Jean-Jacques Annaud Quotes

The select group of people who do make realistic cinema, who do make cinema perhaps a little more acceptable to the Western audience, is a very small percentage.

I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations.

A film engages you emotionally and intellectually.

I mean, '8½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.

Movies, by nature, are not subjective, they're objective.

'Barton Fink' owed something to Roman Polanski. As a director, he always goes beyond the obvious narrative drift.

My personal fave is 'The Japanese Wife', because I think I achieved a lot of what I wanted to do. I wanted that Japanese minimalism in the film, which I managed to get somewhat.

A fragmented film such as 'Babel' gives the impression of 'edginess' but, in its form, tells us nothing we didn't already know.

McQueen is an astonishing film maker. He uses really unusual shots and builds incredible dramatic tension.

In thus pointing out certain respects in which philosophy resembles literature more than science, I do not mean, of course, to imply that it would be well for philosophy if it ceased to aim at scientific rigor.

The religious establishment (of Saudi Arabia) makes sure that millions of Islamic books are translated into other languages each year, but very few books are translated into Arabic.

I always feel in movies, I don't know if it's because I'm jaded, but I always feel like we don't go far enough.

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.

'Piku' was driven by subtleties. Most films come with the padding of the sound, the visual, the drama.

Whether you're Godard or Almodovar or Scorsese, it's text, text, text. Everything begins with the text, and this is a source of great anguish to me. So please let cinema get on with doing what it does best, which is expressing ideas in visual terms.

Look at 'Marienbad' honestly. What is it? It is just another talking radio show with pictures. Nobody acts. People stand around while the author talks about the woodwork.

Works of art are like a Trojan horse. Under the surface is always some artist's deeply held philosophy on their view of the world. But on the other hand, you do not want to make it feel like medicine. You do not want to make it feel like an afternoon TV special where you're trying to hammer a message into someone's head.

I actually studied literature and philosophy. So, when I started making films, I didn't really know what I was doing, and I was too proud and arrogant to learn.

I don't think 'Lootera' is slow paced; it's finely paced for its setting and story.

Art and cinema is not restricted to any language.

For me, film is an extremely powerful way of conveying a message to a mainstream audience.

For me, 'Shanghai' is beyond language. For me, it's good cinema. The language is incidental.

When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film 'Amores Perros,' you may wonder if he knows what he wants.

World music can be sometimes like the lumber room in which all the non-English singers are dumped. When you are singing in Arabic, no matter what your style of music or artistic proposition is, you are faced with some of that reality.

People say that my movies are violent. I do not think so.