When classical singers or dancers look at cinema with derision, I have half a heart to tell them that they're wrong. They're losing a platform.
I grew up with a concept of cinema as a directorial thing, meaning the director is allowed to sail the ship. Not a dictatorial thing.
I felt like, you know, my presence in the world of cinema had a different meaning than Meryl Streep... There was an impact that was made, but it wasn't the usual.
I believe that we will elevate and differentiate the discourse of cinema the more we discuss image creation in specific terms.
I think starting a cinema career late in life has more advantages than disadvantages.
I don't go to the cinema often anymore - I'd rather just pop in a disk and get the biggest monitor you've got, and if the quality is superb, I can watch a film, and if I don't like it I can pop it out.
Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It's for the distributor. The film becomes a brand.
Nobody's ever made a film in the history of cinema where they weren't expecting some return on their dough.
I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.
Hong Kong cinema is something you can't duplicate anyway.
When I was in elementary school, I watched 'Cinema Paradiso' 22 times and memorized the dialogue. In the movie, everyone had a place, even the bum who thought he owned the piazza. Eccentricities were celebrated, and no one was isolated.
I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room.
Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.
Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite. The only true cinema verite would be what Andy Warhol did with his film about the Empire State Building - eight hours or so from one angle, and even then it's not really cinema verite, because you aren't actually there.
I don't want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.
I can't make pronouncements about the entirety of Iranian cinema, because there's such a great number of filmmakers and because of the diversity of points of view and filmmaking attitudes.
Even within escapist cinema, if you find a good story to tell, it will do well.
I always wanted to make cinema which will entertain the masses, cinema that could be called escapist but is mounted on a realistic scale with high production values.
I am really not interested in the cinema. I loathed it when I started six years ago, and I don't enjoy it even now.
It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren't words or metaphors which describe many of the emotions you are attempting to evoke.
