"♪♪" " man:" "We have this technology." "But what do you do with it?" "You use it all, it's part of the vocabulary and to catch that truth of that moment, that's the challenge." " man:" "What I like is not to arrive at a clear and obvious conclusion, but to leave you, the audience, stuff to go away and argue about, um, ponder about, reflect on, rather than for it all to be tied up" "so that you can go away and forget the whole thing." "♪♪" " man:" "But sometimes, you'll find that, um, a film is looked at solely for its content without any regard to the style or manner in which the story is told." "After all, that basically is the art of the cinema." "(film projector whirring)" "♪♪" " man:" "Films, cinema, cinema, it's contagious." "There is something in you that-that-that needs it." "That need..." "And you are driven to it." "You-you-you-you're pulled into it." "My drug was movies." "Like reading poetry that makes you want to... to-to also write poetry." "♪♪" " Humanity, in-in order not to go..." "go nuts in contemporary civilization, which is very boring, they need some entertainment," "They need something." "(breathing heavily)" " It's... it's..." "They function the same as drugs." "♪♪" "We are almost at the point where it's like a end of a circle where people used to sit and smoke and relax and see images that project into that smoke, and now, after a series of many different technologies," "motion pictures, video, computers, digital, we are dreaming already about implanting something in the eye," "in the brain." "It's like a big tree with small, tiny branches and-and huge, huge branches where..." "and huge epics and-and little haiku." "♪♪" "The challenge, you see..." "of my own challenge and every..." "Everyone to watch in every art is you just go, like, to-to catch the essence." "You can call it hard, but usually that's an essential moment that you... that is..." "So much in it that you want to go back again and again to see or to listen or to experience, to help you not to go crazy or to go crazy in some other way." "(bubbling)" "♪♪" " man:" "It's so beautiful, cinema." "Cinema can go deep or it can go shallow and I think the great films, uh, tell a story, a surface story, but the great cinema goes deep into the psyche and these undercurrents are caught on deeper levels." "It can get abstract and conjure something in a person that can only be conjured through this language of cinema." "The real gift is when you get an idea, it comes in a spark and you see it and you feel it and you hear it." "(knocking)" "If you get the elements correct, uh, the thing will dig into a person and they'll-they'll have this experience." "It can conjure a kind of a knowing, even though it's abstract." "It's-It's real magical." "♪♪" "If the picture is giant and the sound is beautiful and the people are quiet and they get into this world, it's very, very delicate how you get into that world, it can be broken with the wrong sound," "it can be broken with a stupid little screen, it can be broken with people making noises in the theater." "It's so delicate, but if you get into that world, it can be like a dream." "You're not only an observer, but you can get caught up in that world and it can become very real." "In dreams, logic goes out the window and yet you understand it." "♪♪" "There's a thing called imagination, but I think imagination is just ideas flowing." "I always equate it to fishing." "You can't take credit for a beautiful little trout, uh, but you can really appreciate it when you catch one." "♪♪" " I'm so glad you didn't give the center over to the aisle, this is really good." "Good." "(chatter)" " woman:" "I just remember, you know, a lot of people saying..." " man:" "I've never seen kind of... these kinds of films ever, just..." "And I see yours and I'm kind of, "Whoa, what is this?"" " Good." "♪♪" " Jacobs:" "These movies are, you know, thoughts." "They're stores of memory." "And they only matter to us because they strike sparka with that stuff." " I'm very, very inspired." " You don't have much of a choice." "You have to..." "You have to do it." "You know, we have to..." "(sighs) persevere." " man:" "So what'd you think of the audience?" "Did they like the movie..." "They got it?" " Yeah." "No one walked out that I know." "You just have to really be afflicted with it, really." "(singing)" "♪♪" " I'm interested in alternative film form." "I'm really interested in what the medium itself can do." "What I'm looking for in film is to get... an enhanced understanding, an enhanced access to the world." "♪♪" " It's diminishing, the amount of interest there is in this kind of cinema, I think, but there's still a hardcore group of people that still appreciate it." " And there's young people who are coming up who are really interested in it." " I'm not gonna, like, blanket-say Meryl Streep can't fit into it." " That dingo took my baby!" "Took my baby..." "My baby!" " Bon appétit." " If I juxtaposition or remake it in a certain way, maybe it could fit in this category." " All al... alone." "All al... alone." "All al..." " woman:" "We distribute films that are not for the mass media." "Hollywood has a formulaic, a beginning, a middle and an end." "If I go see the "Twilight" series, it-it..." "The vampires isn't even a vampire." "He won't sleep with the girl because, uh, he's Mormon or something." "I look for the deepest part of the human psyche, what cannot be expressed in words and what is, um, sometimes graphic and explicit and painful, but it's what we all have in common, what makes us human." "(film projector whirring)" " I think we're seeing an experimental film from maybe the '60s, but I can't really place it." "I see a lot of, sort of, Andy Warhol factory-types." "I tend to sort of prefer my cinema to have a little bit of story." "I feel like that's important." "I have, uh, an iPhone and I can just sit there and record and record and, um, that doesn't make it cinematic." "It just makes it a $300 item that records video." "You have to bring a little bit more to the show if you want to be called cinema, I feel." " woman:" "All al..." " Serra:" "We're part of the counterculture, that idea of outside the mainstreams and it still applies today." "It can be any form, it can be any content." "It's personal vision." "Anyone can make a film." "(horns honking)" "♪♪" " To me, the-the basis of, uh, motion pictures is the experience and the narrative can be part of the-the-the, uh... the experience, but it's-it's that you-you as the viewer experience something" "in-in time." "(horns honking)" "A great movie, um, stand up under repeated viewings" "And that once you know the story, you're free in a way to get deeper into other parts of the-of the experience." "(horns honking)" "There's a lot more than, uh, than-than-than just the plot." " You don't go to bed deciding what you're gonna dream and make, uh, notes," "I will dream this." "You know, you don't need a script, you dream." "And the dreams can be very vivid, and you know, utterly necessary." "And I felt that way about-about the filmmaking, that if I-if I had a story to tell, it-it would make itself known." " Hoberman:" "And the powerful thing about motion pictures is that it's an experience which hundreds of thousands, millions of people can-can share, although it's not going to be identical in every case, and that-that, to me, is not the same thing" "as-as saying that they're all, um, following the same story." "There's nothing intrinsic in motion pictures that demands a narrative and a case could be made that the narrative element is, uh, secondary to many other things in the movie." " The best scripts don't make the best films, you know, because they have that kind of literary, you know, narrative thing, you know, that you're sort of a slave to." "The best films, you know, are the ones that aren't, like, tied to that slavishly, so, um... so I don't know, the whole narrative thing, it just seems to me like, you know," "you don't-you don't first think of the story of the song and then make the song, you know, it has to come out of the... that moment, you know, and that's what film has, it's just that moment which is holy." " I was in and out of the holy moment, looking at you." "Can't be in a holy..." "you're unique that way, Caveh." "That's one of the reasons I enjoy you." "You can bring me into that." " man:" "Let's see, now, I have a sample of her handwriting here." "Oh, yes." "Here we are." "Marie Samuels." "Has an interesting address." " man:" "When I say that I'm not interested in content, uh, it's, uh, it would be the same as a painter worrying about whether the apples that he's painting, whether they're sweet or sour." "Who cares?" "It's his style, his manner of painting them." "We have a rectangular screen in a movie house." "Now, this rectangular screen has got to be filled with a succession of images." "Any art form is there for the artist to interpret it in his own way and thus create an emotion." "(plane rumbling)" "♪♪" " man:" "I wish I knew how to quit you." " You just don't belong in my world, Bella." " I belong with you." " My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius." "And I will have my vengeance." " Can't you see it's impossible?" " No." "♪♪" " In dealing with high emotion of jealousy and, uh all of the melodramatic elements, betrayals and all this kind of stuff, I was very aware of-of dealing with a genre, but, uh, because I didn't use actors," "I used, uh, dancers who had no acting ability at all." "One way of describing my relation to making art of any kind is, uh, batting my head against the wall of, uh, familiar practices." " I'd like to kick your ass in." " It's a Brechtian idea of disrupting the spectators' identification, uh, and making them aware that they're seeing something that is constructed." " man:" "Sherman, is that you?" " Rainer:" "Shut up back there." " woman:" "Now, you keep your body there." "One, two." " Rainer:" "I was making a kind of dance that wasn't involved with stories or topical issues and the second wave of feminism came along and the possibilities of film seemed so much more... open and, uh, extended than what I was able to do with-with dance." " Court jesters were always male." "Even as fools, they were accorded dignity." "But when a woman plays the fool, she's made to feel like an idiot." "There's no dignity in the role for us." " Rainer:" "I never expected a mass audience." "I mean, I go to some of my screenings and the only reason I stay is to see when people will leave." ""Jeanne Dielman" was a very radical film for its time." "She was telling a story, in a very attenuated way, about the disillusion of the main character." " Of course, we were all influenced by feminism and its, uh, its protest against the, uh, inequities in social and private life." "(grunting)" "There is no way the image of a woman could, uh, be, uh, represented without it being sexualized." "(brakes screeching)" "This male gaze was something to be analyzed..." "Beginning with the director then the, uh, the male character." "The woman's body was a landscape through which the man passed and controlled." "♪♪" " Here's looking at you, kid." "(crashing)" "(screaming)" " This is one night you're not turning me out." " This your girl?" " I'm my mother's girl." " Rainer:" "You know, it still goes on." "We are bombarded by images of women's bodies and it's an ongoing struggle to deal with that in art-making of all kinds." " Wh-what's this?" "Heavy underwear." "(metal clattering)" "Sorry about that." "♪♪" " Cinema is the sexiest thing possible." "First of all, you're dealing with the issue of control and passivity." "The person behind the camera ostensibly has control, the person in front of the camera is supposedly the subjective, or the object, and so there's a little dance." "(groaning)" "But I absolutely believe that everything in life is political." "For me, anything that you turn the camera onto is, in essence, a documentation." " man:" "Brother to brother, brother to brother." " men:" "Brother to brother, brother to brother." "Brother to brother, brother to brother." " man:" "Brother to brother, brother to brother." "Brother to brother, brother to brother." " men:" "Brother to brother, brother to brother." " man:" "Something very powerful about sitting in a dark theater with a few hundred people, mostly strangers, and the audience, though they are not really communicating with each other, they do affect each other and-and it becomes sort of a collective force." "♪♪" "Moore on film:" "I asked Corporal Henderson of the United States Marine Corps to join me on Capitol Hill to see how many members of Congress we could convince to enlist their children to go to Iraq." "Congressman?" "Michael Moore..." "How are you doing?" " How are you today?" " Good, good." "I'm trying to get members of Congress to get their kids to enlist in the army and go over to Iraq." "Congressman?" "Congressman..." "Congressman?" "Congressman Doolittle." "Michael Moore." " Oh, no..." " I'm wondering if..." " I believe movies, especially documentaries should have a point ofview and the filmmaker should be honest about their point of view." "Should believe in something." "If I was making a movie about women getting the right to vote, you know, well, Mike, you didn't..." "You didn't put in those people that thought women shouldn't be voting." "Yeah, that's right." " woman:" "Paco." "Raymond." "T-Tania..." "Todd." " man:" "I consider my documentaries to be dramatic films." "What's the theme of the film?" "What's the heartbeat of the film?" " man:" "You know, we forget that someday, this is gonna be over." "Someday, there's gonna be no such thing as AIDS." " man:" "Our most precious jewel." " woman:" "John." " man:" "Our most beautiful son." "John Anthony." " woman:" "Johnny boy." " man:" "Johnny boy." " If it worka as a story, if it engages the viewer, um, if it makes sense to the viewer, if it moves the viewer, informs, uh," "I want it to work for anybody who sees it." " man:" "And we love him so much." "We love him so much." "(distant booming, chatter)" " man:" "I didn't drop napalm, but I dropped other things just as bad." "And people would suffer." "They would-they would live, but they would suffer, you know, then often they would die afterwards." "And this would cause people to have to take care of them, you know?" "But I look at my children now and, uh, I don't know what would happen if... what I would think about if someone napalmed..." "(loud chatter)" " Moore:" "Some of the great films that were documentaries that I saw were very inspiring because I saw things that I couldn't see anyplace else." " Jagger:" "Come on now!" "Everybody, just cool out!" "(banging)" " You okay, Jim?" " Yes, Johnny!" " Huh?" "What are you doing, Jim?" " woman:" "What do you do for a living, Jason?" " I hustle." "(laughing)" "I'm a stone whore." "And I'm not ashamed of it." " man:" "Of course, we are challenging nature itself." "And it hits back." "It just hits back, that's all." "And I wouldn't see anything "erotical" here," "I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and..." "Just rotting away." "♪♪" "(gun firing)" "(thudding)" " man:" "You don't remember?" " This isn't a deposition, sir." "I was polite enough to give you time." "Foolishly, I now see." "You have three more minutes." "Give it your best shot." "♪♪" " Moore:" "I don't have a lot of, uh, highfalutin hopes for movies or anything, really, changing the world these days, although I-I do remain an optimist." " woman:" "Excuse me." "Excuse me." "Uh, where are you guys going?" " We're going up to the 14th floor." " Do you have an appointment?" " No, we're gonna try and see Roger Smith." " No, you're not." "You're not gonna get on one of those elevators." " Why is that?" " If you don't have an appointment, you're not going up to 14." " Well, can we go up and try and make an appointment?" " No." " Why?" " I need Tony or Denise." " And the reason to talk to Roger Smith would be?" " Uh, Michael Moore." " No, what's your reason for seeing Roger Smith?" " Excuse me, I need to see you." " Um, we're doing..." "We're making a film." "Cinema is a way to sort of..." "to take a look at the world in which we live and make it writ large so that the audience watching the film becomes part of it." "And they do become part of it." "♪♪" " People used to talk to me about "Z" so much, almost 45 years ago." "The fact that the few movies succeed, survive," "I think the only explanation I have is that the director and the actors and everybody give so much passion to make that movie and its passion remains, survives." "Everyone finally has a vision of the movie, has a vision of the scene, so the important thing is to bring everybody to go to the director's vision." "We don't do in a kind of political speech or university speech." "I would like the audience to feel it much more than see it." "♪♪" "I believe the story's most important, with a good style, of course." "(exploding, crashing)" "♪♪" "(shouting)" " Photography does not create eternity as art does." "It embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption." "Viewed in this perspective, the cinema is objectivity and time." "(gun firing)" "For the French film critic André Bazin, the invention of photography and cinema were revolutionary because for the first time in human history, we could record and therefore capture and hold an actual moment in time." "(flapping)" "For him, this was revolutionary, not least because, even though a director chooses what to film, can put the film images in any order and then alter them in any way, nonetheless, there is that direct contact with an original moment in time." "And for Bazin, what we see on screen only exists in relation to everything that's not on screen." "Cinema suggests as much as it reveals." "(horn honking)" "(grunting, thudding)" " So, finally you watch the movie." "There is nothing..." "you create the universe." "(gun fires)" "The movie is not reality." "It's based on the real, but it's not reality." "The art's... much too longer, much too complex." "The important thing is to give the audience the elements they can understand the story and what the story is meaning." "So, the way you do it I don't really know." "(chuckling)" "I don't know." "♪♪" " man:" "He is totally trusting himself and the material." "He winds up with some of the greatest footage ever shot." "He was using that horribly misunderstood word, "film style,"" "and that takes such courage and such wisdom and such security." "He trusts the audience." "♪♪" "The oversaturation of the color applies to all of the work." "There's an oversaturation in performance." "♪♪" "We're changed by great work." "So you see "Ran" because you're exposed to something that's as good as a movie can get." "♪♪" "(gasping)" "♪♪" "(waves crashing)" " Ideally, the audience can look at a film, emotionally get the whole thing and, uh, not necessarily be able to explain it to somebody else." "You know what it means, but you can't articulate it." "After I see a film," "I say, how do they do that?" "I don't know how it gets done." "(wind rushing)" " woman:" "Kiss my hot lips!" " man:" "Oh, hot..." " Lips?" "Hot..." "Hot lips?" " We have got to share this with the rest of this camp." " Altman:" "There's a word that's in the director's manual, it says "action."" "I don't restrict the actors and I allow them to do what they can do or what they will do, in fact, I insist on it and I don't restrict their performance." "(Echoing)" " Frank!" "Wait a second!" " What is it?" " Turn the light on!" "No, that's wrong..." "turn it off." "♪♪" " Altman:" "When we started film, we took it from theater, literature and we were an extension of another art form." "It's still that way, it's getting away from it and I think that eventually, somebody will make a film that is purely a film and the audience can respond to as such and I don't think it's been done." " ♪ But I'm easy ♪" "♪ Yeah I'm easy ♪" "♪ Take my hand and pull me down ♪" "♪ I won't put up any fight because I'm easy ♪" "♪ Easy ♪" "♪ Give the word I'll play your game ♪" "♪ As though that's how it ought to be ♪" "♪ Because I'm easy ♪ (clapping)" " Altman:" "I've always said that making a film is like making a sandcastle at the beach." "You invite your friends and you get 'em down there and you say, you build this beautiful structure and have a drink, watch the tide come in and the ocean just takes it away, and that sandcastle remains in your mind." "(dog barking)" " Can we talk about something other than Hollywood for a change?" " woman:" "Yes." " woman:" "Yes." " We're educated people." " woman:" "Yeah." " man:" "Sure." " woman:" "Sure." " (laughing)" "♪♪" " In this particular piece, as in a lot of my work, quite a bit of my work..." "People are really feeling a deep emotion, uh, from the experience that's going on on the screen, and what's going on on the screen right now is, uh, an image of a mother and her children" "walking through, uh, some kind of barrier and coming into our world, and then, of course, which is the fate of all of us, they have to go back." "They have to go back to the dark gray side, uh, and go back from where they came and that's basically, uh, our existence." "That's how we live in this world." "Cinema is the preservation of a memory." "Cinema is the inability to remember without assistance." "Cinema is the preservation of the moment by slicing up its parts into small pieces." "Cinema is an image that moves too fast to be seen, but just fast enough to be believed." "Cinema is a series of frozen moments that might wake up." "For me, art exists on the fine line of knowing and not knowing and a lot of artists make a mistake, myself included, that you're a little too timid to sort of go all the way uh, and for me, uh, my life has been changed by the times" "when something in my mind, something in my head, something in my heart just told me to just take that other step." "The one that you don't wanna take." "I don't connect the dots." "I like things that grow sort of like the way plants grow and theyjust take you and intertwine and move, sometimes inside you and out of you and that, to me, is how I make my work." "Very often sometimes, I don't even know what I'm doing and-and I guess I kind of like it that way." "The natural world is unpredictable." "We will never, ever find a place where it's absolutely nice and neat and tidy, it doesn't work like that." "And that's, I think, is the difference between artists and people that don't make that leap into the unknown." "I have to have an idea, you have to have a way, you have to have a path." "That's all really important." "You have to have technique, you have to do all of these things." "But in the end, it's gonna really happen when you let go, and let go..." "letting go, you fall, and you didn't look to see if there were rocks on the bottom that you might crush your head on, you just jump." "So much to do when video started and nobody really knew it very well so everybody was trying to figure it out and everybody was trying to, you know, understand it better, but in the end, really, what you're really trying to understand" "is yourself, your place in the world." "What moves you honestly?" " Madam." "This is best." " Viola:" "Not, you know, what you saw someone do or a cool movie you saw but something really deep inside you that comes from a very deep place." "♪♪" "(waves crashing)" "(ship's horn blowing)" "♪♪" " Hoberman:" "The first motion pictures were minute-long actualities." "And basically, the special effect, or the attraction was the motion picture, the moving picture, the idea of a photograph that moved." "♪♪" " man:" "Mr. Ford, you made a picture called "3 Bad Men,"" "and you had a quite elaborate land rush in it." "How did you shoot that?" " Ford:" "With a camera." " It's interesting to see them lined up as museum pieces, because... that's- that's what they are." " Everybody senses that there's a big change going on." "Nobody knows what it is and I certainly don't know." "I'm gonna be a part of the past." "(crashing)" " Hoberman:" "It's going to become an increasingly digitally produced medium." "It's neither good nor bad, It just..." "It just is." " Get away." "(screams)" "(screaming)" " What's changed, I think, is the nature of the audience and the parameters of the movie industry." "It's much harder for a certain kind of film to be made, not just in Hollywood, but anywhere." "I still think that very talented and gifted individuals are engrossed in the medium and, you know, the most interesting films all come from the periphery." " Everybody knows a lot about film now, whether they are aware of it or not." "And so it's nice to be able to deconstruct those things a little bit or play with them so you're not in a trance-like state of, like," "I know what I'm..." "I know what I came for and I will get that." "My films are more sunk in the mundane and the day-to-day." "From the beginning, we know we're gonna have limited resources, so I'm always looking for stories, that are mostly exteriors." "I like shooting on location." "And it's Oregon, so we're usually in the rain." "I live a completely unadventurous life except for when we're making a film." "You know, you're definitely on an adventure with these people that you're with." " man:" "It's like climbing a mountain." "Look around, you see trees and rocks and bushes, pressing around you and then you get above the tree line, you see everything you just went through and it all, like, comes together." " Hey..." "What's going on?" " man:" "Just relax, man." " Reichardt: "Old Joy" was a crew of six, including the actors." "They had to be crew people, too." "I had paid for that film myself." "You know, I had everybody for two weeks and we just sort of went into the woods to make this... whatever it was gonna be." "The frailty of the production really always does mirror the frailty of what's happening." "(knocking)" "With "Wendy and Lucy," if she makes one mistake, she's done for." "She doesn't have a net, we don't have a net." " You can't sleep here, ma'am." " Reichardt:" "It's putting the audience in the situation she's in." "There's a lot of themes about society and tough times and also, it's also about aloneness." "♪♪" "To me, the ideal would be, you know, you leave the theater with someone you saw the movie with you and you both take away a different idea and it's not all so conclusive that it's just completely handed to you." "I'm here in my little editing room." "Nobody says anything that I have to do anything or follow anything." "I'm really grateful for it, but it's what I tell myself when, um..." "(laughs)" "I want more time to shoot and you know, more of everything." " Independent film means films made with no interference whatever, with total creative freedom, with absolute, um, integrity uh, and no committees of any kind e-e-exerting any kind of pressure on form or content." "(both arguing loudly)" " Leigh:" "I'm concerned with, um, with the-the very substance, the sort of tangible nuances of how we are behaviorally." "(grunting)" "People say, well, what of the subject?" "You know, there's a guy sitting here, the sound recordist..." "There's immediately a story there." "I want to know who he is, where he's from, what he had for breakfast, what his relationships are about." "You know, there's a movie and there's a guy sitting over there in the corner, and there's another movie, or it's the same movie, I don't know." "♪♪" " woman:" "Johnny!" " Leigh:" "Life is out there to capture and explore and distill and, uh, be that mirror that we hold up." " Where are you going, Johnny?" " You're off your head." " I'm coming with you." " No, you're not." " I want to come with you!" " Don't you fucking come with me." " Are you coming back?" " Johnny:" "What the fuck for?" " Don't stop!" " What about dinner?" " What?" " I can't eat no more, I'm full up." " It's not a joke!" " I'm gonna puke." " Weak." " The main subject with my films is characters and their relationships." "The shoot has to be preceded by a substantial chunk of time through which you discover what the piece of work is." "(phone ringing)" " In the rehearsal process of "Secrets and Lies, we had built the backstory, as we do with all the characters, of the central protagonist, Cynthia, played by Brenda Blethyn." " Hello?" " Is that Cynthia Purley?" " Yes." " Of 76 Quota Street?" " Is..." "What is it you want, darling?" " It's about Elizabeth." " Elizabeth..." "Elizabeth who?" " Baby Elizabeth Purley." " Leigh:" "The premise of how I get all these things happening is that nobody knows anything about any of the other action or characters except what their character would know." "(retching, phone ringing)" " She and I had decided that, uh, when this girl, woman, was 16, she was very, very vulnerable and very, um, susceptible to guys and was mistreated and exploited by guys." " I mean, I can't be your mother, can I?" " Why not?" " Well, look at me." " What?" " Listen, I don't mean nothing by it, darling, but I ain't never been with a black man in my life." "No disrespect nor nothing." "I'd have remembered, wouldn't I?" " Leigh:" "We had decided that she'd gone to a party, she'd had too much to drink and she'd gone with a black guy." "She had a fuck with a black guy in the bathroom." " Oh, bloody hell." " We'd invented the fact that she'd had a baby and she'd given that baby away." " Oh, Jesus Christ almighty!" "(crying)" " She'd forgotten." "Brenda Blethyn, the actress, had forgotten that moment." "So the shock that this woman was claiming to be her daughter was, she actually experienced it for real." " I'm sorry..." "I'm sorry." "I'm so ashamed." " I had never saw a film that wasn't in English 'til I was 17." "Suddenly, I discovered world cinema." "Suddenly, in one explosive moment, it was all going on." "You can't look at any of my work and say it's obviously influenced by "The Seventh Seal"..." "But "The Seventh Seal" was a revelation at that time." "(laughing)" " You keep on rowing, I'll keep on smiling." " Leigh:" "I see the world as being deeply tragic and hilariously comic." "And I actually like watching my films." "There are film directors who... who can't bear to watch their own films." "Beats me how they expect you to enjoy them." "♪♪" "My films are very much not only about people, but there are about place." "Homes, of rooms, of things, of clothes." "About... time passing." "At the last scene of "Happy-Go-Lucky"" "when the two protagonists are in a rowing boat, you analyze it, there's something liberating about it and philosophical, they are being philosophical." "All kinds of magical things happened and we did six takes and the one take that we used has got the birds flying through it." "And that is cinema." "You want to know what is cinema?" "That is cinema." "(soft scraping)" " woman:" "Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out." "(thumping)" " man:" "Cinema is writing with images and movement and with sounds." " woman:" "Images and sounds, like people who make acquaintance on a train and afterwards cannot separate." "(train whistle blowing)" " man:" "An image is transformed by contact with another image, as a color is transformed by contact with another color." "(shattering)" "The camera is more than a recorder." "It's a microscope." "It penetrates." "It goes into people." "♪♪" " woman:" "The essence of cinema is movement." " man:" "The most important thing in movies is lighting." " woman:" "The most important thing in movies is casting." " man:" "We are in a time now when movies, and more generally, art, have been lost, do not exist, and must somehow be reinvented." "Like lost children, we live our unfinished adventures." "(wind rushing)" "♪♪" "(chatter)" " You know, mainstream movies are generally made in a certain way, they're supposed to tell a narrative." "We were very conscious that we were doing, you know, an unconventional approach in that way where there was an outline for a script with some line, just points to kind of hit." " Press?" "Press?" " man:" "We'll knock on doors and make those phone calls!" " Filmmakers can be a little bit arrogant, so you need to, sort of, check that at the door and look outside the viewfinder and be impacted by what you see." " We have an idea in our head and hopefully, you know, not too far into it, that idea changes, and if it doesn't, maybe we're making the wrong film." " Okay, guys, we have Michael Winterbottom... director." " man:" "Michael, how are you doing?" " It is a play, it is an experiment, it's an instinctive thing, rather than "this will mean this," I think, or "this will do this."" "When you're making a film, it's not like I don't care about the audience at all." "It's not like I want to deliberately exclude an audience, but I think as a filmmaker, you can only make what you like, you can only make the things that you find interesting." " Cinema is the multiple network of... of technologies and ideas." "And it will continue as long as humanity will continue." "♪♪" "(siren blares)" " Good evening!" "Good to see... (applause) No... (speaking foreign language)" "(rattling)" "It's like cooking." "It's not so much different." "You have icebox full of stuff and... but you are making one dish, so you don't just put everything, you just put what belongs to it." " man:" "What advice would you give to people?" " Never give any advice to anybody." "(laughing)" " man:" "This feels like your last film, but I assume it isn't." " No, it's up to you." "(laughing)" "What managed to survive the wars, dictators, fanatics, fires," "is because it's so rare that..." "the reality recorded there." " Viola:" "Cinema is an artificial perception looking for an experience." "Cinema is a series of frozen moments that might wake up." " Mekas:" "It's rare..." "Special." "Unique." "♪♪"