Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm against escapist entertainment.
I have a British and an American passport.
I see myself as an explorer more than a storyteller.
I didn't really get any rigorous background in film history.
Cinema is, of course, the great storytelling medium of modernity.
Testimony always comes from people who are in some way disempowered.
We have to support truth and reconciliation and some form of justice.
All we can do is find the courage to stand still and to look backwards.
I went looking for embodiments of pure evil, but found ordinary people.
No one forgets the presence of the camera, no matter how long it's there.
I'm a big admirer of S21, and I really also like Rithy Panh's work in general.
We can distance ourselves from the reality of what we did through storytelling.
I don't drink in the cinema because I have a bladder the size of a hummingbird.
Denial, panic, threats, anger - those are very human responses to feeling guilt.
Waking from any fever dream, one retains, above all, impressions seared into memory.
Military rule in Indonesia formally ended in 1998, but the army remains above the law.
From 2005 to 2010, I was exclusively shooting 'The Act of Killing' and then editing it.
I always have said, you know it's not for me to forgive or to condemn, I'm a filmmaker.
I heard about the Holocaust before hearing the 'Cinderella' story or watching 'Peter Pan.'
I think that indignation is pleasurable, and it's pleasurable because it's self-righteous.
There are committed Indonesian filmmakers who are committed supporters of 'The Act Of Killing.'
For a long time, the Indonesian government ignored 'The Act of Killing,' hoping it would go away.
'The Act of Killing' helped catalyze this basic transformation in how the media talks about the past.
A podium is something you walk up to, you say what you want to say and when you're finished, you leave.
My background is in filmmaking, and my mentor is Dusan Makavejev, who combined fiction and documentary.
In Denmark, the annual Christmas party is probably the most important cultural institution in the country.
I don't like to eat when I watch films because it distracts me. Anything crunchy or in a wrapper is terrible.
I think that our task as filmmakers is to create the most insightful reality given the most pressing questions.
I believe every time you film anybody, you create reality with that person - whether it's fiction or nonfiction.
I really believe that the past is beyond our grasp and what is essential about the past is something unspeakable.
I had been working with a community of survivors who had lost their relatives and were too scared to talk about it.
At our production company, the trademark dish - and this sounds particularly revolting - is curried pickled herring.
I don't think there's a morally perfect way to do anything in life, but I'm not a filmmaker who tries to hide my mess.
The killers have built the society. The whole Indonesia is their platform. They run the country. They run the country.
There's a tradition of reenactment in documentary which is about sort of illustrating what the past might have been like.
I need to trust myself and go where my instincts tell me, and to be as wild and free as possible in my creative decisions.
My first memory of cinema is my mother taking me to see 'Silkwood,' which is about a whistleblower at a nuclear power plant.
Direct cinema is about simulating a reality in which you're not having the overwhelming influence that you really are having.
What makes art powerful is a flash of recognition, a frightening encounter with something familiar about the human condition.
Performance is always oriented towards a spectator, towards an imagined audience and I was thinking who is their imagined audience?
To put it crudely, 'The Act of Killing' would blast open the space for the more delicate film, 'The Look of Silence,' to do its work.
I think Americans are aware that they are involved in all sorts of violence around the world. They normally don't want to look at that.
For my part, as a filmmaker, I've never been a fly-on-the-wall documentarian. I have no commitment to that method. I believe it's a lie.
I am always a little surprised when anyone sees anything I make, so being nominated for the Oscar is beyond amazing - what a tremendous honor.
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.
I think we are fascinated and scared by evil at the same time. I think it's important not to suppress our fascination but to walk into it with open eyes.
Films can't change the society; they can simply open the space for the discussion which can lead to social change and can start new forms of social activism.
If you film a little boy going to school, the big event in that boy's day and all the classmates' and teachers' day is you being there filming, not the school.
Like all art, nonfiction film should invite, seduce, or force us to confront the most difficult, frightening or mysterious aspects of what it means to be human.
I still receive very regular death threats that make it impossible for me to return to Indonesia. I think I could get in, but I don't think I could get out again.