Fede Alvarez Quotes

I see things going on before my eyes and I photograph them as they are, without trying to change them. I don't warn people beforehand. That's why I'm a chronicler. I speak about us and I speak about myself.

I try to capture reality, nothing else.

Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality.

In those simpler days, you could just take pictures of movie stars and show them the way they were, as normal human beings. And if I felt part of any movement at the time, it was just to do that - to be journalistic and photograph what is, rather than what is made up.

The photograph doesn't claim to be a participant, or to know, or to be a club member of whatever it's documenting - photography is more demanding when it doesn't pretend to know.

You don't need to over-dramatise life, you can just reflect it. It's more interesting, in a way, if it appears to ring true.

I don't like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.

I'm simply trying to tell the truth about human behaviour as I see it.

A lot of people think theatre must be much harder work than film, but anything histrionic or superfluous gets seen on camera so you have to work to distil it into a complete sense of what's true.

I think that if you can convey a kind of a complexity, a mystery, a truth in stillness, that, to me, is really worth striving for, and I totally agree with Michael Fassbender in that less is more. If it's going on inside you, the camera will find it.

I paint things as they are. I don't comment.

I never shot on sets, but if I was traveling somewhere or on location, I would always have my camera, and I'd always be - it's that kind of fly on the wall approach to photography, though. I don't engage the subject. I like to sneak around, skulk about in the dark.

Portraiture keeps me humble. It's simple and straightforward. There is nothing more interesting I can make up than the figure sitting right in front of me.

I don't have lights, I don't have assistants, I just go and meet somebody and take a photograph. That's really basic, and that's how I used to work when I was 17 or 18 in Holland.

I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.

Just film what's there, trust what came before, one hour before, and make it easy.

I like documentaries because there's nothing to nitpick or criticize about scenes if they aren't just right. It's about honesty and real-life circumstances coming out. Granted it can be swayed by how people tell that story, but overall, I like it because it is true.

I recorded that because it happened to me. I wasn't making a point.

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.

I adopt a very simple approach. I observe and reflect real life and ordinary people and sooner or later that raises a laugh.

Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.

I'm not a writer who looks for the fantastic and the sensational. I like the world we've got. If there is anything special and magical, I have to find it in the ordinary stuff.

I just like to keep things small and subtle and authentic, and ground everything in reality. So that is something that I feel is my strength as a director and I try to achieve as an actor.

I try and photograph people as they are. I do not want to hide anything. I want to bring across a personality, a humanity. It is not a case of model A or model B against a white background. I am interested in the person.

My responsibility is to present things in a way that is realistic and true to the multifaceted world I've known... This is how I think the world is, not how it should be.