I would travel down to Hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.
Money doesn't make films. You just do it and take the initiative.
Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.
I try to be after something that is deeply reverberating inside of our souls, some deep echo from - even from prehistory. What makes us humans? How do we communicate? Where are we going at this moment? Something for an audience where they can step outside of themselves, where they can be almost like in ecstasy of truth, some sort of deep illumination. And that's what I'm trying in documentaries and in feature films.
Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.
I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade unprecedented in the history of cinema.
If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.
I have learned a lot through defeats, and, until today, it's - I'm still haunted by defeats, and they do happen. Sometimes, a film of mine is rejected. And how do you deal with it? And you have to learn how to deal with it and survive anyway.
Clive [Oppenheimer] and I figured out that I'm the only one probably in the film industry who is clinically sane. I say that as a joke, but there's a grain of truth to it. I'm not a stupid daredevil who jumps into the crater of the volcano to get the closest close-up, I'm not one of those. And you have to be aware that you have a crew with you and you are responsible.
I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard.
When you look at my film you see footage that is unbelievably awesome and beautiful and dangerous looking. It's something that is very, very cinematic.
For me, the distinction between documentaries and feature films is not so clear - my "documentaries" were largely scripted, rehearsed, and repeated, and have a lot of fantasy and concoction in them.
There is never an excuse not to finish a film.
I work very fast and steadily, and I don't hardly ever notice that I'm working. It feels like just breathing or walking when I do films.
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.
In my films, I hope there are a few moments where you feel almost illuminated, like in a state of ecstasy, stepping out of yourself, beyond yourself and perceiving something which is only, in the case of cinema, possible in collective dreams.
It doesn't matter whether you shoot on celluloid or on digital, you better make a good film.
I know what I'm talking about and I've never been over budget, in 70 films.
I have nothing against 3D films but I do not need to see them.
