Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.

I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.

The wonderful thing is that Clive [Oppenheimer ] insisted on training his camera - his private camera - on me at one point. We were discussing things such as how to avoid certain dangers, while reflecting on a volcano that had threatened to explode 40 years ago.

[ Digital revolution ] only has allowed me to work faster, editing digitally, which I'm doing right now, a film on volcanoes. I can edit almost as fast as I'm thinking, editing with celluloid means always searching for this little reel of film, and number it, and scribble on it with some sort of pens, and gluing it together, and working on a flatbed. It's much, much slower.

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]

If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its legs.