Quotes About Cinema

Most cinema is not about images but text. Why on earth have we based cinema on text? Why can't we break that umbilical cord? Why do we have to pollute cinema?

Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite. The only true cinema verite would be what Andy Warhol did with his film about the Empire State Building - eight hours or so from one angle, and even then it's not really cinema verite, because you aren't actually there.

I spent 15 years of my career trying to convince people that Indian cinema is relevant. I am so proud of Indian cinema and I am so proud of my Indian roots. The IIFAs are doing a great job to this effect.

A message I've been telling myself: the cinema is very conservative, and unless you have a story that satisfies you, that is within the unchallenging zone, but you love it, you can't do it as cinema. Otherwise, you better go do it for television, which is more daring now.

When I was a young man, my friends and I and all of us in New York were very influenced by French cinema. French cinema played an enormous influence on those of us who wanted to be filmmakers.

I know there is one kind of cinema that exists in the world, that is good or bad cinema.

Cinema is capitalism in its purest form.... There is only one solution - turn one's back on American cinema.

I'm not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I say, 'Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this?'

I know why I make films -cinema is a mode of expression that allows you to express all the nuances of a thing while including its opposites. These are things that can't be quantified mentally; yet they can exist and be juxtaposed. That may seem very contradictory. Cinema allows you to film these contradictions.

Well, as a visual artist working with the phenomenon of cinema, the grammar of cinema, [making a feature] was bound to happen. Everything I do is like sculpting with image and sound.

If you're going to break cinema, film, and movies apart, very rarely to you get the opportunity to even think that you've been a part of cinema.

I think that cinema and television have nothing in common. There is a breaking point between photography and cinema on the one hand and television and virtual reality on the other hand.

The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life. But Hollywood has forgotten that, in the past, what made Hollywood great and what made it go ahead was the fact that Hollywood was fed with, for example, Jewish directors coming from Germany or Austria and enriching Hollywood. In 15, 20 years, Hollywood became imperialistic. Cinema goes ahead when it is marriaged by other culture. Otherwise, it turns on itself.

I love cinema. I think the risk of the aesthetics being fixed is compensated by other advantages. Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies.

Napoleon is pure cinema, and cinema was designed for sharing.

I am not interested in making didactic polemical statements. That is not the way I want to make films. There is a place for polemics, but I don't think that it is in fictional cinema. Fictional cinema works subtly and deeply.

The cinema industry is competing against everything else people can do on a Friday or Saturday night. If they don't have a good time, you're going to lose them to something else. So much of what we do is trying to make the Alamo experience special.

I think if some people know anything about African cinema it's something like the The Gods Must Be Crazy, which is such an awful, condescending movie that debases African participation, and anything I can do to shift that and draw attention to rich and widely varied films that come from there- because there's all kinds of filmmakers from Senegal, you have Mambety, and Haroun with Grigris.

You can't really divorce women's struggles in the world from women's in the cinema. As long as there's hierarchy it means that women are somehow secondary or second class or less than. That's going to be reflected in movies because films are the most powerful medium to reflect back society's view of itself

I like watching film, I go to the cinema, but a lot of times I go to see kids' films.

I read reviews of critics I respect and feel I can learn something from. Right now there are a lot of bottom-feeder critics who just have access to a computer and don't necessarily have an academic or cinema background that I can detect, so I tend to ignore that and stay with the same top-tier critics that I've come to respect. I like reading a good review - it doesn't have to be favorable, but a well-thought-out one - because I very much appreciate the relationship of directors and critics.

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."

I'm a big fan of British cinema; I think we make some unbelievably brilliant films, but they can quite often have a dark feel.

One of my assistants was on Instagram and showed me how it was working. I thought it was playful, the way you go through images, a little like cinema. It's a bit like a filmstrip that's animated by your finger.

The idea that cinema can be dangerous is a great idea.

The most important question in American cinema, I've learned, is 'When is lunch?'

Cinema is the greatest mirror of humanity's struggle. You see this alternative world, but you're part of it. Everybody is part of it. This is our world.

Previously the same Polish audiences would have been pressured into seeing cinema made for adults, films made by us about those spheres of life that were significant for us and which should be significant for our society.

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.

I still would like you to feel the enthusiasm that all those people felt in the twenties and thirties, that indeed we had discovered, with cinema, the great 20th-century, all-embracing medium.

With cinema, one of the great lies dating back to its origin was "It's just entertainment! It doesn't make any impact" Like the great Samuel Goldwyn said, "If you've got a message, send a telegram."

Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information.

I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the best novels.

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew's cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo's choice to know the truth. It's a beautiful, beautiful story.

We can compare classical chess and rapid chess with theatre and cinema - some actors don't like the latter and prefer to work in the theatre.

I think people need to understand that with plays and with cinema, when you hear about it, call and get a ticket then or go and see it then. It's especially with the play, which I can do because it's a limited run.

I can see that cinema seems to be finished. Everybody has a bigger screen at home. I'm assuming eventually you won't need a screen at all - these iPhones will just project.

The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.

Jeff always says, "In the cinema, everybody goes to sci-fi. Those are the biggest movies. But, in television, nobody wants to touch it with a barge pole." It's strange. I think it's because maybe there's a legacy of television shows that depicted sci-fi in a certain way that turns off a lot of viewers, so maybe there's a negative connotation.

Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.

There's no point in making films unless you intend to show us something special, otherwise just go out and watch a play. Kubrick showed us something special. Every film was a challenge, and a direct assault on cinema's conventions.

Some holiday traditions are sacred. In our house one such tradition is the annual Christmas classic cinema celebration.

I remember queuing around the block in Sheffield when I was growing up. At that time, going to the cinema was really something special - there was something about the style of the real thing that is immeasurable nicer than multiplexes.

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don't manage that - but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.

People go to the cinema to be moved; they wanna laugh, they wanna cry, they wanna feel something deeply, especially if they're not feeling deeply in their own lives.

Photography is truth...and cinema is truth 24 times a second.

I didn't want to be part of that tradition of French cinema that wasn't really watched by the people of my age. I didn't really care to be in the last André Téchiné or Claude Chabrol movie, even though some of them are really interesting. For me, it was much more important to work with Mathieu Kassovitz or Gaspar Noé. It was for me a question of identity.