I certainly don't believe you documentary filmmakers. Like me, you are involved in making fiction, and your fiction is just as well organized and just as well predicated, but the big difference between me and you is that I'm honest and you're dishonest. I know I'm telling you lies.
I think documentary filmmakers need as much protection as possible under journalist's privilege. How else is the public to know what is going on?
I feel like there's a lot of sympathy and camaraderie among documentary filmmakers.
I wanted to describe the world at the same time, through image, express what I felt. It was the time of the great documentary filmmakers: Richard Leacock, Joris Ivens. Today, television has put an end to this type of filmmaking.
My hat's off to documentary filmmakers. I don't know if I'm ever going back to it. You're treated like a second-class citizen at most film festivals. You take the bus while everybody else is flown first-class. If you're a feature film director, you're put in a five-star hotel, and if you're a documentary director, you stay in a Motel 6.
If you're a great documentary filmmaker, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a great narrative filmmaker. There are fantastic documentary filmmakers that can't direct actors. You don't have to do that in a documentary, if it's a real documentary.
The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.
What little return documentary filmmakers get often comes in the form of recognition by their peers and the critics who influence doc audiences around the country.
I don't think the subject of a documentary film should be producers on it.
I just like documentaries.
I think independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers - they are journalists.
There are many documentary filmmakers who have a tough time because they don't really get what they need to do what they want. There are so many people with good visions that should be encouraged and helped. And they will deliver, I'm sure.
With newspapers cutting foreign bureaus and budgets shrinking for long-form, investigative journalism, documentary filmmakers are often filling a void nowadays in the media landscape with their ability to spend time with their stories and subjects.
I've often thought even ragtag gatherings of documentary filmmakers are more fun than gatherings of fiction filmmakers.
Maybe today I would call Fred Leuchter and there would be two or three other documentary filmmakers interested in his story simply because of the exposure.
The existing documentary makers still believe that it is impossible to produce drama material in this State, otherwise they would be doing it, they say.
I think documentary filmmaking is a braver way to make films because it's real, and you're really there.
My mother and stepfather were documentary filmmakers and, of course, had a very healthy Scandinavian mentality. When it came to cinema, my mother was very obsessed with the French New Wave. That was her generation.
