Quotes about cinema
page 2

“I am not a theoretician of the cinema. If you ask me what directing is, the first answer that comes into my head is: I don't know.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Cahiers du Cinema (1960)

“I never go to the cinema. I can't stand sitting in the dark with strangers -- all of us obliged to share the same emotional experiences -- it's too intimate. I like to be emotional in private.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Philip
8 1/2 Women

“I follow the works of Iranian artists even now, sometimes in Paris or in New York and I am happy Iranian artists are still great. Whether they are men or women, they have always been great. Despite all the pressure and censorship inside the country, they haven't been able to stop the creativity of our artists. Some have to work underground, like in cinema, and sometimes their work has political messages, but the number of our artists now has definitely grown in comparison to the past.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Former queen of Iran on assembling Tehran's art collection http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/01/queen-iran-art-collection, The Guardian, (August 1, 2012). Interviews

Women, Men, Past, Country

“In 1957, James Vicary, a market researcher, conducted a six week test in a New Jersey movie theatre. A high-speed projector repeatedly and subliminally flashed the slogans ‘drink Coke’ and ‘eat popcorn’ over the film. I thought I’d make my own cinema ad to try something similar. According to Vicary, popcorn sales went up by 57.5% and Coke sales by 18.1%… Whether Vicary’s results were due to the subliminals can never be shown and the experiment has become shrouded in urban myth. This is the Genesis Cinema in East London, which kindly agreed to include our ad amongst the trailers for a screening of Ocean's Twelve, a carefully chosen film which, if the ad works, the audience will not be able to remember. Not a bad thing.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Drink, Speed

“Today's conventional cinema, or mass cinema, doesn't take the receiver seriously as a partner. It sees the audience member as a bank machine, whose only function is to spit out money.”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

as interviewed by Richard Porton, "Collective Guilt and Individual Responsibility: An Interview with Michael Haneke," Cineaste, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 50-51

Money

“Attack of the Clones displays some similarities to The Empire Strikes Back, but, overall, it is not as effective a piece of cinema (although the 2002 era special effects make it far more pleasing to the eye). Both films contain romantic subplots and are darker in tone than their predecessors. Both develop a number of unresolved plot elements. And both end on a note that incorporates hope with ambiguity. There is, however, one major difference. The Empire Strikes Back includes a shocking revelation. Nothing of that sort is present in Attack of the Clones. In terms of its plotting, this film is relatively straightforward. There's nothing wrong with that — in fact, it works. In a time when, more often than not, sequels disappoint, it's refreshing to uncover something this high-profile that fulfills the promise of its name and adds another title to a storied legacy.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/s/sw2002.html of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002). Three-and-a-half star reviews

Hope, Disappointment, Time

“Anyway I be, holding this mic
And I'm restless
Lyrical bars, it comes quick like my first sex
I'm raw, no latex
I aint a slave, I'm a grown man
Fvck the chains and the necklace
Gat bad chicks everywhere, Casablanca
Noah flow, leave you in a state like Bayelsa
I poo in your mouth, you can talk that shyt
Guns like a cinema, it got clips”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

"Real Recognize Real" (track 10)
I'm On Fire (2013)

Sex

“The Cinema is too rich; it is obese.”

Isidore Isou (1925–2007) Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist

Venom and Eternity (1951), Danielle's Monologue

“Because of the influence of the cinema, most reports or stories of violence are so pictorial that they lack content or meaning. The camera brings them to our eyes, but does not settle them in our minds, nor in time.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Jorge Luis Borges: Medallions", p. 178
The Myth Makers: European and Latin American Writers (1979)

Time

“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Quoted in: Richard Roud, Godard, introduction (1970).

Life, Art, Literature, Painting

“[paintings as] the plastic equivalent of the sounds, noises and smells found in theaters, music-halls, cinemas, brothels, railways station, ports.”

Carlo Carrà (1881–1966) Italian painter

1910's
Source: 'Piani plastici come espanzione sferica nello spazio', Carrà, March 1913

Music, Painting

“All my films are somewhat experimental, they are all, each one, taking a certain amount of risk, but there's always the basic assumption that we should be able to appreciate the cinema as much with the mind as we can through emotional empathy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

“I took a stroll in the city. It was infernally hot. The usual evening hubbub around me. Lovers on the pavements, hurrying to cinemas and other places of amusement as if nothing had happened, nothing. Living their nonexistent lives. Or do they exit, and it’s me who doesn’t.”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Source: Detective Story (2008), p. 31.

Lovers

“I believe natural beauty stimulates the creative mind and it’s no wonder the residents have always had an affinity to the arts. Growing up I was surrounded by music, dance, theater, literature and given my father owned and operated the only two cinema halls in town, I was a very popular kid on Saturdays when traditionally the two would flock to see the latest “flick” that was playing at either the Capitol Cinema or The Rink”

Erick Avari (1952) Indian actor

formerly a roller skating rink

Beauty, Art, Music, Literature

“Modern civilization, characterized by an enormous increase in the output of mechanized knowledge with the newspaper, the book, the radio and the cinema, has produced a state of numbness, pleasure and self-complacency perhaps only equalled by laughing-gas. In the words of Oscar Wilde we have sold our birthright for a mess of facts. The demands of the machine are insatiable. The danger of shaking men out of the soporific results of mechanized knowledge is similar to that of attempting to arouse a drunken man or one who has taken an overdose of sleeping tablets. The necessary violent measures will be disliked. We have had university professors threatened with the loss of their positions for less than this.”

Harold Innis (1894–1952) Canadian professor of political economy

Source: Essays in Canadian Economic History (1956), p. 383 (originally from an essay entitled The Church in Canada first published in 1947).

Men, Pleasure, Books, Knowledge

“Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Thinking

“The cinema may have a specific beauty of its own, but it does not permit that constant re-reading, that meditative brooding, those turning-back to passages heavily charged with meaning, which form the special pleasure of the novel-reader.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

Pleasure, Beauty, Reading

“When we say expanded cinema we actually mean expanded consciousness. Expanded cinema does not mean computer films, video phosphors, atomic light, or spherical projections. Expanded cinema isn't a movie at all: like life it's a process of becoming, man's ongoing historical drive to manifest his consciousness outside of his mind, in front of his eyes. One no longer can specialize in a single discipline and hope truthfully to express a clear picture of its relationships in the environment. This is especially true in the case of the intermedia network of cinema and television, which now functions as nothing less than the nervous system of mankind.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Preface
Expanded Cinema, 1970

Life, Hope, Light

“Our only means of original manifestation is to vomit these old masterpieces. Masterful spittle is our only opportunity to create within the Cinema our masterpieces. That's what Picasso stands for. He is a creator of deglutition and spittle, of old well-digested canvases.”

Isidore Isou (1925–2007) Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist

Venom and Eternity (1951), Danielle's Monologue

“Mani Kaul was one of the greatest auteurs of New Wave Indian Cinema. His films reflected his personal creative vision. Kaul was a man with a luminous mind who pioneered the parallel cinema movement in India. His films explored a new language and expression. Innovative imagery, vocabulary and experimentation were his forte. His debut film Uski Roti was a landmark film in Indian cinema. He was deeply influenced by Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky and Ritwik Ghatak, though he made a mark of his own.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

On Mani Kaul http://cinefreakin.blogspot.com/2011/07/tribute-mani-kaul.html (2011)

Personality

“I myself have employed the close-up, which is the cinema's only real invention. The fragment of the object has also been of use to me; by isolating it you personalize it. All this work has led me to regard the phenomenon of objectivity as a new and highly contemporary value in itself”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

quote of c. 1927
Quote in 'Autour de Ballet Méchanique', as quoted in Fernand Léger – The Later Years -, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota; published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, pp. 21-22
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Quotes, Personality

“As for my style, for my vision of the cinema, editing is not simply one aspect; it's the aspect.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Mitry, Jean; King, Christopher. The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema (1999). Indiana University Press. [ISBN 0-253-21377-0], p. 176.

“In Berlin Jews controlled almost one hundred percent of the theaters and cinemas before the rise to power.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (21 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

“For two and a half years, I rigorously trained seven to eight hours a day in two disciplines of dance but moved on to the most versatile medium called cinema which encompassed every form of art.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

Kamal Hassan: A universal legend

Art, Dance, Training

“When was the last time you looked at anything, solely, and concentratedly, and for its own sake? Ordinary life passes in a near blur. If we go to the theatre or the cinema, the images before us change constantly, and there is the distraction of language. Our loved ones are so well known to us that there is no need to look at them, and one of the gentle jokes of married life is that we do not.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Art Objects (1995)

Love, Life, Change, Time

“What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Where are the Movies Moving?" in Essays Old and New (1926)

Literature

“Radio through television becomes a species of Cinema. Why shouldn't Cinema, in turn, become a species of radio?”

Isidore Isou (1925–2007) Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist

Venom and Eternity (1951), Danielle's Monologue

“This was part of Corporation 9592’s strategy; they had hired psychologists, invested millions in a project to sabotage movies—yes, the entire medium of cinema—to get their customers/players/addicts into a state of mind where they simply could not focus on a two-hour-long chunk of filmed entertainment without alarm bells going off in their medullas telling them that they needed to log on to T’Rain and see what they were missing.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 15
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

Parting

“Cinema is a product of society. You look around you, the way women dress up for parties is no longer the same.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Queen of hearts

Women, Way

“Only cinema narrows its concern down to its content, that is to its story. It should, instead, concern itself with its form, its structure.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in Zoom, 16 Nov 1988
Interviews

“There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Minnesota declaration (1999)

Truth, Imagination

“I heard a story that Guinness once decided to stop advertising. Everybody knew what Guinness was. Everyone who liked and regularly drunk Guinness wouldn't find out anything new about Guinness from TV spots and they were guaranteed sales as long as St. Patrick's Day existed. But you know what happened? Their sales plummeted. Very, very quickly. So next time you complain about adverts on TV or in the cinema or even on my online videos, remember that it wouldn't be necessary if you weren't all such flighty cunts.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

4 August 2010
Fully Ramblomatic

Time

“Originally I was content to just simply accept the money, that was offered when people had adapted my comic books into films. Eventually I decided to refuse to accept any of the money for the films, and to ask if my name could be taken off of them, so that I no longer had to endure the embarrasment of seeing my work travested in this manner. The first film that they made of my work was "From Hell" Which was an adaptation of my "Jack the Ripper" narrative … In which they replaced my gruff Dorset police constable with Johnny Depp's Absinthe-swigging dandy. The next film to be made from one of my books was the regrettable "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"… Where the only resemblence it had to my book was a similar title. The most recent film that they have made of mine is apparently this new "V for Vendetta" movie which was probably the final straw between me and Hollywood. They were written to be impossible to reproduce in terms of cinema, and so why not leave them simply as a comic in the way that they were intended to be. And if you are going to make them into films, please try to make them into better ones, than the ones I have been cursed with thus far.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

From the BBC2 show The Culture Show (9 March 2006) (separate quotes shown; edited together for the segment of the show)

Money, People, Books, Way

“Cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be merely left to the storytellers.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the introduction to the published script.
A Zed and Two Noughts

“With the invention of printing, mass standardized culture had become possible.
With the inventions of photography and then cinema, the standardization of popular culture began to progress geometrically and its rate of change slowed down.
In addition, the complete documentation of daily life made possible by these technological advances presented the mass of humanity, for the first time in history, with a mirror in which to regard itself. Less and less had it been able to look away, as its own image became more detailed and perfect, especially with the burden of information that became available at the end of the twentieth century.
What this meant, in practical terms, was that retro was the only fashion.”

Kage Baker book The Life of the World to Come

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 6, “Alec and His Friends” (p. 105)

Life, History, Fashion, Change

“Suppression of all harmful influences in literature and the press, stage, art and cinema.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), p. 56

Art, Literature

“I often sneak into the cinema and watch how the audience are reacting to my movie. It teaches me so much.”

Jamie Uys (1921–1996) South African film director

Sunday Times interview (1979)

“There have been innumerable films about film-making, but Otto e Mezzo was a film about the processes of thinking about making a film -- certainly the most enjoyable part of any cinema creation.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the introduction to 8 1/2 Women
8 1/2 Women

Thinking, Parting

“I don't have any particular wish to be polemical or didactic; I don't have a "message", but what I do thoroughly enjoy are those works of art, not necessarily in the cinema, but in the other arts as well, which have an encyclopaedic world.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

World, Art

“This is the visual world, using the most advanced advertising techniques that are familiar to the crowds in their daily life.... What kind of representational art do you want to inflict on these men then, when they’re solicited everyday by the cinema, radio, huge photo montages and advertising hoardings? How can you compete with these enormous modern mechanisms, which give you art to the 1000th degree?”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1950, in: Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 58
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's

Life, Men, World, Art

“My primary concept in approaching the production of THX 1138 was to make a kind of cinema verité film of the future — something that would look like a documentary crew had made a film about some character in a time yet to come.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

American Cinematographer (October 1971)

Time, Future

“After further consideration, the herd of ponies had left off being frightened at all and had calmed down, and were now grazing in the home pastures, on the grass fields and gravel banks or in the home meadow close up to the farm. I stood at the window in that autumn light that makes the dead and the living more sharply discernible than the light of any other season. Yes, what a well-sculptured creature the pony is, so finely carved that even if there were no more than half a chisel stroke extra the workmanship would be ruined; that curve from neck to rump, and all the way down to the fetlock, is in actual fact a woman's curve; in the oblique-set eyes of these creatures lies buried a wisdom that is hidden from men but blended with the mockery of the idols; around the muzzle and the underlip hovers the smile that no cinema shark has ever been able to reproduce; and where is the female star who smells as wonderful as the nose of a pony?</b”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

Wisdom, Men, Smile, Way

“By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Minnesota declaration (1999)

Truth

“(Lucio Fulci) was a great director. Many terrible things happened to him in his life. He was rather unlucky. I have always enjoyed working with him greatly, as he was a truly original human being with a great love for cinema.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Love, Life

“Cinema has evolved in two paths. One is spectacle. Like the phantasmagoria, its goal is the creation of a total substitute sensory world. The other is peep show, which claims for its realm both the erotic and the untampered observance of real life, and imitates the keyhole or voyeur's window without need of color, noise, grandeur.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969), The Lords: Notes on Vision

Life, World, Color

“I passed by a corner office in which an employee was typing up a document relating to brand performance. … Something about her brought to mind a painting by Edward Hopper which I had seen several years before at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. In New York Movie (1939), an usherette stands by the stairwell of an ornate pre-war theatre. Whereas the audience is sunk in semidarkness, she is bathed in a rich pool of yellow light. As often in Hopper’s work, her expression suggests that her thoughts have carried her elsewhere. She is beautiful and young, with carefully curled blond hair, and there are a touching fragility and an anxiety about her which elicit both care and desire. Despite her lowly job, she is the painting’s guardian of integrity and intelligence, the Cinderella of the cinema. Hopper seems to be delivering a subtle commentary on, and indictment of, the medium itself, implying that a technological invention associated with communal excitement has paradoxically succeeded in curtailing our concern for others. The painting’s power hangs on the juxtaposition of two ideas: first, that the woman is more interesting that the film, and second, that she is being ignored because of the film. In their haste to take their seats, the members of the audience have omitted to notice that they have in their midst a heroine more sympathetic and compelling than any character Hollywood could offer up. It is left to the painter, working in a quieter, more observant idiom, to rescue what the film has encouraged its viewers not to see.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), pp. 83-84.

War, Beauty, Art, Intelligence

“At eighty, a man has experienced everything: love, and its ending; ambition, and its emptiness; several foolish beliefs, and their rectification. Fear of death is not very great; affections and interest concern people who have died and events of the past. In a cinema theatre when the show is continuous the spectator has the right to retain his seat as long as he wishes to do so, but actually, when the scenes he has already witnessed reappear on the screen, he leaves the theatre. Life is a continuous show. The same events take place every thirty years, and they become boring. One after another the spectators take their departure.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Life, Death, People

“Producers nowadays want item numbers. So I have penned one for this film. Cinema is the most effective way of creating awareness and spreading social message. Through this film I would like to convey the message of happiness, humanity and harmony.”

Kapil Sibal (1948) Indian lawyer and politician

On composing the lyrics for a song for a film, as quoted in Kapil Sibal pens item number for Bollywood film http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/Kapil-Sibal-pens-item-number-for-Bollywood-film/articleshow/47221241.cms, The Times of India (10 May 2015)

Way, Happiness

“Among today's directors I'm of course impressed by Steven Spielberg and Scorsese, and Coppola, even if he seems to have ceased making films, and Steven Soderbergh — they all have something to say, they're passionate, they have an idealistic attitude to the filmmaking process. Soderbergh's Traffic is amazing. Another great couple of examples of the strength of American cinema is American Beauty and Magnolia.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Jan Aghed interview (2002)

Beauty, Passion

“Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things.”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

About CGI, in IMDB profile http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000416/bio#quotes

Death, Hate, War, People

“To be honest, when you're younger and cooler, you say those sort of things don't mean anything, but then on the day when they pat you on the back and they say, "Look, mate, we're noticing what you're doing-thanks very much;' you think of the people who spent a life in the cinema and didn't receive that kind of accolade, and it's sort of a humbling experience. And it's very nice and all that. But it doesn't change the way I do things.”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

On winning an Oscar for Gladiator.
GQ Interview (2005)

Life, People, Way, Thinking

“I strongly believe that cinema has the power to influence people and bring all of us together for a greater purpose – of peace, brotherhood and solidarity. By showcasing films from around the world and creating a platform for healthy dialogue, DIFF has taken cinema to its next level of social relevance. Personally, I am humbled by this recognition from Dubai, a city I consider as my second home.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quoted in Bachchan Receives Lifetime Achievement Award at DIFF, 25 November 2009, 15 December 2013, Khaleej Times http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/newsmakers/2009/November/newsmakers_November64.xml&section=newsmakers&col,.

People, World, Peace, Home

“Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Minnesota declaration (1999)

Truth

“I believe in committed cinema.
I mean, commitment in the broadest sense of the term.”

Ritwik Ghatak (1925–1976) Bengali filmmaker and script writer

[Ghatak, Ritwik, Cinema and I, 1987, Ritwik Memorial Trust, 15]

Sense

“Frank, you are, without doubt, a scarcity. Anyone who looks at the historical record of the juncture of art and technology finds you nearly unaccompanied when it comes to documenting this historical record between the years of the late-1960's up to the early 1990s. Basically there is you, Jack Burnham's book Beyond Modern Sculpture (1968), and Gene Youngblood's reference work Expanded Cinema (1970). Specifically, your books Origins and Development of Kinetic Art (1968), Art, Action and Participation (1975) and Art of the Electronic Age (1993) are indispensable research tools in helping us figure out how art got to where it is today - in your terms virtualized.”

Joseph Nechvatal (1951) American artist

Joseph Nechvatal. in: " Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper http://www.mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Popper.pdf," in: Media Art History, 2004.

Books, Age, Art, Help

“Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could listen to them properly, cinema would have no need for music at all.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 162

World, Beauty, Music, Feeling

“The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

As quoted by the interviewer, from a preface to his screenplays
Encountering Directors interview (1969)

Lying

“I've gravitated towards independent cinema because you have to work harder in studio scripts to flesh out characters, particularly female ones. They are not as sharply edged, they tend to be quite watery. They are not renderings of women as I know them.”

Vera Farmiga (1973) American actress

As quoted in " Vera Farmiga: 'I demand a lot from myself' https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/27/vera-farmiga-film-interview" by Elizabeth Day at The Guardian (March 27, 2011)

Women

“My teaming with Amitabh taught me many practical aspects of life and the film world. He’s one of the most versatile actors of Indian cinema.”

Rekha (1954) Indian film actress

The diva rules

Life, World

“Freud spoke of oceanic consciousness as that in which we feel our individual existence lost in mystic union with the universe. Nothing could be more appropriate to contemporary experience, when for the first time man has left the boundaries of this globe. The oceanic effect of synaesthetic cinema is similar to the mystical allure of the natural elements: we stare in mindless wonder at the ocean or a lake or river. We are drawn almost hypnotically to fire, gazing as though spellbound. We see cathedrals in clouds, not thinking anything in particular but feeling somehow secure and content. It is similar to the concept of no-mindedness in Zen, which also is the state of mantra and mandala consciousness, the widest range of consciousness.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Source: Expanded Cinema, 1970, p. 92, as cited in: " Expanded Cinema, Gene Youngblood, Studio Vista, 1970 http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/books/gyngbld.html" at hohlwelt.com, January 21, 2012

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Universe

“My perfect Sunday would be a chilled, calming day, nothing too taxing. I try to watch films at the cinema whenever I can, or I go for a walk down by the river. … Richard and I might then try out a new restaurant we’ve heard about. I’m vegetarian and I love it that there are so many places in London with great veggie food. … I’ve got my own little fan group who call themselves the Sprouts, because of my obsession with Brussels sprouts, and they’re a fantastic group of girls that I chat to all the time. … Otherwise – this is embarrassing to admit – Richard and I will play Call of Duty. It’s a side of me that not a lot of people know about but I was a big games girl when I was a teenager and computer games are my guilty pleasure.”

Samantha Barks (1990) Manx singer and actress

“Samantha Barks: I'm addicted to Call of Duty,” interview with The Telegraph (4 August 2014) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/11003183/.html.

Love, People, Pleasure, Food

“The sudden change [Wotruba and his wife returned to Vienna in December 1945, at the end of the war; there he started to direct a class for advanced students on the Akademie der Bildenden Künste of Vienna] has had a shock effect on me and on my work. The almost sensual excitement caused by the destruction around me wears off rather quickly. It is not my duty to give this past [of Nazism and the war-years, fh] more significance than it has already been given in literature, on the stage and in the cinema. I am concerned with the figure, with the statuary, i. e., with statics, measurement, equilibrium, and with unity.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 22.

War, Literature, Change, Past

“I’m single and my entire youth was spent enjoying time with friends, but these times I’m trying to be more responsible and take more care and use my energy in cinema. It makes me happier.”

Javier Botet (1977) Spanish actor

Youth, Time

“When a movie is this bad, it's hard to adequately describe its awfulness in words. The temptation exists to write something along the lines of: "Something this horrible has to be seen to be believed." Of course, that kind of advice would lead to e-mail death threats and other assorted nasty comments from those who spend money on The Devil's Rejects. … Aside from its poor production values, horrendous acting, and ignoble morality, The Devil's Rejects isn't engaging cinema. Even if the simple act of sitting in a movie theater watching people get hacked up for 90 minutes doesn't bother you, the dullness and repetition is likely to.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=934 of The Devil's Rejects (2005). Half-star reviews

Death, Money, People

“I am showing the Old West as it really was. Cinema takes violence from life. Not the other way around. Americans treat Westerns with too much rhetoric.”

Sergio Leone (1929–1989) Italian film director, screenwriter and producer

As quoted in Hollywood and After: The Changing Face of Movies in America (1974) by Jerzy Toeplitz, p. 141, and in The Pop Sixties: A Personal and Irreverent Guide (1985) by Andrew J. Edelstein, p. 148.

Life, Way

“On some rare occasions I do go to cinema theatres abroad. But if you really ask me I would rather watch a film on DVD all alone in the dark environs of my car or my home.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Rajeev Masand

Cars, Home

“To be only spectacular should be 5 or 10 percent of cinema.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

ibid. Cited in: David Brancaleone, The Interventions of Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker into Contemporary Visual Art https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/issue-30-spring-2012-godard-is/the-interventions-of-jean-luc-godard-and-chris-marker/, 2012, closeupfilmcentre.com

“The first thing I do when I’m creating, either for stage or for cinema, is to find the ideograph of the story.”

Julie Taymor (1952) American film and theatre director

Quoted in "Oh, girl : A Talk with Julie Taymor" at Subtitles to Cinema (2 September 2008) http://subtitlestocinema.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/oh-girl-a-talk-with-julie-taymor/ Context: The first thing I do when I’m creating, either for stage or for cinema, is to find the ideograph of the story. Which is; the one, simple expression that can tell everything. And at the same time be recognizable for the audience. It’s like in old Japanese paintings — if you were to paint a bamboo forest, you should be able to find its essence with only three strokes.

“I always love it when people write me and say "I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies, and it made such a difference."”

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) British actress

How to be Lovely‎ (2005)
Context: People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant, when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music. I always love it when people write me and say "I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies, and it made such a difference."

Love, People, Time

“Cinema is a truly valuable means of connecting people. ”

Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) Japanese film maker

People

“People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant, when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music. I always love it when people write me and say "I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies, and it made such a difference."”

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) British actress

How to be Lovely‎ (2005)

Love, Women, People, Beauty

“The critic has a purpose, but I don’t see my writing as trying to judge a work, trying to communicate its good or bad points to a reader. To me, my hope is that this dossier may open-up new areas of cinema for readers, and point at new avenues for investigation, which is all I would hope for. If it merely defined any emergent orthodoxy-of-extreme-cinema I would feel it had failed.”

Jack Sargeant (writer) (1968) British writer, performer and curator.

"American Extreme" in Senses of Cinema http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/american-extreme/introduction-american-extreme/?fbclid=IwAR3RDbEMlJKfP_tUFAOt3apUoZ99oioJ5kFwJfPO3wBnu1PGC0Xmtpnf9pY (2016)

Feeling, Bad luck, Hope, Communication

“I think TV series, games, and general media have changed the way we tell stories. But books will remain. Technology has changed all the others arts: painting, theater, dancing, cinema, music. But literature is an absolutely intimate process between the writer’s voice and the reader’s mind, it is something so natural and strong that the only thing that technology could change is its support, its format, for example, if we read from a book or from an e-reader. But that doesn’t change the heart of literature.”

Samanta Schweblin (1978) Argentine writer

On the staying power of literature in “Samanta Schweblin on Revealing Darkness Through Fiction” https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-on-revealing-darkness-through-fiction/ in LitHub (2017 Jan 12)

Painting, Reading, Strong, Game

“Reliance’s Big cinema had backed out as sponsors of MAMI as it was going through a massive financial crunch and there were rumours that it might shut down. ... From down-to-earth, genuine filmmakers like Shyam Benegal, the festival now was in the hands of corporates, critics, powerful people’s wives and their admirers. This was the year when MAMI officially transformed from a cinema lovers’ festival to a corporate club festival. I learnt this when I reached Chandan cinema with Pallavi for the closing award ceremony. We were official nominees, yet we were asked to sit in a corner seat in the tenth or twelfth row whereas the front rows were all occupied by commercial stars, star wives, their friends and people who are inconsequential to indie cinema. I was officially nominated; my wife Pallavi, besides being a senior actor is a national award winner and has been on the jury of the national awards, but nobody was ready to recognize those who did not make great press.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Star, Making love, People, Lovers

“Hindi cinema’s only woman of substance, of late who enthralled the audiences and others with that air of mystery and intrigue while remaining a top heroine for more than 10 years is Rekha.”

Rekha (1954) Indian film actress

Critique V. Gangadhar unraveling the enigma of Rekha
Queen bee:The legend of Rekha

“Rajnikanth’s dedication, compassion for the welfare of co-artistes and passion for cinema have been key factors for his success as a mass-entertainer.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Sankar Narayan alias ‘Cable’ Sankar, an Assistant Director and a writer on film industry trends
Decoding Rajinikanth

Passion, Success

“Being fair-complexioned continues to be the norm in cinema.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

K. Balachander, in a recent media interaction, adverting to Rajinikanth being dark-skinned naturally.
Decoding Rajinikanth

“While others used the staircase, he used the elevator to stardom. I don’t think any other actor in cinema made cigarette smoking a such an asset to his repertoire.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

K. Balachander, in p. 14
Rajinikanth: A Birthday Special (12 December 2012)

Thinking

“Yes, I own Kamal. Yet, he does not belong to me — he belongs to the world of cinema. It is often argued that had he been born abroad, he would have won the Oscar many times over.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

K Balachander, in K Balachander praises Kamal Hassan! (2 September 2010) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/others/news-interviews/K-Balachander-praises-Kamal-Hassan/articleshow/6474377.cms?

World, Time

“Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philtre, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced.”

Greta Garbo (1905–1990) Swedish-American actress

Roland Barthes, "The Face of Garbo," Mythologies (1957), trans. Annette Lavers [Farrar, Straus, 1986, ISBN 0-374-52150-6], p. 56

“I have made my fair share of mistakes. In the beginning when you are trying to find your way, you end up doing stereotypical and cliche roles, I have done all of that. I am at a stage in regional cinema where I am looking to do roles that test and push me to my limit.”

Samantha Akkineni (1987) Indian actress

"When It Comes To Bollywood, Samantha Ruth Prabhu Doesn't Want To Repeat The "Mistakes" She Made In Regional Cinema" https://www.ndtv.com/entertainment/when-it-comes-to-bollywood-samantha-ruth-prabhu-doesnt-want-to-repeat-the-mistakes-she-made-in-regional-cinema-2327062. NDTV. (November 18, 2020).

Way

“The institutions of democracy will be gradually and, if possible, imperceptibly withdrawn. The Press will become a better and better directed and drilled servant of the capitalist class. All other methods of disseminating information, notably the cinema and the wireless, will be more and more consciously monopolized. Power may be gradually withdrawn from a democratically elected Chamber (cf . Reform of the House of Lords in Britain) or alternatively the franchise may be gradually curtailed (cf. the proposals of the British Conservative party for withholding the franchise from persons in receipt of poor relief). At the same time, the habitual regime of police violence will be increased (cf. the present heavy sentences on working-class militants in Britain passed almost openly, not for any specific offence but because the accused were working-class militants, as notably in the case of Arthur Homer; the increasing use of terror in all American wage disputes ; the police regime in France, etc., etc.). This method applies the principle of " the inevitability of gradualness " to the introduction of an open capitalist dictatorship.”

John Strachey (1901–1963) British politician and writer (1901-1963)

Source: The Coming Struggle for Power (1932), p. 268

Democracy, Personality, Time, Housing

“My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

From "Film as catharsis". Haneke, Michael – "Film als Katharsis": in Austria (in)felix: zum österreichischem Film der 80er Jahre – Bono, Francesco (ed.), 1992. ISBN 3-901272-00-3

Falseness, Question

“When I was young, the idea of “world cinema” didn’t exist. We would watch any films that we could find in the cinemas. Today, some of those films have become accessible again on streaming platforms. In a way, it doesn’t matter as much where they exist as long as people have access to them.”

Wong Kar-wai (1958) Hong Kong screenwriter, film producer and film director

"5 Questions for Wong Kar Wai" in Notebook Feature (19 March 2021) https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/5-questions-for-wong-kar-wai

People, Way, World, Idea

“No one can teach you how to compose a shot. You are only guided by an instinct. It has to come from within. I learned cinema by working on my films. The best thing was that I bought my own camera, and since I was working on the digital medium, I had the freedom to experiment, shoot more.”

Rima Das (1982) Indian Assamese film maker

SilverScreenIndia Article - Making A Zero Budget Movie: The Tale Of Assamese Filmmaker Rima Das’s ‘Village Rockstars’ - 20 November 2017 https://silverscreenindia.com/movies/features/interviews/making-a-zero-budget-movie-the-tale-of-assamese-filmmaker-rima-dass-village-rockstars/ - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210728183808/https://silverscreenindia.com/movies/features/interviews/making-a-zero-budget-movie-the-tale-of-assamese-filmmaker-rima-dass-village-rockstars/

Freedom, Learning

“The main thing is to remain yourself, and this is impossible for a professional actor. Although it is difficult to think ahead. It seems to me that cinema and music, complementing each other, can coexist in my life.”

Viktor Tsoi (1962–1990) Soviet rock musician (1962-1990)

"Appendix I. Viktor Tsoi: interview diary" https://ik-ptz.ru/en/istoriya/prilozhenie-i-viktor-coi-dnevnik-intervyu-fragmenty-iz-odnoimennoi.html

Music, Thinking, Life

“Cinema takes me to another world. That world is authentic, real, and welcoming. Cinema doesn’t belong to the winner but to the loser/loner. The blissful loser. I like that world.”

Kim Bora (1981) South Korean director

As quoted in "Tribeca 2019 Women Directors: Meet Bora Kim – “House of Hummingbird”" in Women and Hollywood (25 April 2019) https://womenandhollywood.com/tribeca-2019-women-irectors-meet-bora-kim-house-of-hummingbird/

World

“Right now, the industry might have gotten bigger. More people may be watching films. Those are positive aspects. But diversity in Korean cinema has decreased a lot since then. There are more female film students in schools.”

Moon So-ri (1974) South Korean actress

On highlighting the need for diversity in Korean film industry in "Now a director and scriptwriter, actress Moon So-ri speaks about her film" in The Korea Herald (6 Septmeber 2017) http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170906000677

People, School

“Cruelty in cinema can give us perspective and insight but I’m not a fan of horror as an adrenaline rush or a desensitizing mechanism, I prefer horror movies that elucidate the human condition.”

Julie Carmen (1954) actress, dancer turned psychotherapist

“From a cinema major’s perspective, philosophically, theoretically it’s easier for people to imprint on that character what they think they’re feeling. I don’t know why, but it seems easier for kids to identify with someone like Ferb, or Perry, when they say nothing.”

Jeff "Swampy" Marsh (1960) American television director, writer, producer, storyboard artist and actor

Source: Phineas & Ferb's Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh on Their Platypus Super-Spy Perry https://www.mtv.com/news/2625269/phineas-ferbs-dan-povenmire-and-jeff-swampy-marsh/ (30 May 2012)

Feeling, People, Thinking

“I consider myself a professional who acts, not to express my soul or elevate the cinema but to entertain and get paid for it.”

Virginia Grey (1917–2004) American actress (1917-2004)

Source: Western Clippings Interview, Mike Fitzgerald, 1998 [citation needed]

Soul

Quotes about cinema page 2

Quotes about cinema
page 2