Film Theory Quotes

My filmmaking style of remixing came out of necessity. When I was a film theory student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, there were no film production facilities. The only way I learned to tell stories on film was by re-cutting and splicing together celluloid of old movies, early animated films, home films, sound slug - anything I could get my hands on. ~ Elisa Kreisinger

One absolutely crucial change is that feminist film theory is today an academic subject to be studied and taught. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was a political intervention, primarily influenced by the Women's Liberation Movement and, in my specific case, a Women's Liberation study group, in which we read Freud and realised the usefulness of psychoanalytic theory for a feminist project. ~ Laura Mulvey

Film theory has nothing to do with film. ~ Roger Ebert

Since there are Indian movies, of necessity there is an Indian film theory that informs Indian scholars. However, that theory remains to be formulated. ~ Gaston Roberge

My best film is always my next film. I couldn't make Chungking Express now, because of the way I live and drink I've forgotten how I did it. I don't believe in film school or film theory. Just try and get in there and make the bloody film, do good work and be with people you love. ~ Christopher Doyle

Most of the movies are working like, 'Information, cut, information, cut, information, cut' and for them the information is just the story. For me, a lot of things [are] information - I try to involve, to the movie, the time, the space, and a lot of other things - which is a part of our life but not connecting directly to the story-telling. And I'm working on the same way - 'information, cut, information, cut,' but for me the information is not only the story. ~ Bela Tarr

The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted…Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature…we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. [Final passage in "The Death of the Author," in Image-Music-Text, by Roland Barthes, Trans. Stephen Heath (1977)] ~ Roland Barthes

All films are learning processes. I am still trying to work out how you make a movie. I didn't study at film school or any of those things. I didn't bother with film theory. ~ Terry Gilliam

I was really fortunate that I went to a high school where we actually had a film theory program. ~ David Brooks

You can talk film theory till you're blue in the face, but in the end, the thing that may haunt you most about a movie is a pair of eyes. ~ Stephanie Zacharek

As an independent filmmaker, the biggest challenge is finding the money. Whenever you have interest in a film project you need to find investors who are real. I think most independent filmmakers would echo that sentiment. ~ Harrison Smith

Comedy pays the bills if I can't find a film. ~ Robin Williams

You can't base your actions on the theory that anyone you don't keep your eye on is apt to get killed. ~ Rex Stout

I grew up in a show biz family and, if you wanted to talk at the dinner table, you'd better be prepared to talk about film. ~ John Orloff

'Ek Main Aur Ek Tu' was a very special film for me. Imran and we complement each other very well. He is sugar, and I am spice. ~ Kareena Kapoor Khan

You can throw away your script more easily than you can throw away your film. ~ Lenny Abrahamson

Sometimes words need music too. Sometimes the descriptions are not enough. Books should be written with soundtracks, like films. ~ Terry Pratchett

I love film and I love sitcoms, and I was one of those kids that would just go to the movies on the weekend and spend my whole weekend watching all of the movies. ~ Terrence J

If we were in a film, the villain would turn out to be the least-expected person. But as we aren't in a film, I'd go for the character who tried to strangle you. ~ Kerstin Gier

So I just came out here to Los Angeles with a bunch of buddies I had gone to film school with. You know, for better or worse, we just tried to slug it out here. ~ Danny McBride

For the record, I do have genitals; and they are functional and aesthetically pleasing. ~ Chuck Lorre

We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body - a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature." This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin. ~ Alan W. Watts

Control Master Theory suggests that our psychological problems come about in much the same way: our decision to make ourselves unhappy because one or both of our parents were unhappy is just as altruistic as our friend's decision to run through flames to save his daughter. ~ Lewis Engel

I like being able to see an innocence in people. I see a lot of beauty in youth. Young people are in progress. Their faces and bodies and minds are constantly changing. It's exciting to capture that on film. ~ Bernardo Bertolucci

When people say I have become a celebrity, I remind them of fame's flip side. For instance, if I want to watch a movie in a cinema, I have to enter through a side exit just before the film begins and leave by the same exit before the credits roll. ~ Saina Nehwal

I really believe at the end of the day, regardless of how noble you are or how patriotic the film might be, it has to serve as entertainment in order for your audiences to come into the theatre and watch it. Otherwise, audiences will wait and see it a few months later when it is premiered on television. ~ Abhishek Bachchan

The film medium is some sort of magic. I think also it's a magic that every frame comes and stands still for a fraction of a second and then it darkens. A half part of the time when you see a picture you sit in complete darkness. Isn't that fascinating? That is magic. ~ Ingmar Bergman

My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn't be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You're a lawbreaker. It's just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society, you see? ~ Orson Welles

Actually I did, because I saw the film like everyone else, ten years ago and I remembered some of it. I just wanted to see it, to kind of remember the tone a little bit. ~ Julianne Moore

I'd prefer not to act in the film I'm directing. I think, though, as an actor, you do learn how to turn things on and off quickly and kind of compartmentalize. You learn to accommodate the camera and the other actors, to notice where the boom is and where you mark is, and be able to repeat something a few times. ~ Jodie Foster

Because of the way tech is changing, and becoming cheaper and user-friendly, it's becoming easier to make films cheaply, maintaining quality. ~ Lance Reddick

Conspiracy theory is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world. ~ Roger Cohen

Even in India the Hindi film industry might be the best known but there are movies made in other regional languages in India, be it Tamil or Bengali. Those experiences too are different from the ones in Bombay. ~ Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

I someday hope to find the time and coin to invest more of my creative energy towards the visual media side of releasing music. I'd love to make short film videos pushing the conventional standards of what a country music video can be. ~ Sturgill Simpson

Each time I'm starting to work on a film, even if I love to settle the plot in the real world, I start to think about the plot as a fairy tale, or a dream, or a nightmare ... As if it was the best way to tell the truth about characters or narration, instead of realism. ~ Arnaud Desplechin

With film, you read the whole script three or four times, and you really have a solid blueprint of who your character is. Whereas in television, that blueprint is constantly changing and adapting, and sometimes you have to take a risk. ~ Graham Phillips

A metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion or a concealed experimental conclusion. ~ Hermann Von Helmholtz

Everything about filmmaking tries to distract you from that first fine rapturous vision you have of the film. ~ Ted Kotcheff

I really learned how to act on camera through 'Power Rangers' because I hadn't done a lot of film and TV. ~ Erin Cahill

Independent film is taking risks in all areas. It's not just about complicated women. ~ Anne Heche

There was one theory put forth by a journalist recently. I have a lot of friends that have died prematurely and a lot of friends that have died of natural causes. I've lost a lot of people over the years. This journalist basically recommended to me that God keeps me around because I amuse him. ~ Al Jourgensen

As far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still a Marxist ~ Dalai Lama

I shot my undergraduate work on 35mm. I love the way it looks, but I haven't shot film in a while. If you can avoid scanning, it makes your practice faster. Oh, and I shoot a lot of Polaroid, too. I have about five hundred Polaroids from my film that I hope to show soon. ~ Laurel Nakadate

I've seen a film in which Dr Lorenz pointed out the difference between two colonies of cattle egrets, one free and one caged. The free ones, who had to provide for themselves, were monogamous and energetic and kept their numbers within ecologically reasonable limits. The captive egrets were promiscuous, idle, overbreeding and presumably going to hell fast. ~ Russell Hoban

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another. ~ Dennis Hopper

Disruptive technology is a theory. It says this will happen and this is why; it's a statement of cause and effect. In our teaching we have so exalted the virtues of data-driven decision making that in many ways we condemn managers only to be able to take action after the data is clear and the game is over. In many ways a good theory is more accurate than data. It allows you to see into the future more clearly. ~ Clayton Christensen

I am a film buff. ~ Carol Lynley

Although a large branch of game theory is devoted to the study of expected utility, we generally consider each player's payoffs as a ranking of his most preferred outcome to his least preferred outcome. ~ William Spaniel

You buy any book on color theory today, and it's just complete poppycock. Everybody comes out of school painting pink, purple and green. The whole damn cartoon industry has pink purple and green on their mind. ~ John Kricfalusi

[Comics is] one of the last havens for honesty when it comes to a reader's genuine response to art. Most of us, if we don't find any sympathy or pleasure, for example, in a modern painting, are likely to blame our own ignorance of the history and theory of painting. But nobody pretends to like a bad comic strip. Such harshness is necessary for any real truth to surface, I think, and for art to really contribute anything to life. Though I don't know. I could be wrong. ~ Chris Ware

To believe in God is to "let God be God." This is the chief business of faith. As we believe we are allowing God to be in our lives what He already is in Himself. In trusting God, we are living out our assumptions, putting into practice all that we say He is in theory so that who God is and what He has done can make the difference in every part of our lives.
This means that the accuracy of our pictures of God is not tested by our orthodoxy or our testimonies but by the truths we count on in real life. It is demonstrated when the heat is on, the chips are down, and reality seems to be breathing down our necks. What we presuppose at such moments is our real picture of God, and this may be very different from what we profess to believe about God. (God in the Dark, ch. 4) ~ Os Guinness

Making an independent documentary film is so hard that usually, the usual model is that your film becomes a model for advocacy, so you can enlist that support group and get as much juice out of your film as possible. That's just practically, financially, what you need to do. ~ Tim Hetherington

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God. ~ Peter Kreeft

I didn't have any idea that I would be able to have a career in film. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman

Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television. ~ Val Kilmer

Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high? ~ Martin Scorsese