Documentaries Quotes

I'd love to direct commercials on Caribbean beacheswith luscious women rubbing on suntan lotion, but all I get arethese documentary-type things. ~ Michael Apted

I make short films, little documentaries, about the co-evolution of humans and technology. ~ Jason Silva

One of the common themes you will read in interview after interview is the call to keep fighting for your vision. This is a message to women directors, producers, writers - anyone who wants to work in the business. Your voice counts. Your vision matters. ~ Melissa Silverstein

And shooting things in a documentary style was a good way to create tension and energy without money. ~ Michael Patrick Jann

I don't know that there were any rules for documentary photography. As a matter of fact, I don't think the term was even very precise. So as far as I'm concerned, the kind of photography I did in the FSA was the kind of photography I still do today, because it is based on passionate concern for the human condition. That is the basis of all the work that I do. ~ Jack Delano

I love doing fiction. I love doing performance films and I love doing documentaries that don't have music. I love to shoot and I love to shoot things I'm enthusiastic about. ~ Jonathan Demme

Bizarrely funny ... Rarely is a documentary as well attuned to its subject as Howard Brookner's BURROUGHS, which captures as much about the life, work and sensibility of its subject as its 86 minute format allows. ~ Janet Maslin

Documentaries - my God, there is so much going on in our country and in the world today that every time you open the newspaper or turn on the radio or watch the news on TV there is another documentary subject. We're getting the headlines for a second, shaped by corporate delivery most of the time, but what's really the story there? ~ Jonathan Demme

As an actor, your text is your bible, so you're not making a documentary, but you still have to follow the choices made by your writer. ~ Natalie Dormer

Great," Shane said. "Look i'd rather not be on janitorial duty. I have allergies to cleaners."
"And to cleaning," Michael said.
"Look who's talking, Didn't the do one of those Animal Planet documentaries about the roaches in your room? ~ Rachel Caine

Thhe essence of documentary filmmaking is how you manipulate the material to create an emotional impact, as opposed to just delivering information. ~ Richard Ray Perez

I watch movies occasionally, and I watch documentaries. Virtually nothing else. ~ Don DeLillo

I'm addicted to documentaries. That's all I watch on television. ~ Robert Zemeckis

But if anyone
so much as threatened them because of what Kaia
had once done, she would turn the Slumber Party
Massacre into Blood, Bath and Beyond, a
documentary by Kaia Skyhawk. ~ Gena Showalter

Most of my films have been documentaries, but I'm also very interested in narrative filmmaking. ~ Barbara Kopple

I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that. ~ Anna Deavere Smith

I have been portrayed by actors in three television documentaries, two plays, one musical and a film. It's no fun watching yourself being traduced and imitated by an actor. ~ Felix Dennis

Well, this week for example, I was just in Los Angeles making a documentary for German television on whales. They had tried to get me in England where they missed me. ~ Wavy Gravy

The Tantric view is that there is already a complete Buddha dormant within each of us, but we've individually and collectively become addicted to horror movies that we mistake for documentaries. From this perspective, our whole society is caught up in a kind of shared horror story, imagining ourselves as zombie consumers rather than empowered citizens: afraid, insecure, incapable beings who have no choice but to wander through life grasping after fleeting pleasures, needlessly competing with each other instead of collaborating, isolating ourselves from the plight of those whose stories we don't understand. Because our whole society is both constructing and watching this shared screenplay simultaneously, the physical world begins to take on the qualities of this horror movie, and it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the theater of our experience from the screen of our own projections. ~ Ethan Nichtern

We struck an unusual deal. I'll get to leave CNN with my catalog and documentaries. We were able to create a brand at CNN - 'Black in America' - that I now own. I can take that brand and extend it in any way I want. ~ Soledad O'Brien

I saw 'The Grand Budapest Hotel.' I liked it. I saw 'The Fault in Our Stars,' and I could see why young girls like it. But it dropped off like crazy in the second weekend. I liked 'Fed Up' - I love documentaries. I go to a lot of documentaries. ~ Rob Reiner

Whenever I'm making a feature film, I wish I were filming a documentary, because making feature films is so stressful. It happens every time. ~ Fatih Akin

I'm a curious guy. I can't turn away from an investigative story, when it comes to the forensic analysis. I've done 33 dives, to the titanic wreck site. I've spent over 50 hours piloting robotic vehicles at that wreck trying to piece together what happened during the disaster. How the ship broke up, comparing the historical record with the forensic record. Documentaries are kind of my new life. I love documentary filmmaking. ~ James Cameron

Evidentialism, the view that holds that a belief is rationally justified or acceptable only if it is held on the basis of good evidence, has been rejected by many in the field of epistemology, in which such questions are probed deeply, and this rejection is for good reasons. The fact is that for all our talk about evidence, most of us would have a difficult time producing evidence for many of the things we believe and take for granted. We have neither the time nor the resources to track down such evidence, so we simply accept most of our beliefs on the word of others or because we heard them in news reports or documentaries, read them in books, or received them from other sources of information. Are we acting irrationally for holding beliefs in this way? It hardly seems so. ~ Paul Chamberlain

I hate those earnest TV documentaries that are the world according to people with glasses who know better than you. ~ Billy Connolly

It's all movies for me. And besides, when you say documentaries, in my case, in most of these cases, means "feature film" in disguise. ~ Werner Herzog

We tried to present the ordinary in an extraordinary manner. But that's the paradox because the only thing extraordinary about it was that it was so ordinary. Nobody had ever done it before, deliberately. Now it's called documentary, which I suppose is all right ... We just took pictures that cried out to be taken. ~ Ben Shahn

Gift cards?" Hi's complaining brought me back to the present. "Why not just hand me a note that says: I don't care enough to make an effort."
April 7. Hiram Stolowitski's sixteenth birthday.
"When exactly were we supposed to shop?" Shelton was scrolling Rex Gable emails on his laptop. "It's been a hectic week, bro."
"I bought you Assassin's Creed six weeks before your birthday," Hi shot back. "Waited in line all afternoon. The guy behind me smelled like fish tacos, but I stuck it out."
Ben clapped Hi's shoulder. "If it helps, I didn't remember to get you any gift. Tory and Shelton picked that up. I signed the card though. See? Ben. Right there."
"These are the memories that scar," Hi huffed. "I'm gonna be so complicated when I grow up. I'll probably film documentaries. ~ Kathy Reichs

I love these sort of documentaries, which you might turn on late on a Saturday night - like, say, 'The Alma Cogan Story.' But they are ripe for spoofing, because the presenters are always so serious and anxious to make themselves look like rather attractive and interesting people. ~ Peter Capaldi

Documentaries can embrace contradictions in a way that journalism can't. ~ Alex Gibney

After I read all the medical journals and watched all the documentaries, I still didn't understand the physical sensation of ticking and where it comes from and what it feels like. ~ Robin Tunney

People love watching medical dramas - they also love watching documentaries about the workings of the brain. ~ James Nesbitt

In all my documentaries I did all the camera work, but in fiction I didn't want to do it myself. I think the machinery is so heavy and demanding that you would leave the actors alone for a long time. ~ Pirjo Honkasalo

I have a great career, and no matter what I am doing, a big blockbuster movie ... or my small documentary, David Letterman will call and say I would like you to sit on my couch. ~ Rosie Perez

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. ~ Mira Nair

One of the things I've been talking about with my critical writing and my own work is that these movies are seen differently in a theatrical space. It's very important to me. I edit films to be seen theatrically, like fiction material I've worked on like Listen Up Phillip or other documentaries. ~ Robert Greene

Films are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman

I'm not your expert on Africa or animals or whatever. I'm not a travel writer or maker of documentaries. I was someone who doesn't know very much, trying to communicate. ~ Michael Palin

In documentary, which is the only thing I'm really very familiar with, women are very easily relegated into a producer role. ~ Liz W. Garcia

One of the top challenges is the fact that you are dealing with survivors. Every time you deal with a documentary film subject it is fraught with obvious minefields but when you are dealing with a population that is severely traumatized and trying to recover from that trauma there is an extra level of vigilance and care and attention that has to be implemented all the time at every level. ~ Amy Ziering

David Irving has consistenly applied an evidential double standard, demanding absolute documentary proof to convict the Germans (as when he sought to show that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust), while relying on circumstantial evidence to condemn the British (as in his account of the Allied bombing of Dresden). ~ David Cannadine

I watch 'Al Jazeera.' They have news that you can't find anywhere else. They do great documentaries, too. ~ Dick Van Dyke

No one likes documentaries. ~ Alex Gibney

When I watch my early documentaries, they're very eclectic. They don't follow any particular [pattern]. I would have gotten thrown out of film school because I didn't. I was just putting them together somehow as the spirit moved me, following my nose, thinking I was brilliant. ~ Pawel Pawlikowski

I have tried reading the Bible but that's a tough read there. I watch a lot of religious documentaries. I have a keen interest in religion for someone who's not religious. ~ Jim Jefferies

When I was a teenager, I thought maybe I'll be a filmmaker, making film documentaries. My dream when I was a girl was I would be hired by 'National Geographic' or work with David Attenborough, but it didn't happen. I became a model. ~ Isabella Rossellini

The biggest misconception is that I only write about shitty people. Or that I'm trying to be shocking. I just think people are super weird, so I like to write characters that get addicted to things, lose their minds, hurt others, put themselves in bad situations. I'm just more interested in that. ~ Leslye Headland

People in general have a preconceived idea of what prison is, from seeing documentaries or whatever. ~ Laura Prepon

It's a funny thing with documentary films - you want them to feel as entertaining and as gripping as a fictional film. With a fictional film you want it to feel as realistic as a documentary film. ~ Jonathan Demme

You made a point about proof. In this sort of history we do nt have proof ... Yet ... the incontrovertibility of the evidence can be plain even when it is not documentary or complete. ~ Robert Conquest

I have made more documentaries in my time than I think I care to remember, though I am immensely proud of all my work. ~ Charles Guggenheim

I love documentaries, I like observing real people. ~ Tracey Ullman

I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together. Riveting! ~ Stewart Francis

In fiction film, there are so many trappings - money, glory, champagne and supermodels - that attract the wolves. But in documentary film, there's none of that, so the wolves stay away. The only people who make docs are people who are curious about other people and just like making documentaries. ~ Marshall Curry

I'm an eclectic and avid filmgoer. I try to see everything from romantic comedies to blockbusters to art house films, world cinema and documentaries. ~ Pamela Yates

By showing hunger, deprivation, starvation and brutality, as well as endurance and nobility, documentaries inform, prod our memories, even stir us to action. Such films do battle for our very soul. ~ Theodore Bikel

I wanted to be a police detective. In my work, particularly in documentaries, I am obsessed with finding things out, seeking ever-new facts and perspectives - each project can involve years of research. ~ James Marsh

I've been doing documentaries for about 25 years and want to continue to do that, but I love the idea of working in a different medium. Advertising pushes the envelope creatively, and there is some really great work being done right now, so I'm excited to jump into it. ~ Rory Kennedy

One of the reasons to do documentaries is that. There's more sense of creating something, more sense of my own soul in the documentaries than in movies, because I don't write the movies I do. ~ Michael Apted

I like documentaries because there's nothing to nitpick or criticize about scenes if they aren't just right. It's about honesty and real-life circumstances coming out. Granted it can be swayed by how people tell that story, but overall, I like it because it is true. ~ Steven Yeun

As I've grown older, the simple pleasure of sitting on the couch with someone you love and watching a documentary is about as good as it gets for me. ~ Paul Wesley

People outside the documentary world don't realize how time-consuming making a documentary film is there is a lot of responsibility, and in order to make something good you need time. ~ Alex Hammond

They kept asking me over and over again whether I was
having a romance with Hitler. Are you Hitler's girlfriend?
I laughed and answered the same way each time: No, those
are false rumours. I only made documentaries for him ... ~ Leni Riefenstahl

I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time. ~ Julian Assange

I like giving music-themed gifts. I've given a couple of music documentaries to boys. Especially if they don't have the same taste as me, I try to infiltrate their mind with my favourite bands. ~ Bella Heathcote

Here comes his hand, planing slowly across the white tablecloth like a manta ray in one of those deep-sea documentaries. It's descending onto her own hand, which she shouldn't have left so carelessly lying around on the table. ~ Margaret Atwood

There have been so many stories about alcoholism and drugs. Eating disorders are also a form of abuse, but rarely a theme in feature films that aren't documentaries. ~ Sanna Lenken

You can always go back and reconstruct stuff in a documentary, but it's so much cooler when you're there as it happens. ~ Ed Cunningham

I read slave narratives, books like Bullwhip Days, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. [The Root's chairman] Henry Louis Gates has an amazing documentary called Many Rivers to Cross - really, his whole writings; he's such a wealth of knowledge. ~ Jurnee Smollett

I'd rather lose the small part of the audience that is going to be insulted because a documentary shouldn't have music than the big part of the audience that kind of gives itself over to the scene. ~ Daniel Stamm

For some reason at Sundance, more than other festivals that I'm aware of, you find filmmakers rushing to screen works that sometimes aren't completed. In my seven years of programming at Toronto, I'm not aware of any documentaries that went back for serious editing after their premiere - other than those presented as works-in-progress. But at Sundance every year there seems to be a few films that push the deadline so hard that they get taken back to the edit room afterwards. ~ Thom Powers

Alejandro Amenabar is a different kind of director than I lot of the directors I've asked for. He really asks you to enter his dream as opposed to, you know, a guy like Sidney Lumet or something is going to ask you to create a character almost like a documentary. He wants you to make the people really real and he's going to capture it like a documentarian. ~ Ethan Hawke

My father was an amateur filmmaker who shot 8mm color documentaries. ~ Lasse Hallstrom

Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day. ~ Anita Diament

Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'. ~ Steven Spielberg

On 'The Office,' so much of the show is about disguising your true feelings and your romantic feelings because it was a mock documentary. ~ Mindy Kaling

Documentaries make a difference. ~ Paul Watson

In an old model, the way a film would imprint itself on the public's consciousness is to get a theatrical run. But now there are more documentaries and more films in general being released than ever before. There are weeks when the New York Times is reviewing 15 films, so it's harder to leave an impression on the public. A lot of these films are seeing their financial future on digital platforms. Because viewers aren't hearing as much about films in theatrical release, I think the festival circuit is going to have increasing importance for the life of a film. ~ Thom Powers

People are looking at possibly doing some documentaries and also we have the first four films that will stay out there for the years to come. So, yeah, Sherwood Pictures will be around and my brother and I are certainly supporters of that. We can't wait to see what God does not only locally there at the church but what he has for us down the road as well. ~ Alex Kendrick

Many people in this world do jobs that are dangerous and where their life is at risk and they feel that there is some kind of value to their job I guess that's how I feel about what I do. There is a social function to documentary photography that is very important and it requires people to take risks. ~ James Nachtwey

I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addiction, the funny short subjects, the half-finished romantic comedy, the boxes of slice-of-life photographs that spoke volumes about the human condition. I wondered how you stop caring about what you've ached over, sweated over. (Thwonk) ~ Joan Bauer

Some of the History Channel's documentaries involve docudrama segments and are highly speculative - but there seems, on the part of the producers, to be a real determination to get at the history behind our past - not the sex, which is left to drama shows and entertainment channels. ~ Nigel Hamilton

I'm fascinated by documentaries, to begin with. Because of the nature of television, as opposed to theatrical, documentaries can be in this long form and take you on a journey. ~ Barry Levinson

All I've ever wanted to do is take stills of people, or take documentaries about people, and try to express to an audience how somebody lives next door. You know what I mean? Just how similar we all are as individuals. ~ Roger Deakins

As historians, our training and discipline is based on documentary evidence,. ~ David Dixon

Documentaries for me always felt kind of limiting. I wanted to go bigger. And I also love actors, and I love performance. So feature filmmaking was always the intent. ~ Peter Landesman

Of course, the main reason is the change of law in the way Germany has brought Nazi war criminals to trial. The previous rules was that you'd have to have tangible evidence, and documentary evidence was not sufficient. ~ Marvin Hier

I love those documentaries where everyone is fabulous and always perfect. ~ Katy Perry

Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways. ~ Dana Spiotta

The pictures that were coming from Vietnam were showing us what was really happening on the ground level. It was in contradiction to what our political and military leaders were telling us. They were straight forward documentary images. A powerful indictment of the war, of how cruel and unjust it was. When I finally decided what to do with my life, it was to follow in that tradition. ~ James Nachtwey

The great documentary subjects find you, you don't really search for them. ~ Jeremy Coon

Maybe every two films you need to do documentary to tell what you really want to tell and not be limited by the medium. With documentary you don't create the reality you have to hunt the reality. ~ Fatih Akin

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject. ~ Leslie Cockburn

Documentary is, therefore, an approach, which makes use of the artistic faculties to give vivification to fact - to use Walt Whitman's definition of the place of poetry in the modern world. ~ Beaumont Newhall

Virtual reality is the 'ultimate empathy machine.' These experiences are more than documentaries. They're opportunities to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. ~ Chris Milk

Ten years ago I was not heavily involved in the film world but on reflection it was a boom time with the mineral boom happening, so there was immense growth for industrial training films, documentaries to do with the mining, and the outback world. ~ Ann Macbeth

Now documentary evidence is acceptable. What does that mean? If you have documentary evidence that a person served as a guard in one of the death camps and the documents have been authenticated, that is grounds to charge the person with crimes against humanity. And that's why you see the spate of trials previously, for example, in the '70s and the '80s, even in the low '90s. That was not the case until the change in the law. ~ Marvin Hier

Recently, while I was in England, I saw a documentary on the BBC about the border between India and Pakistan at Wagah. When the border closes each evening around six o' clock, the soldiers on each side do these amazing high-stepping peacock march-offs (like a dance-off). The displays are almost identical on each side and thousands gather to watch them. Though they're patrolling along their separate borders, what comes across is how similar they are. ~ Matthea Harvey

If we have anything to offer, as filmmakers and as TV makers now, it's this ability to feel as close to a documentary as you can get in a narrative form. ~ Mark Duplass

I am particularly pleased to see that the Bendheim Center for Finance is thriving. ~ Ben Bernanke