Aparna Sen Quotes

In a feature film, the question of censorship always comes up.

I love my country, but I believe that we are too quick to censor nudity.

Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.

A lot of my movies were completely destroyed by the censors, who can be pretty arbitrary. They're not completely fair with how they treat one person vs. another.

There are things that I love in Iranian cinema and things that I don't. In Iranian cinema, you have to use metaphor because you are living under a dictatorship.

I have a dirty mouth sometimes, and I'm very liberal, and that doesn't always go down well in the film industry - especially when you've got to appeal to mums and daughters.

The censor boards are mere redundant forces conspiring to keep the 'bold' films out of reach of the audience.

I've been involved with violent movies, and then I've also said at a certain point, 'I can't take it anymore. Please cut it.' You know, you've got to respect the filmmaker, and it's a really tough issue.

I don’t think that they would have allowed me to make The Best Years of Our Lives just a few years after I made it [in 1946].

If we must have the Production Code, then I think the only way to use it effectively is to judge a film as a whole and determine whether its effect is good or bad.

Today, there is not one Hindi movie which doesn't have a kissing scene.

When a script shows two individuals attracted to each other, why can't they kiss on screen? As far as the scene is honest, not meant to titillate the masses, and, most importantly, I am convinced about it, I am okay with it.

All my films were based on sensitive issues, and they were passed without any problems. I give full credit to the Censor Board for being capable enough to do their work well.

In Rio Bravo when Duke makes love to Feathers, the scene dissolves to the next morning where we see him putting on his vest and almost humming. It was subtle, but you knew what happened. Give me a towel and some blankets any day!

Well I don't think sex and violence have ever stopped a movie from being mainstream.

What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.

The American way is to let each family decide what they want in their homes, not somebody in Washington …. Four letter words are acceptable to some families and not acceptable to others.

Would you want your wife or your servant to read this book?

Apropos of the agitation for abolishing the Censor in England, it occurred to me that not even the advocates of freedom seek to justify the free treatment of sexual matters in any other than a high moral-pointing vein. The notion that sexual themes might allowably be treated in the mere aim of amusement does not seem to have occurred to anybody at all.

A film has to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience.

There are stories you can tell on TV that can't be told in movies anymore.

I just sit down and write. I never know when. The most recent one is 'Sarah Still,' which is about our life, Sarah and me. It's my favorite of all my poems.

I always was irritated doing network television... You're in love, you make love. That happens.

I've made six films for Disney, and they have a clause in their contracts called the morality clause that I've always refused to sign.

I'm deeply stressed as a filmmaker, and I know I'm not alone. The censorship crisis, the moral policing, the politics of it has most of us on edge. I'm scared to use certain words: like, if I use 'Bombay,' will there be a problem?