Marshall Curry Quotes

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps.

With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye.

I'm not trying to acquire a reputation as serious documentary maker for its own sake.

I just like documentaries.

I don't want to be on a soapbox, but I feel like a lot of documentary filmmakers are part of the ancient tradition of writing down notes, of saying, 'Hey people, hey people!'

There's a documentary film-maker called Werner Herzog, who's a German film-maker. I really dig his stuff, I'd love to chat with him.

The only thing documentary filmmakers have to work with, at least the way I make films, is trust. That's been true of everyone from James Carville and George Stephanopoulos to the kids in 'American High' to the soldiers in 'Military Diaries' to Anna Wintour to Dick Cheney.

Post my parents' divorce, when I was 10, my mother, Deepa Motwane, took up a job as a line producer with documentary filmmaker Shukla Das, who was a cousin of hers. When I was 17, she did a TV talk show and I helped her with research and assisted her as she was also producing that show.

As a documentary filmmaker, 'Meru' was an irresistible challenge. You can spend years searching for the right story, but this one had all the elements: the obstacles, the characters, and the drama.

Despite the limitations of the bulky 16mm camera and 10-minute film magazines, 'The Anderson Platoon' feels as spontaneous and fresh as any films that have come out of the Afghan or Iraq wars.

A film based on my life would not be as interesting as my father. I have not lived a life as enriching as my father. I have only been observer to his life, so I think I'm the best person to make a documentary on him.

I would love to direct a documentary film if any good subject comes my way.

We make movies to endorse our own personal feelings. I am not, in fact, a documentary filmmaker. I've got my personal beliefs, and I'm ready to put them out on the table.

When we made 'Life in a Day,' we asked people around the globe to record their lives on a single ordinary day. When we were cutting that film, we talked about what it might be like if we chose a day that already had significance to people. The result is 'Christmas in a Day.'

At Harvard, direct cinema was the core of the film department, and most of the students were trying to make socially conscious works, but I was trying to combine fiction and non-fiction to show how our seemingly factual world is constituted through fantasy and stories.

Brilliant documentaries are about so much more than their subject.

To put it crudely, 'The Act of Killing' would blast open the space for the more delicate film, 'The Look of Silence,' to do its work.

I was the first independent to walk in with a documentary.

Like all art, nonfiction film should invite, seduce, or force us to confront the most difficult, frightening or mysterious aspects of what it means to be human.

People may assume 'The Act of Killing' is a historical documentary about what happened in 1965. But our purpose was to expose a present-day regime of fear for what it is.

My roots are documentaries.

We do documentaries on the history of cinema in between our feature films.

In Delhi, I got a chance to assist someone on a documentary film. Then I moved to Mumbai. This was before the satellite TV. One had to assist a director for years before being able to direct a movie.

I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.

I love Humphrey Jennings. People ask me who my favorite documentary maker is, and he's certainly in the top three.