Ira Sachs Quotes

I saw what I could [in Mexico City], but we rarely got anything other than big, mainstream American films.

In general, I almost always watch foreign films.

'Five Easy Pieces,' 'Easy Rider' - those are indie pictures; those were not studio pictures. They had relationships with studio distribution, but they were indies.

In the beginning, it wasn't even a question of deciding I'm going to do independent film and not commercial films - I wasn't being offered any commercial films, and there wasn't an independent scene.

South Africa had very poor repertory distribution. I didn't find out about Akira Kurosawa and Tarkovsky and Werner Herzog until I got to the U.K.

The scene of independent cinema is already a large scene in America, and not in a negative way, but it's cluttered. It's very populated with just American films, so the room left for foreign movies is not extremely vast. The American public also does not really read. They don't read subtitles. But we're like that in Canada, too.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

I think it's important that nobody forgets that although Hollywood commercially dominates the world cinema, in fact what comes out of the filmmaking here is only a tiny slice out of the massive amount of operation that goes on around the world.

I grew up thinking there was something called 'independent film,' which I wouldn't necessarily have had access to if there wasn't Sundance.

I've been working a long time, and mostly European films.

The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'

There's so many films from around the world, I emphasize, that are so beautifully photographed, but they don't get the recognition.

I don't think of the 'indie film world' as this cohesive kind of world anyhow. It's so disparate: all these different filmmakers seeking financing from many different sources to make different kinds of movies. It's hard to pinpoint a trend, really.

The films that are coming out of SXSW are incredible, and they should get the same bids that films at Sundance are getting.

My offbeat choices definitely don't get me too much money because they are made in a very restrained budget. We do it because we love cinema, because we are passionate about the content and new ways of storytelling.

Actually I don't watch a lot of films but when I do, I like experimental, avant garde, European and world cinema. That is the language of cinema I am drawn towards. I don't watch much Hollywood or Bollywood.

I was lucky enough to come in at the beginning of the independent film movement, and it's really shaped my life and my career.

Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.

We are moving into a phase where what was once alternative cinema is becoming mainstream. I like being in that space.

With independent films, you again get to work with new directors and experiment too.

That's what I want to continue to do: really odd films, with interesting filmmakers.

I guess, in a sense, 'Audition' was a film that gave me an opportunity that I hadn't had up until that point. So that's definitely one that is important to me. Then there's 'Visitor Q' that kind of taught me that there are some kinds of films that can only be made as low-budget films that really wouldn't work as anything else.

I would be open to doing cinema anywhere in the world. I wouldn't want to restrict myself to a certain kind of cinema or a certain language or get typecast.

I assisted on a lot of films outside my dad's company. I only did two of his films.

I want to do one or two commercial films, but also want to do off-beat movies.