - didn't interest me. I wanted to make films. I was glad when I was graduated. Yet it's odd; on graduation day, I was overcome with a terrible sadness. I realized that my youth was over and now the struggle had begun.

The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development- whether psychological or material- one must pass on to the actual realization.