Cinema Evolution Quotes

I was around New York at a time when independent cinema was at its peak and became kind of popular and mainstream. It got some hype, culturally. After that, studios started to have independent companies within their studio system, and they found bigger stars willing to do new material. That's kind of what it's turned into.

Our cinema is coming of age, and people are realizing we need to tell different stories differently and in fresh manner and not just do formula stuff and serve it to the audience.

Sadly, cinemas with film as the primary source are disappearing. We need to remain open to change. That does not require one to divorce the past but to respect and process both the present and the future.

Cinema is dead, long live cinema.

When I discovered European filmmakers, it affected me so deeply. It redefined what cinema could be. I mean, 'Blow-Up' ends with a dead body and mimes playing tennis. What?

Cinema is changing every week, and multiplex audiences are demanding every week.

I think cinema is so visually driven now, and people are so taken in by the glamour, gloss and all things good looking that we don't appreciate the craft as much as we used to in the bygone era.

It's weird because movie-making, and especially movie theaters, have always been so old-school, and it wasn't until 3-D that a lot of them were forced to have digital projectors and even digital distribution.

Silent films were, I think, more different than we know to sound films. We think of it as simply that we added dialogue and in actual fact I think it was an entirely different art form.

The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema

I remember at 16 years old, growing up in Queens, we were punks, but hey, when we went to the theater, we wore a shirt and tie! Similarly, I believe that to keep movie theaters in existence, they're gonna have to make 'em an event, have a couch, a table and drinks or something. Otherwise, there's no reason to get out of your bed!

Every five years, there is a shift in cinema space, but we are slow to catch that. Young people understand that shift.

But I do believe that there's going to be a time where all movies are going to be made in 3D and it's just going to be a given, and that is going to be an exciting time.

My cinema - the '50s, '60s - is different from the cinema today so I thought that it would not be bad to show that kind of cinema where we could dream.

The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life. But Hollywood has forgotten that, in the past, what made Hollywood great and what made it go ahead was the fact that Hollywood was fed with, for example, Jewish directors coming from Germany or Austria and enriching Hollywood. In 15, 20 years, Hollywood became imperialistic. Cinema goes ahead when it is marriaged by other culture. Otherwise, it turns on itself.

We can't keep thinking in a limited way about what cinema is. We still don't know what cinema is. Maybe cinema could only really apply to the past or the first 100 years, when people actually went to a theater to see a film, you see?

[on the screenplay for "When Harry Met Sally"] It struck me that the movies had spent more than half a century saying, "They lived happily ever after" and the following quarter century warning that they'll be lucky to make it through the weekend. Possibly now we are now entering a third era in which the movies will be sounding a note of cautious optimism: You know, it just might work.

I'm one of those people who says, 'yes, cinema died when they invented sound.'

On the professional side, I've helped move cinema from a chemical-based medium to a digital-based medium. That'll be one of the landmarks. And I've left these stories, these little tales that have been imprinted on the media, which will or will not be of interest to people in the future. I've done the best I can.

I was seduced by the nouvelle vague, because it was really reinventing everything. And the Italian cinema that one would see in the theaters in the late '50s, early '60s was Italian comedy, Italian style, which, to me, was like the end of neo-realism. I think cinema all over the world was influenced by it, which was Italy finding its freedom at the end of fascism, the end of the Nazi invasion. It was a kind of incredible energy. Then, late '50s, early '60s, the neo-realism lost its great energy and became comedy.

Our cinema has evolved in last 60 years because we have made people happy through our films. The main purpose of our storyline is to spread happiness. Our cinema has an emotional connect.

The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.

I don't think we've seen any cinema yet. I think we've seen 100 years of illustrated text.

Movies began as a communal experience. Even though we now watch them as DVD's, sometimes alone on our computers, mostly in the history of cinema it has been a communal experience.

The younger generation of filmmakers is concerned about our roots, rather than making films with characters plucked out of the cloud or some English DVD. Actually since 2000, Tamil cinema is going through some positive changes.