I wasn't searching for a common denominator - I started wondering about the challenge of working in other cultures. What I reached was the sudden acknowledgment of the universal aspect of filmmaking.
Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.
I think that narrative, fiction filmmaking is the culmination of several art forms: theater, art history, architecture. Whereas doc filmmaking is more pure cinema, like cinema verite is film in its purest form.
I think that there's a natural attraction to enigmatic characters, people that have decided to make a decision in their lives to live differently than everyone else. That's a very attractive quality that also happens to be good for filmmaking, people that have their own point of view and aren't looking at things the same way as everyone else.
I mean, '8 ½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.
When I hear the words 'activist filmmaking,' I think of somebody who's an activist, who wants to prove a particular point.
What's great about documentary genre, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of "documentary. "
My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.
I came to filmmaking because it's my passion. I decided I can't have it distorted or marred by someone else deciding what it should be.
I never had any special appetite for filmmaking, but you have to make a living and it is miraculous to earn a living working in film.
Filmmaking is a real craft.
I love filmmaking because it's like harvesting as a farmer. I have an idea, I get the financing, I write the script and then cast and shoot and edit. Then there is opening night, and after that I get another idea.
We tried to be as ready and solid as we could be,. . . Filmmaking is always some form of chaos, and to what extent you're able to harness the chaos.
Several years ago, as I was transitioning from film finance to film production and writing again, someone asked me how long I would try to get back into filmmaking before I gave up? My response was "giving up" was not an option.
I think people don't really actually talk about what their real issue is, which is that white, cis men - not straight men, but cis men - have had their hands on the narrative ever since filmmaking has begun.
There's a very interesting article or symposium to be written on just the real difference between comedy filmmaking and non-comedy. Because, you know, when you work in comedy, you depend on audience screenings to tell you about your movie.
When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.
I'm happy that I feel a little less out of place in filmmaking than I once was - but it's almost impossible for a playwright in the U. S. to make a living. You can have a play, like I did with 'Angels,' and it still generates income for me, but it's not enough for me to live on and have health insurance.
Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.
However, that old mode of Polish filmmaking virtually disappeared.