I find it remarkable. It’s surreal for me that I’ve gotten to work with so many people who are not only great filmmakers but whose films have had such a direct effect on me.
I’m a filmmaker and I’m proud of the movies I’ve made. But in the background of my life I was also very involved in the creation of the sport.
With ‘Mask,’ ‘Smooth Talk’ and ‘Blue Velvet,’ I loved the specific experiences so much. Each one was a specific filmmaker with a specific vision.
You want somebody who’s capable of being diverse in the characters they play, and you want a big name that’s going to bring attention to the filmmakers and to the project.
As a woman filmmaker in Bosnia, I have more privileges than disadvantages. I feel I can do more than my male colleagues with a motherly approach rather than a male approach.
People used to want to be filmmakers and animators; now they want to make apps.
I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn’t have the resources to do that.
In Austin, you work in anything that will pay and a lot of things that don’t. The documentary filmmaker may also be a gaffer on a feature and producer for a commercial series and web host. Everyone just does a little bit of everything, and you have to because it’s a secondary market.
I think I’m a better filmmaker than actor, so I already know that. That’s OK. I can handle not being a famous actor.
I had had no aspirations to be a filmmaker or a writer.
A filmmaker doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand it. You don’t have to die to shoot a death scene.
It is important to keep the filmmakers interested in you so they can offer you everything and anything. We actors are not given work on the basis of audience poll; the filmmaker will cast you after they see and like your work. It is essential to do different kind of films and not get typecast.
What attracted me to ‘Eclipse’ was that it is a great story and a tremendous challenge for me as a filmmaker.
I wanted already to be a filmmaker after I saw ‘La Dolce Vita.’
My dad couldn’t connect to my wanting to be a filmmaker. He was very connected in entertainment, and through him I met Steven Spielberg and got rides on his private plane to California. I’d see Spielberg’s people reading scripts. I was like, ‘That’s what I want to be when I grow up.’
I am the luckiest filmmaker I know.
The director Steve McQueen has found a way to constantly include the element of surprise in his work, both as an artist and as a filmmaker.
Rituparno Ghosh was one of the finest filmmakers of India; I had seen his films ‘Raincoat’ and ‘Chokher Bali’ and I had always admired his body of work.
As a filmmaker, I don’t want to limit myself to one kind of movie. After ‘Headhunters,’ I went to Hollywood and read a lot of scripts: lots of action thrillers and heist movies, and superhero films.
I wear this label of a Christian filmmaker proudly.
I find that I don’t lie about the big things in life. The things that matter. And about me. While I’m talking about myself, I rarely lie: I know who I am, my level of talent, that I’m not the most versatile filmmaker, the person I am. I don’t lie about myself because I don’t lie to myself.
My philosophy as a filmmaker is to inform and entertain at the same time. And when I went away from documentaries into miniseries like ‘Roots,’ I did the reverse. Instead of just entertaining, I want to inform at the same time.
For someone, success is to be the highest paid actress. For some, it might be the number of awards, and for some, it is the number of films. Honestly, I feel privileged when a celebrated filmmaker offers me a role so that I can be a part of his vision. That is success for me.
In England, there’s a lot of people producing their own work and becoming producers and filmmakers, so they’re not constantly waiting around. It can be very scarce for work, so it’s important to create the work.
It’s interesting the kind of freedom the musical form gives you. The rules are out the window. You can get impressionistic without seeming pretentious. Because it’s perceived as an inherently accessible form, it gives filmmakers some leeway.
I have no idea why one of our most original filmmakers would want to spend two years of his life translating someone else’s movie from Spanish into English. And it wasn’t such a good film in Spanish, either.
While I always thought of making sequels to movies like ‘Ghayal,’ the filmmakers would almost always veto the idea.
I think filmmakers want their movies to be seen.
As a filmmaker, I believe in trying to make movies that invite the audience to be part of the film; in other words, there are some films where I’m just a spectator and am simply observing from the front seat. What I try to do is draw the audience into the film and have them participate in what’s happening onscreen.
When you get an opportunity to work in good films like ‘Raazi,’ it boosts your confidence to know that good filmmakers are willing to work with you.
The great composers I worked with along the way, I always felt they were filmmakers more than composers. They would talk about the story rather than the music.
I saw ‘A Clockwork Orange’ when I was 11. When you watch ‘Clockwork Orange’ at 11, it either totally scares you from watching movies, or you want to become a filmmaker. I was the latter.
If I’m in a gathering of filmmakers, I’m first and foremost a British Indian; if I’m in a gathering of British Indians, I’m a woman director. There are so many sides to who I am that I change all the time.
From where I sit, I see the digital cinema creating sloppiness on the part of filmmakers because they know if they really get in trouble, they can fix it later. So they don’t pay that much attention, and of course it costs a lot more money.
I think all the filmmakers in Hong Kong are influenced by John Woo.
Like a lot of people my age, I grew up on Amblin movies. They’re a part of who I am as a filmmaker and, arguably, as a person.
I don’t profess to be Shonda Rhimes by any stretch of the imagination, or Dick Wolf. They’re icons. I’m a filmmaker.
I’m a filmmaker, so I always think: When is the breaking point? Sometimes you’ve got to go beyond the breaking point, and then you catch it. When is long enough? It’s one of those things you have to look at, walk away, and go home and find out what it is.
I hope I can become a good enough filmmaker where I can take a script that I’m not ‘heart and soul’ into, but I could still make something really great out of it.
I am an emotional and fragile person. I observe life, I am perceptive and can read a person’s body language. I have a strong journalistic streak in me, and had I not been a filmmaker, I would have become a film journalist. I have combined my perceptive and journalistic traits to create my own brand of cinema.
Roman Polanski is one of my favorite filmmakers, and John Phillips one of my favorite songwriters. I had the honor to meet each of these men and was almost giddy to be blessed with the chance to tell each artist what his work meant has to me.
The filmmaker is really important to me: it could be their first film; it’s not just about their reputation, but I have to really believe in them.
When dealing with HBO, you actually are dealing with real filmmakers.
For American filmmakers, the Oscars is like a mystic thing. For me, it was being in a mirror of my dreams when I was dreaming of Hollywood when I was an adolescent.
The younger generation of filmmakers is concerned about our roots, rather than making films with characters plucked out of the cloud or some English DVD. Actually since 2000, Tamil cinema is going through some positive changes.
I am a filmmaker. My job is to make films. When something excites you – a story or characterisation – you immediately forget about everything else. You only think how to make a movie out of it. The economics come only later. You shouldn’t let money dictate the kind of films you should make.
I always wanted to be a feature filmmaker and tried to treat that experience as some sort of elite film school where I could learn the craft, and got paid to learn the craft.
When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn’t mean that the other 39 are bad.
As a filmmaker, like any artist, when something affects me emotionally I think about it in those terms. It’s my way of dealing with my thoughts, my fears and my hardships. I think the same can be said with any artist. For a musician, you’re going to write a song about something that affects you emotionally.
I entered the film industry as a background dancer and then gradually rose step by step. Now I am a judge and a filmmaker, but amongst everything, my personal favourite continues to be dancing, as it is what has led me to the rest.
What I feel is great acting might be rubbish for another filmmaker. There is no right or wrong way to do it. It all boils down to the trust between an actor and a director.
If there isn’t a deep core reason for a film existing, what is the point? For me to be known as a filmmaker that makes films that have a point, I’m stoked.
I’m not going to be labeled a black filmmaker. I am not here to just tell black stories. I’m here to tell all kinds of stories, musicals and dramas.
