The ‘Western’ is the only genre whose origins are almost identical with those of the cinema itself.
I think there’s not a lot of real filmmakers. There are only a few people who make real cinema. I can count them on my fingers.
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.
For British cinema to survive, you really need a British film culture, and it’s got to start down there, with young kids watching films in the cinema – so they can be transported to a different world.
I see only one requirement you have to have to be a director or any kind of artist: rhythm. Rhythm, for me, is everything. Without rhythm, there’s no music. Without rhythm, there’s no cinema. Without rhythm, there’s no architecture.
I am going to produce a movie of my own. I am not going to stick to the time-tested formulae of Hindi cinema. I want to make a film for the present generation. So there will be a lot of new faces in the film.
I want to make movies that pierce people’s hearts and touch them in some way, even if it’s just for the night while they’re in the cinema; in that moment, I want to bring actual tears to their eyes and goosebumps to their skin.
I’m getting a little bored by the juxtaposition of American and other cinema. I no longer think this division is as true as it might have been in the 1980s, or the early part of the 90s.
I realised that you could easily turn any room into a cinema with a projector, so I went on and on at my parents for one. They eventually got me a projector for Christmas when I was ten, and I realised I’d made a ridiculous mistake – I’d forgotten to say ‘movie’ projector; I got a still one.
So, if falling crime rates coincide with the rise of violent video games and increasing violence on TV and at the cinema, should we conclude that media violence is causing the drop in crime rates?
There aren’t many odysseys in cinema for characters.
I feel that, particularly because of language, we are handicapped in getting a large world audience. But Hindi cinema has the same ingredients that appeal to the whole world.
For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.
I have always wanted to work with Lingusamy, as he is a master of commercial cinema. I have always admired his etching of female characters.
I had no interest in cinema until I was 24 years old. My friends had posters of their favourite stars in their houses, but I was far from a film buff – very detached from films.
Ten Days That Shook The World, by Eisenstein, I went to see it, and I was so impressed with this film, so impressed with what cinema could do.
We all go to the theater and cinema to be inspired and moved on an emotional level, sometimes to laughter, sometimes to tears. Once I discovered that acting could have such an effect, I was sold. It has been one of the most rewarding discoveries I have ever made.
There are large numbers of people in India below the poverty line; there are large numbers of people who lead a meager existence. They want to find a little escape from the hardships of life and come and watch something colorful and exciting and musical. Indian cinema provides that.
Most of the cricketers are doing side businesses apart from playing the sport, so why should I be left behind. I feel there is a lot of money in making films, and since Punjabi cinema is doing good, this is a lucrative option for me.
I have made a promise to myself that I will have no limitations as an actor. I have realised I have to pay attention to the commercials or the business aspect of cinema, but deep inside, I am purely an artiste.
When I was younger, people were inventing a new way of writing – James Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner. And I thought we had to find a structure for cinema. I fought for a radical cinema, and I continued all my life.
I love escaping into film, because everyday life I find quite troublesome. So any excuse to go into a cinema and say goodbye to the world for a couple of hours, or in a book or whatever, is great.
Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It’s for the distributor. The film becomes a brand.
I don’t want to be a grumpy old man or too pessimistic, because if I have a chance, I would prefer to watch a film in the cinema with an audience on a big screen instead of watching it on a cell phone. It’s a very different experience, but somehow I think this form will have its own future and life.
I could almost say it is my religion. I guess that sounds pretentious, but I want to live and breathe cinema.
You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.
Telugu audiences love cinema. They won’t let a good film down, and they’ve proved this with the way they accepted ‘Srimanthudu.’
Cinema has become my life. I don’t mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.
I am more interested in revolutionary beauty than in the great beauty, to be honest. Italian cinema is now mostly a bureau for tourism. We have given up that revolution of the contemporary.
I turn a lot of stuff down – big, big movies, the kind I wouldn’t want to go to the cinema to see.
In cinema, the leading player is the director.
As a matter of fact, I find the Western cinema very fantastic.
Today’s cinema is a global art form, it is impossible to make movies for a market the size of France, representing no more than 4% of the world’s total.
Professional cinema image-taking should integrate, serve, interest, and enhance the story. I judge cinematography not just for a story well told but for what the story is.
Horror will always be there, it always comes back, it’s a familiar genre that some people, not everyone – it’s sort of the cinema anchovies. You either like it or you don’t.
The wonderful thing about cinema is you can bring a 3D world to life.
I always try to do middle-of-the-road cinema.
The cinema is really built for the big screen and big sound, so that a person can go into another world and have an experience.
I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don’t hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory.
Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing. And Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.
I like cinema. I am very fond of it. But from time to time I feel like having some time on my own.
When I was a child, the temptation to sin was always a romantic option. This romantic option led me to the cinema, a place where sin was welcome.
I tell my children to avoid theatre and go into cinema and TV.
One of the reasons I do like ‘Cult’ is that it plays along the same vibe as the movie ‘Seven,’ which I absolutely love. There was a period of cinema in the mid-’90s that I was a huge fan of, with ‘Heat’ and ‘Seven’ and the Tarantino era. If I’ve ever been fanatical, it was about those films, back in the day.
My mom was the happiest person when I first got a Telugu offer. She told me that the people here love cinema and will also love you. I have to agree with her.
It is important that alongside the blockbusters there are stories that can inspire and audiences can experience together in the cinema.
Some months ago, while I was preparing a new work, I told a young cinema executive my intention of including in a soundtrack two themes from Bach. But when he asked me which has been the last hit from that Bach?, then I knew that I had no longer place in cinema.
I think that distributors and marketing companies realise that there are a huge number of women over 40 who want to go the cinema and see films about themselves. Women of my age don’t want to be force-fed with stuff about 25-year-olds.
I am doing the remake of ‘Bai Chali Sasariye,’ which was my debut in the Rajasthani film industry. It became a major critical and commercial hit in the history of Rajasthani cinema.
It is my first preference to do films with social significance. Art cinema has given me credibility and status as an actor, but commercial cinema has given me a comfortable living.
When I went to the cinema as a boy, when I saw a war film, I thought the general was the star, and that Cary Grant was an extra. I had no idea about the structure of film, but I loved going to the cinema.
The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images.
I’m a bit old-fashioned. I like the idea of going to the cinema and then an Italian restaurant.
I wouldn’t want to do a Bollywood film per se, but I would like to do an Indian-language film. For some reason I think Bollywood has become synonymous with commercial cinema, which is song and dance and everything that is larger than life, and I am interested in the reality.
