From the Mouths of Filmmakers

Cinema is not the reflection of reality, but the reality of the reflection.
Jean-Luc Godard (pictured above)

I'm a visual stylist. I'm dealing with a white canvas up there and I may be one of the few practitioners doing that today.
Brian De Palma

Character and emotionality don't always have to be relegated to quieter, more simple constructs.
Kathryn Bigelow

This, I think, is the best thing a filmmaker can give to an audience--the possibility of many interpretations.
William Friedkin

I shoot my films from the point of view of neighbors, and as a neighbor there is always something you cannot see and have to guess at.
Wong Kar-Wai

A good philosophy is to take a chance when you shoot, and be creative at every stage.
Michel Gondry

I'd rather do an honest commercial than a dishonest film.
Orson Welles

To be honest with you, we artists do not contemplate that many theoretical issues. In art, creative impulse plays a bigger role than theory.
Zhang Yimou

If I fail, the industry writes me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart.
George A. Romero

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen

I demand that a film expresses either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.
Francois Truffaut

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.
Jean-Luc Godard

To me I think music video is the perfect medium to do kinetic or geometrical research and I use them for that.
Michel Gondry

I try to personalise everything I make. I can’t do it otherwise. I don’t tell the studios that, though...
Tim Burton

If anyone tells you the filmmaking process is fun, they’re liars. Rehearsals are fun, getting the costumes together, dressing the sets. When you get down to shooting all you’re doing is prioritising to minimise downside.
David Fincher

Some people's interpretations of our works overshadow the works themselves. It has been common for interpretations to impose themselves on art works.
Zhang Yimou

Rebellion is no longer a purpose, but a story or a theme.
Zhang Yimou

A lot of people think that youth or age is the total sum of your knowledge about anything, and it's absolutely untrue. I think I might have even known more five years ago than I do now.
Steven Spielberg

I just don't think they're much interested in directors anymore. It's all a celebrity business.
Brian De Palma

I've become wary of interviews in which you're forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you've done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive.
Peter Weir

Censors do what only psychotics do... they confuse reality with illusion.
David Cronenberg

All the films I'd like to make are art films, but that doesn't mean they're not commercial.
Richard Kelly

You have to believe in God before you can say there are things that man was not meant to know. I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.
David Cronenberg

When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, "No, I went to films."
Quentin Tarantino

I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself.
Stanley Kubrick