Andrew Haigh Quotes

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

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.

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

If I've seen the movie, it means it's an influence on my own filmmaking. Every movie has a reflection in 'Night Watch.'

Agnes Varda changed my view of cinema; she directs from an artistic point of view, and a film is most of all the expression of an artistic director. I learnt to enter the world and the imagination of a director.

My films start with images, a few images and a few feelings, and I try to edit them together to see the correspondence between these images and these feelings.

With 'Mask,' 'Smooth Talk' and 'Blue Velvet,' I loved the specific experiences so much. Each one was a specific filmmaker with a specific vision.

I don't make films to reproduce reality.

It could be sci-fi, love story, historical drama what counts for me is the fact that they're made by great directors with a great point of view who bring the audience to be elevated and at the same time entertained. That's what cinema is.

I've always tried to create music the way Kubrick makes film, just kind of mimicking consciousness. He has a way of mimicking this greater power.

An epic is the canvas Brian DePalma paints on.

I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.

My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility.

I think each film should be regarded as its own specific text.

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

All movies are pure process. A commercial movie isn't less process than an art movie. You can't make your decisions about a film on the basis of, 'Is it important enough? Is it serious enough?' It's either alive or it's not for me. If it's alive, I want to do it.

I don't approach films purely in context of genre.

I think film is a very powerful advocate and message carrier.

My roommate at Yale University introduced me to the auteur theory of filmmaking. I soon became a big fan of the works of John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, and Stan Brakhage. I then decided to make my own films!

I hope this doesn't sound pretentious, but I very often like the way Europeans make movies. I think sometimes that don't they care about having to clean certain things.

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

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

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.

The first time I saw Douglas Sirk was in college. I didn't encounter him on the late, late, late show like a lot of people; people a little older than me, maybe. But I saw him already as someone to take special note of in an academic context in college. I was immediately in a state of visual splendor.

When I was around 12 or so, I saw 'The Shining.' I just remember that being a turning point for me, where I started to think about the fact that there was a hand behind the film. That it wasn't just this magical story being told - there were actual people crafting these films, and they were works of art.