Asif Kapadia Quotes

'The Look' is my first documentary, and I enjoyed the freedom of working within a small team.

Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.

Docs, in general, are made in the edit bay, archival docs even more so.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it.

I don't think the subject of a documentary film should be producers on it.

When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was.

For a documentary filmmaker, I do very well.

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

When you make a documentary, you have to adapt to what reality imposes upon you.

The relationship between a director and an editor in documentaries is so important.

I started as a documentary maker, and they're my first love.

When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.

Reality television hasn't killed documentaries, because there are so many great documentaries still being made, but it certainly has changed the landscape. There is this breed of gimmicky documentary that is basically a reality show.

My background is sociology. Combined with my graphic approach, if I could do some film projects, I think I'd be very good at making documentaries eventually, but people don't think of me for that, of course. But dialogue is something I know I can be good at.

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go.

We set out to capture what was happening, and then we cut that into the series.

I hope that not only my documentaries, but everybody's documentaries, last. It will really confuse historians in the next century, because they'll have, in addition to all the print material, they'll have all these pictures to look at.

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

I don't know if I'd mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.

It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.

My time in documentaries was very educating, in terms of life experience as well as the filmmaking side of it.

From 2005 to 2010, I was exclusively shooting 'The Act of Killing' and then editing it.

With documentaries, what's beautiful about them is that you capture something unique in a shot, something that will never repeat itself.