Frontiersmen Documentary Quotes

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

That's my idea of what a portrait ought to be, anonymous and documentary and a straightforward picture of mankind. ~ Walker Evans

All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives… The photograph… is only the most peremptory of a huge modern accumulation of documentary evidence… which simultaneously records a certain apparent continuity and emphasizes its loss from memory. Out of this estrangement comes a conception of personhood, identity… which, because it cannot be "remembered", must be narrated. ~ Benedict Anderson

I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did. ~ Daniel Bruhl

One day, back when I working at a video store, a woman accompanied by her two small sons walked up the counter with a tape box displaying a man slicing off someone's head with a chainsaw. "Does this have any sex in it?" she asked. In my mind, it was like I was narrating a nature documentary on humans. "Watch as the American mother protects her young ones from dangerous influences. ~ Alex Bosworth

The spirit of man is not a created being; it existed from eternity and will exist to eternity. Anything created cannot be eternal; and earth, water, ect., had their existence in an elementary state, from eternity." ~Joseph Smith, Jr., 2 July 1839 - Documentary History of the Church 3:387 ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

I don't see myself as a documentary photographer. I am more drawn to the image itself, rather than to the description of a scene. And, anyway, every image only halfway represents reality, whereas the other half is rather, more or less, fulfilling our imagination. ~ Beat Streuli

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

I'm sometimes called a 'documentary photographer' but ... a man operating under that definition could take a sly pleasure in the disguise. Very often I'm doing one thing when I'm thought to be doing another. ~ Walker Evans

I've had frustrated storytelling juices that have been lying dormant for a long time, and I guess the documentary was a way of me telling a story that I felt most qualified to tell. And I loved it, and I'd love to do something else someday, probably more narrative-based. But I'm in no rush. ~ Eric Bana

At the beginning of my career, I shot a lot more documentaries because I liked the adventure, and probably also because it was easier, and still is easier, for women DPs to shoot documentary than it is to shoot fiction. ~ Maryse Alberti

What's great about documentary, 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.' ~ Errol Morris

You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected. ~ William Shatner

James O. Incandenza - A Filmography
The following listing is as complete as we can make it. Because the twelve years of Incadenza'a directorial activity also coincided with large shifts in film venue - from public art cinemas, to VCR-capable magnetic recordings, to InterLace TelEntertainment laser dissemination and reviewable storage disk laser cartridges - and because Incadenza's output itself comprises industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic non-commercial, nondramatic ('anti-confluential') noncommercial, nondramatic commercial, and dramatic commercial works, this filmmaker's career presents substantive archival challenges. These challenges are also compounded by the fact that, first, for conceptual reasons, Incadenza eschewed both L. of C. registration and formal dating until the advent of Subsidized Time, secondly, that his output increased steadily until during the last years of his life Incadenza often had several works in production at the same time, thirdly, that his production company was privately owned and underwent at least four different changes of corporate name, and lastly that certain of his high-conceptual projects' agendas required that they be titled and subjected to critique but never filmed, making their status as film subject to controversy. ~ David Foster Wallace

How useful are documentary photographs if there is no follow up, no way of knowing what happened next in the story? ~ Martha Rosler

News makes things black and white. Documentary filmmaking should do the opposite. ~ Robert Greene

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

To the documentary director the appearance of things and people is only superficial. It is the meaning behind the thing and the significance underlying the person that occupy his attention ... Documentary approach to cinema differs from that of story-film not in its disregard for craftsman-ship, but in the purpose to which that craftsmanship is put. Documentary is a trade just as carpentry or pot-making. The pot-maker makes pots, and the documentarian documentaries. ~ Paul Rotha

People may assume 'The Act of Killing' is a historical documentary about what happened in 1965. But our purpose was to expose a present-day regime of fear for what it is. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer

I regard sports first and foremost as entertainment, so dry documentary narration is not for me. ~ Jack Brickhouse

Can you pick me up on Washington Road in Mount Lebo, actually? I got here and them some kids stole my bike."
"Quinn, your life story is starting to turn into a documentary that people would walk out of because it's both too sad and too slow. ~ Tim Federle

The narrator of a documentary often comes in at the last minute and takes some of the glory they don't deserve. ~ Joel Edgerton

When is there a boy, even in these materialistic times, to whom the call of the wild and the open road does not appeal? Maybe it is the primitive instinct, anyway it is there. With that key a great door may be unlocked, if it is only to admit fresh air and sunshine into lives that were otherwise grey.
The heroes of the wild, the frontiersmen and explorers, the rovers of the seas, the airmen of the clouds, are pied pipers to the boys. Where they lead the boys will follow and these will dance to their tune when it sings the song of manliness and pluck, of adventure and high endeavors of efficiency and skill, of cheerful sacrifice of self for others. There's meat in this for the boy. There's soul in it. ~ Baden-Powell Robert Baden-Powell

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

Documentary film without nuanced journalistic sourcing risks being sensational, tendentious or broad-brushed. ~ Naomi Wolf

We all identify with the people we see, and in a good documentary, we are not just reading an account of the world, we're seeing and hearing our world. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer

When you're watching a documentary, the danger is to romanticize. ~ Ridley Scott

Ben Affleck exec-produced a documentary for HBO called 'Reporter' about my 2007 win-a-trip journey. I take the trip each year partly to encourage young people to think about global humanitarian issues: I think blogs by a student may be more compelling for that audience than my own work. ~ Nicholas Kristof

When I was at graduate school in London, I began working at NBC News, which had a thriving documentary unit. ~ Leslie Cockburn

There's a documentary film-maker called Werner Herzog, who's a German film-maker. I really dig his stuff, I'd love to chat with him. ~ Finn Jones

It's a privilege to have the career I have, to love every day and be following my passion, the stories that interest me, to remote locations and people. So nothing stops me from that - but yes, it seems redundant in documentary-filmmaker circles today to say the biggest struggle was financing. ~ Pietra Brettkelly

I feel as if I became a documentary film-maker only because I had writer's block for four decades. There's no other good reason. ~ Errol Morris

The ancient priests had said, "Thus far and no farther. We set the limits to thought." The Greeks said, "All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set to thought." It is an extraordinary fact that by the time we have actual, documentary knowledge of the Greeks there is not a trace to be found of that domination over the mind by the priests which played such a decisive part in the ancient world. The priest plays no real part in either the history or the literature of Greece. ~ Edith Hamilton

We're telling a story. And the demands of that are different from the demands of a documentary. The audience must believe in order to keep faith in the story. ~ Bradley Whitford

Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive. ~ Frederick Wiseman

My background was art school, documentary director and surfer with a keen interest in thrilling acts of life threatening stupidity. ~ Yahoo Serious

electrical wires dragged down by the weight of the ice and flickering balefully, a row of sleet-covered planes stranded in an airport, a huge truck that's jackknifed and tipped over and is lying on its side with smoke coming out. An ambulance is on the scene, a fire truck, a huddle of raingear-clad operatives: someone's been injured, always a sight to make the heart beat faster. A policeman appears, crystals of ice whitening his moustache; he pleads sternly with people to stay inside. It's no joke, he tells the viewers. Don't think you can brave the elements! His frowning, frosted eyebrows are noble, like those on the wartime bond-drive posters from the 1940s. Constance remembers those, or believes she does. But she may just be remembering history books or museum displays or documentary films: so hard, sometimes, to tag those memories accurately. Finally, a minor touch of pathos: a stray dog is displayed, semi-frozen, wrapped in a child's pink nap blanket. A gelid baby ~ Margaret Atwood

So much of art-making is about reducing things to the essentials, so I don't feel particularly crippled by this. I don't want it to look natural because then I would be making a documentary film. ~ Jenny Holzer

I think documentary filmmaking is a braver way to make films because it's real, and you're really there. ~ Jamie Bell

I was so used to documentary filming, where it's one take. You can't really say, 'Make that elephant charge again!' And you talk to the camera. With movie filming, you're talking to someone else. ~ Bindi Irwin

I want to do a documentary about strippers, 'cause it's a moneymaker. ~ Method Man

The documentary we are working on is about my mother, Bev Umehara, for whom our film company, Bev's Girl Films, is named after. It is a passion project that I have wanted to make since her unexpected passing in 1999. The film is about my mother's calling which came late in life, at 47, when she made the sudden transformation from a humble hardworking secretary and mother of four, into a labor activist, a respected union leader, and a role model for rank-and-file workers, women of color, and for all Asian Pacific Americans. ~ Garth Kravits

In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

...one of the main questions for me is in the genre of dealing with real life: how to deal with it formally. There is a standard set of formal expressions that are used in traditional journalism. And some of them are really necessary, like fact-checking. But my conviction is that, now more than ever, real life is much stranger than any fiction one could imagine. So somehow the forms of reporting have to become crazier and stranger, too. Otherwise they are not going to be "documentary" enough, they are not going to live up to what's happening. ~ Hito Steyerl

When we are reading, a voice comes to us as in the dark and whispers, "Imagine!" Samuel Beckett
as told by Bill Moyer in the Foreword he wrote for, The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson. Afterword by Ann Patchett ~ Samuel Beckett

I felt the need to distance myself from my problems, instead of dealing with them. My mother said It's not uncommon for people to run away from their fears to start somewhere new with a better attitude. ~ Documentary Recordings