Carlo Ponti Quotes

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.

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.

We have to create images that remain in people's memory because a film is judged by what they have already seen. You are trying to create an image that is unique and you have to employ all the resources available to you.

I've been making films since the '70s and trying to develop that best possible fiction-film style that I feel is the most expressive. At a certain point, I felt I was winding up making the same film stylistically and I found that boring.

There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this there's certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it.

But short films are not inferior, just different. I think the short gives a freedom to film-makers. What's appealing is that you don't have as much responsibility for storytelling and plot. They can be more like a portrait, or a poem.

My heart is in independent film-making. For me, it's where the fun, gritty storytelling is being told.

Movies are art and the spirit of the movie depends on the creators.

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

The cinema that interests me departs from realism.

I'm drawn toward filmmakers who have a very distinctive voice. I really appreciate people who push themselves and, therefore, push the medium forward.

I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not.

Louis Malle was the best filmmaker I've ever worked with. He was such an artist. He was dealing with the theme of innocence and experience.

Film is pop art. It's not whether it's auteur cinema or not; that's a false distinction. Cinema is cinema.

I'm not a big fan of shooting something that looks like it could belong in any movie. I'm not a fan of, okay, 'wide shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up, close-up - we'll figure it out in post.' I hate that.

Of course I know what works for me and what kind of tone I want my films to have.

The challenge is to balance the technical elements and what is required of us with being artists and telling a story.

I would say that all my films have more content than a 'content-driven film.' It is not easy to make such films.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra is the only man I see around who makes films because he thinks 'this is a story that needs to be told, so let's tell it.'

Feature filmmaking is a very powerful medium. It has a hold on me now.

You can't make a film for your personal satisfaction. That is why I detest the cinema of people like Mani Kaul.

What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch 'S21,' it's a form; 'Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell' is a different proposal.

A lot of the surreal filmmakers, like David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, or countless other underground filmmakers... Their sense of explosive images have always dominated their films. It's a way to shock the senses, to make them open themselves.

Every director has his own syntax, his own grammar, his own words.

It's always hard when you're working on a project, and you're seeing it in bits and pieces, whether that be film, television, video games, animation - you only really have perspective of what you're interacting with.