Experimental Cinema Quotes

The film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky - his films are hard to watch - they're so dense and rich - but they're probably the best things ever made. And Spike Milligan, who was light years ahead of the rest - I played some of his stuff to Jack Black once. He'd never heard of him, so watching him listen to Spike for the first time was just hilarious.

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

I guess, in a sense, 'Audition' was a film that gave me an opportunity that I hadn't had up until that point. So that's definitely one that is important to me. Then there's 'Visitor Q' that kind of taught me that there are some kinds of films that can only be made as low-budget films that really wouldn't work as anything else.

There was a phase in my career in my late 20s and 30s when I was doing strange, arty-farty Euro films that were, you could tell, never had much chance of any release anywhere in the world.

I am a huge fan of Cronenberg, all his movies.

You don't do an experimental film to become rich, so the people who are involved are involved because they enjoy the creative aspect of it.

Like everybody, I wanted to meet Andy Warhol. I was impressed by his work and how daring he was. I think he changed the cinema completely, simply by opening his camera and letting it go.

To be honest, I make very controversial films. The films that I've made have been very, very bold choices.

The movies I make - the goal isn't a mass audience. They're not expensive films. So the attempt is to reach a much more limited audience - one would say an audience that enjoys films that challenge them emotionally and intellectually.

Indian audience has a mindset that a movie which does well at film festivals will necessarily be slow and boring.

'Among Friends' was really well written and had strong characters, and while all the elements were there to make it a great genre film, it also left room for me to put a creative flair on it that wasn't your typical slasher or psychological thriller.

I'm interested in taking raw human emotions and then isolating them without any narrative structure. In order to achieve this, I try to break out of the narrative conventions that you'd see in a typical feature film.

The filmmaker Amos Poe was a huge inspiration for me by making guerrilla-style punk films on the streets of New York and - well, it's just a lot of painters and artists and filmmakers all within that scene, and it's very, very important to me.

I would be perfectly happy doing an indie film that had some really cool creative ideas.

I'm a big fan of horror films, particularly 'Friday the 13th.' It's one of the only genres that weaves abstract experimental techniques into the mainstream; having to be spooky requires a little more creativity.

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.

The reverberation of the freedom of making 'Schizopolis' absolutely resulted in 'Out of Sight' and everything that followed.

I wanted to make abstract films that are emotional, and I still do.

When I started making movies, I was pretty young, and at the time I felt like there needed to be more confrontation in cinema - or I needed to make something more disruptive - so in the beginning, those movies were me wanting to play with the rules.

As soon as someone like me or David Lynch pops up everyone says hallelujah, how weird.

I always say that in my career as an actress, I've always worked with people like David Lynch or Guy Maddin or Peter Weir who are considered not mainstream directors and that could be because they are like my dad. They are pioneers, and pioneers, by definition, invent something new.

I come from a background of independent films.

Mainstream movies used to be more adventurous because people went to them.

I'd really love to watch David Lynch work, to be a fly on the wall.

Fellini and Bunuel changed my life for me, they are my favourites. If it is true that movies are dreams, both of them, Fellini and Bunuel were shooting in a dream way.