The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
Filmmaking Wisdom from Robert Bresson
Not beautiful photography, not beautiful images, but necessary images, and photography.
- Robert Bresson
Filmmaking Wisdom from Bong Joon-ho
My favorite genre lies inside myself, and as I follow my favorite stories, characters, and images, it sums up to a certain genre.
- Bong Joon-ho
Filmmaking Wisdom from Bruno Dumont
The movie theater is not a quality criterion. The problem is less a question of theaters or screens than a question of whether the direction is cinematic or not.
- Bruno Dumont
Filmmaking Wisdom from Jim Jarmusch
My work as a filmmaker is a process, and there is no destination. It’s like the Buddhist saying, “The path is the destination.”
- Jim Jarmusch
Filmmaking Wisdom from Agnès Varda
In my films I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.
- Agnès Varda
Filmmaking Wisdom from Andrei Tarkovsky
I am convinced that for any one of us our filmmaking will turn out to be a fruitless and hopeless affair if we fail to grasp precisely and unequivocally the specific character of cinema, and if we fail to find in ourselves our own key to it.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
Filmmaking Wisdom from Steve McQueen
Beauty is not of any interests to me. What happens sometimes is that, by coincidence, things occur and there’s a striking image, because of what the narrative is saying and what it’s symbolizing.
- Steve McQueen
Filmmaking Wisdom from Robert Bresson
A sigh, a silence, a word, a sentence, a din, a hand, the whole of your model, his face, in repose, in movement, in profile, full face, an immense view, a restricted space…Each thing exactly in its place: your only resources.
- Robert Bresson
Filmmaking Wisdom from John Cassavetes
I don’t direct a film. I set up an atmosphere, and the atmosphere directs the film.
- John Cassavetes
Filmmaking Wisdom from Jane Campion
Being responsible for everything you put in your picture, and being able to defend it. Keeping everything clear around you so you know what is operating. To open the wound and keep it clean.
- Jane Campion
Filmmaking Wisdom from Jean-Pierre Melville
You can’t make films just for the sake of making films. If fate wills that I should make more films, I’ll try to remain faithful to this ideal of being ambitious when I start a film…telling myself, “People have to enjoy this.” That’s my ambition: to fill cinemas.
- Jean-Pierre Melville
Filmmaking Wisdom from Spike Lee
I think it is very important that films make people look at what they’ve forgotten.
- Spike Lee
Filmmaking Wisdom from Terrence Malick
For an hour, or for two days, or longer…films can enable small changes of heart, changes that mean the same thing: to live better and to love more.
- Terrence Malick
Filmmaking Wisdom from Victor Erice
Everyone has the capacity to create and recreate within them. And a film doesn’t exist unless it is seen. If there are no eyes to look at the images, the images don’t exist. When I’ve finished a film, it’s no longer mine. It belongs to the people. I’m nothing more than an intermediary in the process.
- Victor Erice
Filmmaking Wisdom from Andrei Tarkovsky
One doesn’t need to explain in film, but rather to directly affect the feelings of the audience. It is this awakened emotion that then drives the thoughts forward.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
Filmmaking Wisdom from Robert Bresson
Images and sounds like people who make acquaintance on a journey and afterwards can not separate.
- Robert Bresson
Filmmaking Wisdom from Steve McQueen
What would be the best way to translate this on screen, what would be the best way to visualize these images, this story, and that’s it. It is all about the language of the story.
- Steve McQueen