Lisa Cholodenko Quotes

A film engages you emotionally and intellectually.

What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful.

I love films that make me react emotionally and physically when you walk out of the cinema. Two of my favorite films however have got to be 'The Tree Of Life' and 'The Piano Teacher,' which also stars one of my favourite actresses Isabelle Huppert.

When I watch a movie for the first few times I'm usually thinking about where I was in a given scene, who was next to me, what we were doing etc. But after I've gotten through all of this, when I'm really watching the film itself, then I get moved.

I like movies a lot, and I feel really excited when I see a movie that moves me the right way.

Storytelling is powerful; film particularly. We can know a lot of things intellectually, but humans really live on storytelling. Primarily with ourselves; we're all stories of our own narrative.

I don't think it's right to define films as commercial or art house. What's important is that a film evokes a certain emotion when it's being watched.

You can be moved by an animated film and not by a live action film. There could be great inspiration in and humanity in that animated story.

Film is such a very good tool for communicating emotions, and all designers and creative people look to inspire an emotional response.

I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I'm not impressed by any technicality.

I'm not a purist - I like films that are narrated and films that aren't, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.

We all do that thing which is the best in movies - we relate.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

As a viewer, I love watching movies. There has to be an emotional connection.

I think a movie is a media that is evoking feelings.

My films express me, my sense of rhythm, my sense of impact, my sense of kinetic energy. I like films to move, but I like also clear storytelling and characters, and most of all, I like authentic emotion.

Movies aren't machines. They interact with our brains.

Film as a medium, like a novel as a medium, possesses a unique ability to communicate. Film is capable of communicating in a way that no other medium can, and I would say the same for the novel.

Film is probably the medium best suited to reach the most people - the visual, the aural, the limbic, the intellectual: it captures all these parts of our mind and soul. No other art form comes close.

Cinema has to move people.

When I make a film, the yardstick is my mind. If I laugh at the jokes and feel sad at the serious undersides, then the subject works.

I'll be honest: 'Badlands' changed my life: it really did rewire my brain as to how film can operate.

My goal is to always try to make you feel something, whether that's humor or sadness or excitement, and to try to manipulate screen space.

I'll go and see anything so long as it amuses me, or moves me. If it doesn't do either I want to go home.

The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.