Words matter. These are the best Raoul Peck Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I started to read James Baldwin very early on in my life. At a time, as a young adult in the Sixties, when there were not that many authors in whom I could recognize myself, he was an important guide and mentor to me, as he was to many others. He helped me understand who I was and decipher the world around me.
I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity – why I create and not for whom.
I studied economics. I studied industrial engineering. It wasn’t until later, when I was around 26, that I really decided to go to film school.
I have always tried to put content in my work. It is a consistent challenge.
I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.
Sometimes people ask me, ‘Are you an optimist or a pessimist?’ It doesn’t matter. Whether I have a future or not is for me to decide.
Haiti is not a world aside, a world apart. Culture and imaginations have always been part of our rebirth.
To put it simply, as a black man, I started watching films at the age of six, and I’ve since seen the bad guys changing race – between the African savages, to the Native Americans, and then the blacks and the Arabs and the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Look at ‘Rambo’: it’s exactly that.
We are artists. We are all subjective people; we have a point of view. It doesn’t mean we are right.
If there is something that determines my motivation in the work I do, it’s the sense of injustice.
I have refused money sometimes for a film. I have refused films when I felt that it was not for me. When it was just a job or just about making money, I said no. I wanted to make every film count, and when you are true to yourself, this gives you a certain integrity and a certain reputation.
James Baldwin is probably, for me and for many other people, one of the most extraordinary authors in this country, black or white. And he is somebody who changed my life.
I tend to believe that film can try to save what still can be saved, in terms of our histories, our memories. Because a lot of things are disappearing very quickly, things are changing. We are living in very quick times, and we have a new generation who basically know nothing about events 30 years ago.
I think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time… not just African-American. He singled-handedly revolutionized the political, artistic, and historical discourses about America.
My story with film is kind of different because I started with photography because my father was a photo buff. He had all sort of cameras, and I grew up with that.
I never wanted to be current in the sense that I follow the news, I follow the historical moment of the day. It was always, for me, to go back to the fundamentals.
When I have people trust me with their money, I am obligated to give them a great film. I am not obligated to give them a profit.
I never considered myself as somebody in exile because, different to my father who, yes, was in exile because he left Haiti as an adult, for me it was just to be somewhere else. I carried Haiti with me everywhere, but I also carried, you know, my youth in a public school in Brooklyn. It’s part of who I am as well.
I think this whole discussion about what is politically correct – sometimes you have to name the name. You can’t hide it. Politeness is good if it’s not hiding the truth.
We need to learn how to organize, not just to let our anger explode. We need to have organization for the long run, not for one issue, not for one murder, but for everything coming to us in the next 20, 30 years.
We forget that everything has a meaning, everything has an impact on you. It’s what we call soft power today. Nothing is innocent.
When I started this profession, I wanted to make films that entertain but that have content. When I went to film school, they made me believe that the two could not mix.
I have to make sure, when you start seeing a film, you are going to see it until the end. I have to, of course, entertain you a little bit. The real question is how far do I go?
If you asked me today if there’s a piece that I would do differently – there’s nothing. Regret happens with all my films.
You face the reality, whether it’s hopeful or hopeless. What’s your alternative? To lie down and die?
