Good Directors That I Want to Discover

The French Connection, The Exorcist, To Live and Die in L.A., Sorcerer, Killer Joe, Paper Moon, The Boys in the Band, A Decade Under the Influence, Bug, The People vs. Paul Crump

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Well, why bad things happen to good people. An innocent 12-year-old girl, who goes through extraordinary symptoms that clearly represent a disease that medical science is unable to deal with. That’s extremely disturbing to people. Because most people either have a child, or have been a child or are a child. So whenever your child goes through the sort of illnesses that are depicted in The Exorcist, it’s of great concern to everyone. And I think the fact that I made the film in a realistic way is what ultimately gets to people. It’s not done as though it takes place on a planet far, far away or something like that, or in an intangible world—it’s set in the real world, with characters who are portrayed as humanly possible. So I think that the fact the story is portrayed realistically is what disturbs people about the events in it. It was a very productive and exciting period to work with William Peter Blatty on his great creation.

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I think the world is on a precipice today. I don’t see any strong leadership to counteract the terrorism that exists in the world, as well as various other problems. I think if the world does not pull together, it will blow apart. And it has now affected innocent people sitting at an outdoor café somewhere, who have no politics, you know, no particular philosophy that would be disturbing to someone else. There is just evil in the world, and that’s what relates Sorcerer to The Exorcist. There is a force of evil in the world that causes all these problems. Life is actually a beautiful gift, but people regard it not as something that is vulnerable, but as something that they take for granted. The major powers in the world just keep threatening each other, attacking each other, and there’s going to come a point where there’s enough nuclear proliferation to destroy the world. So yes, that is the metaphor behind Sorcerer.

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One of the major inspirations to me for The French Connection, was the Costa-Gavras film, Z. I think that Costa-Gavras achieved that, he made a film that felt like a documentary. It felt like the audience was experiencing everything at the moment, in the moment and that gave me the courage to do The French Connection that way. I’ve said this to Costa already; he knows the debt that I owe to him and to his cinema. It was also done to some extent earlier by Jules Dassin, in The Naked City, and in some of the films he made in New York and Hollywood before he was blacklisted.

I felt that I could take what I had learned from making documentary films and impose it on to a story, which had not been done to a great extent... The actual case took 10 months and the film runs 100 minutes, but it’s an impression of the French Connection case. It’s not a documentary: it’s an impression of who those people were, and how they interacted with one another.

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Midnight Express, Evita, Angel Heart, Mississipi Burning.

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Hard to find a single quote of him describing his filmmaking style. He often stated that he wanted to make his films different. Also, he also stated he wants full control over his films and that he couldn't that anymore in Hollywood in the era of digital, this is why he reoriented his career to painting

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The Wind That Shakes the Barley, I, Daniel Blake, Land and Freedom, Sweet Sixteen, The Limey, The Angel's Share, Kes, Sorry we missed you, Looking for Eric

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In order to know what films to make rather than how to make them. Which is the most important question, it is not "how do you do it", that's not too difficult, it is "what do you do". “It’s what films you make, and not how you make them, that’s the most important question. Which stories do you tell and who do you put on screen?”

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In order to make films, you gotta try to understand the world, otherwise, what story do you tell? So how do you understand the world... well you gotta read history. You gotta engage in the ideas that have shaped the way we are.

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When you make a film, you do reflect the world whether you want it or not, you do reflect it. Even the most extreme fantastical film will some connection to it because the people who make it are born now or live now. And their preoccupations will be reflected in their work. Nobody comes from nowhere. Everyone has preconceptions that are born from their experience. So you reveal yourself whether you think you are or not.

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A Streetcar Named Desired, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, America America, Splendor in the Grass, Gentleman's Agreement, A Face in the Crowd, Viva Zapata!, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Panic in the Streets, Baby Doll, Wild River, Boomerang!

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I'm a man that was born in Constantinople, that was brought to America by his family at the age of four and I grew up in the American streets, was educated in the American schools, has a great love for American, a great feeling for America and I have the desire to tell the story of our country, to truthfully show our country on the screen.

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I saw the great Russian pictures of the 20s, Dovzhenko, Eisenstein,..., and they were an inspiration to me, I have never forgotten them, I have never been influenced by anything else in my life, I made up my mind when I was 18 or so to try to become a film director and I never wanted to do anything else, I was an actor and a state director and so on, but my whole desire in life was to work in films.

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I always appreciated the specific nature of the motion picture art, I never thought that it was like the stage, the means of telling a story in films are entirely different than that on the stage. I haven't wanted to make the movies for like the theater, but rather less like so and the more films I make, the more I feel that films are one thing and the theaters are something entirely different. And, I develop, I try to make my films increasingly pictorial, and when I work in the theater that is a different craft, a different medium. I do not want to bring them together.

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It's very dangerous to select actors by tests or readings in my opinion. Very often, a mediocre actor can give a brilliant reading[...] Very often the most talented people can't work quickly and needs care and patience in their hands. The only I can find talent is to do it very slowly, to get to know them[...] Very often their guards drop and I find out who they are and what is inside them, what their souls are are, what material they have inside them for our art. And when I find that, I know whether they are talented enough.

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The Method essentially is terribly human, profoundly human thing. It was affected by psychoanalysis. The understanding of the soul so to say. People would train into control their own emotions, but there are also sensory exercises. We make the senses for keen, more felt.

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Objects are critical in the method, they are very important in the method. ??Everybody trains into?? the inner life of an object, otherwise the significance or the symbolism of an object. What an object means.

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Profondo Rosso, Suspiria, Opera

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Giallo is something... style, italian style. I most invented this because I was one of the first to do that. Giallo is something difficult to... [define?] some trailer, but with the psychology and psychoanalysis, something inside, beautiful woman, this is giallo.

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I like to change things because I come from critics and like critics I understand that we have something that don't exist before. I stood it and then I creat this style.

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I was inspired by a lot by Alfred Hitchcock and by Ingmar Bergman for a lot of film and like style to shoot I... Big influence in me, the French films, the Nouvelle Vague. It is very important for me to tell the stories, how to tell stories. And also, Fellini is an inspiration for me, very important because Fellini, it is inspired by our dreams, his dreams, his nightmares and you know something real. It is similar to me.

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Violence and sexuality, it is complicated because it comes from maybe like the very wild ideas about it is somethings, comes from my deep. You know, it comes from my deep. I mean conscious, I write and when I finish to write, I understand what is the story but when I write I think it is something which comes very fluently, simple, smiple.

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I'm not a dark person, no. There are two Dario Argento, one is the director and the other one is Dario Argento in life. The life is very different, we have to personality when I'm on the films I'm another person, a person who looks in my dream, in my dark side. And then, when i finish flms I'm simple and like everybody.

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Today, there aren’t many options. Most horror films are made with special effects, so you have either the special effects film or you have a kind of plot that’s repeated. A kind of film is successful and immediately many more are made that are exactly the same. For instance, one could be about a gang of friends hang out a house, maybe something horrible happens, and they’re all killed. So the house is haunted, there is a presence, and the film’s a success. Then many other films will follow the same track.

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To make a film, you need funds and an idea. There must be an idea and author to make it in the best possible way. I don’t think there has been a big change. Studios have to make money on their investments. It’s mainly a financial problem. That’s what remains. I don’t think the attitude has changed. At the end of the day, they all want to make money, so that’s what they go for.

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Well, the film has a specific mood. Either you do it exactly the same way — in which case, it’s not a remake, it’s a copy, which is pointless — or, you change things and make another movie. In that case, why call it “Suspiria”?

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Funny Games (1997), The Piano Player, Hidden, Code Unknown, The White Ribbon, Amour, Benny's Video, The Seventh Continent, Happy End, Funny Games (2007), Le temps du loup

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A filmmaker can reach that also in the description of psychological processes. By showing or just not showing certain situations you can make a film unbearable for the audience. If you reach this, your film will be more than just consumed. I don't want to say that I do not enjoy to consume good entertainment. But I really think that it depends on your topic whether the film should be consumable or not. And if you want to talk about a problematic topic, the film itself should do justice to that.

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Evangelion, End of Evangelion

Out of Life

Capharnaum

Need to add to the scorpio directors poll

Need to add to the libra directors poll

16mm de fiction. (format aussi utilisé par les frères Dardenne)

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I experience thing in a very interior fashion. My views of thing of the world, objects, is not a secular one. I always see thing as being a bit miraculous. For me, every object is a miracle. My view of the world is in a certain way a religious one, though not rigid and sectarian. That's why I invest this way of seeing things in my work.

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I'm not looking for consolation. Like every human being, every now and then, I look for some small delight or satisfaction, but consolation is always rhetorical... insincere, unreal.

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The type of people I love the most by far are people who perhaps never reached fourth grade. Very plain and simple people, and those aren't just empty words on my part. I say it because the culture of the petite bourgeoisie, at least in my country but perhaps in France and Spain too, always bring corruption and impurity along with it, while the illiterates, or those who barely finished first grade, always have a certain grace, which is lost as they're exposed to culture. Then it's found once again at a very high level of culture. But conventional culture always corrupts.

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Avec avec la disparition de l'espoir, il y aussi une disparition de l'amour pour l'homme moyen. Il y a l'amour pour l'homme exceptionnel. Je suis comme un sculpteur. En faisant le portrait d'un jeune homme de la périphérie de rome ou des autres personnages, il be fait pas un portrait familiar, il fait une énorme statut. J'ai fait un mélange de style et vous savez quand il y a un mélange de style, ça signifie qu'il y a une menace dans la structure idéale de l'oeuvre et j'ai compris la raison. Parce que dans Accatone, je suis moi même. Je raconte le récit d'Accatone, l'auteur c'est le narrateur. Dans l'évangile, ce n'est pas vrai. Je ne suis pas croyant, je suis marxiste. Je peux raconter l'histoire du fils de dieu avec la fidélité que je voudrais appeler prosaïque à l'évangile de saint-mathieu. Et alors, ce n'est pas seulement moi qui raconte l'histoire du christ, je suis moi à travers les yeux d'un autre homme, d'un croyant, d'un croyant simple, d'un croyant du peuple... du peuple italien. De cela nait le mélange de style, il y a ma façon de voir la réalité et la façon de voir la réalité d'un croyant. Ce mélange de style donc de structure mentale, de vision de la réalité signifie que j'ai instaurer un dialogue entre moi et le croyant et ça c'est la raison pratique pour laquelle j'ai tourné l'évangile.

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Alan Smithee' is a common pseudonym for directors whose film was clearly taken away from her/him and recut heavily against her/his wishes in ways that completely altered the film.

Underground, Black Cat, White Cat