Bahman Ghobadi Quotes

I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.

Even American artists are terrorized by market forces. If one can't see the films, my wings are clipped. I am no longer concerned about this, because I'm focused on making films. Perhaps one day someone who discovers sunken treasures will reexamine my 35 or 36 films - I hope it will be 40 or 50 before I die.

What the artist owes the world is his work; not a model for living.

I guess I created LeRoy Neiman. Nobody else told me how to do it. Well, I'm a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work.

But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.

Now that we do not have priests and philosophers any more, artists are the most important people in the world.

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done.

I think indie films have more of a fresh, experimental vibe about them, whereas studio films know what they want and can basically get it.

I'm just following my own art, and I just think that the only thing I can do to be a great artist is do the best job I can in whatever movie I do.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.

When Picasso painted in Paris, was he a Spanish or a French painter? It does not matter, he was Picasso, whatever the influences surrounding him. He simply chose Paris because it was the ideal place for him to sell his creation.

I see myself and many artists like me as the torchbearers through these dark ages.

I love the intimacy and the passion and the danger that go into independent filmmaking. Because it comes out of a creative necessity. It comes from people who really want to make a movie and want to make a difference and want to grab an audience by the gullet and show them something different.

When I started out in independent films in the early '70s, we did everything for the love of art. It wasn't about money and stardom. That was what we were reacting against. You'd die before you'd be bought.

But short films are not inferior, just different. I think the short gives a freedom to film-makers. What's appealing is that you don't have as much responsibility for storytelling and plot. They can be more like a portrait, or a poem.

Independent film is film that has thought in it. There's no independent thought in studio films. It's collective thought.

There were no previews; we made the film we wanted to make.

My heart is in independent film-making. For me, it's where the fun, gritty storytelling is being told.

I made 'True Detective' like it was going to be the only thing I ever made for television. So put in everything and the kitchen sink. Everything.

There's a tremendous intellectual fervor among independent filmmakers, and that has to be cultivated.

I want to do just, like, regular art. Whatever is made today on canvas goes up against all of art history. It's the most radical thing.

It's impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

The problem with most Hollywood movies is they don't give the director enough control.

Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.

So with the young African artists. What they have to learn from tribal art is not how to copy the traditional forms, but the confidence that comes from knowing that somewhere inside them there should be the vitality which enabled their fathers to produce these extraordinary and exciting forms.