Quotes from Raoul Peck

There are no free rides nor short cuts in this world. 'The Voice' and 'The Bachelorette' are very poor examples to model your life with.

That's what as an artist you always try to do. To try to be a sharper mind than the average person.

Sometimes people ask me, 'Are you an optimist or a pessimist?' It doesn't matter. Whether I have a future or not is for me to decide.

My story with film is kind of different because I started with photography because my father was a photo buff. He had all sort of cameras, and I grew up with that.

Whatever will happen has to be based on long-term policies and strategies of resistance. We had the Occupy Wall Street movement, but when they had to step up and organize in a more institutional way, the whole movement dissolved.

The role James Baldwin played in my life is incommensurable as stated above. He helped, along with a few others, to shape the man that I am today. My debt to him is invaluable.

I just hope that my films will survive me.

Even in Haiti, I saw John Wayne movies. American cinema has always been the dominant cinema throughout the world, and people tend to forget that. People aren't just seeing these films in California or Florida. They're seeing them in Haiti, in Congo, in France, in Italy and in Asia. That is the power of Hollywood.

I think this whole discussion about what is politically correct - sometimes you have to name the name. You can't hide it. Politeness is good if it's not hiding the truth.

We forgot that Martin Luther King, Jr. changed his discourse toward the end of his life because he understood that the real fundamental problem of this country was not just race, it was class. It was the economical situation of not only poor blacks but also the poor white part of the population and everything in between.

I have always tried to put content in my work. It is a consistent challenge.

America has been living on the back of the whole world! If you take how much energy we consume, like, 20 percent of the world's energy is consumed in this country. Where do you think it comes from, and what are the sacrifices of those countries?

When I left Haiti, I was eight. I went to the Congo where my father was working. The only images that I had were the images of Tarzan. That's what I thought Africa was. Of course, the first day I arrived there, I thought I would see a lot of savages dancing on the tarmac.

As long as you are in that white privilege bubble, you don't need to see the world differently. You don't need to see the world through the eyes of minorities or women.

When I started this profession, I wanted to make films that entertain but that have content. When I went to film school, they made me believe that the two could not mix.

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

That's part of being a real citizen: always questioning your leadership, not only about what it is doing in your own country, but what it is doing elsewhere. Because it is connected.

That's the absurdity of Twitter. You can react without thinking now.

It's not about the past; it's about knowing your history so that you can fight in the present. Otherwise, you don't know who the real enemy is, what the real issue is, because it had been covered by many layers of bad information, of lies, and manipulation.

International aid as a means of development is a major failure, and not just in Haiti.

Haiti is not a world aside, a world apart. Culture and imaginations have always been part of our rebirth.

I refuse to make films where the audience comes for consumption. I make films where you know you are also part of the process.

If you asked me today if there's a piece that I would do differently - there's nothing. Regret happens with all my films.

I never wanted to be current in the sense that I follow the news, I follow the historical moment of the day. It was always, for me, to go back to the fundamentals.