John Grierson Quotes

I think cinema should provoke thoughts, sure, but using it as I soapbox I think is the wrong place. I never want to be part of something like that, where there's an agenda there that's not about telling a story, where its someone getting on a soapbox and preaching their own beliefs onto somebody.

As a result of my life on the road and the increasing number of rainy afternoons in cinemas, I began to get the idea that I might write a film.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

I often wonder when I make a film - I'm thinking of making a film of the Buddha - and I often wonder: If Buddha had all the elements that are given to a director - if he had music, if he had visuals, if he had a video camera - would we get Buddhism better?

I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.

All literature is political.

Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.

Cinema is made to film material: the body. By filming the material, the mechanical, the worker, we arrive at the spiritual.

Cinema is a reflection of its own society.

I like Spike Lee a lot. He's incredibly gifted and I don't think he gets the credit he deserves as a filmmaker.

Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It's what you do with the medium.

The best cinema is about ethics.

I love making movies.

Cinema is an infinite medium, so we should take advantage of it, I think.

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.

A lot of people don't know the passion I have for Asian American cinema.

I thought Mia Hansen-Love was a true auteur, and I always wanted to work with her. Mia's empathy for her characters and her ability to use the language of cinema to communicate real human depth is extraordinary. She's a humanist.

Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves.

That's what interests me about film: directing.

I have always thought of films as stories for the world.

The kind of work I do and the films I believe in, I had to take charge of making that kind of cinema.

I love cinema and creating new things, but essentially, I am creating all this because I want people to see it.

My films are personal-voice-driven films about human characters and the place we live. Technically, I'm an independent filmmaker.

I started out with V Shantaram. But my favourite director has been Gulzar, with whom I did intelligent cinema in movies like 'Khushboo,' 'Kinara' and 'Parichay.'

I learned a lot from Direk Brillante Mendoza and Bing Lao.