Quotes from Raoul Peck

You face the reality, whether it's hopeful or hopeless. What's your alternative? To lie down and die?

I have to make sure, when you start seeing a film, you are going to see it until the end. I have to, of course, entertain you a little bit. The real question is how far do I go?

Right now, the machine keeps us totally busy. If you don't react against it, you'll end up letting yourself go and become the perfect consumer. That's what they want.

[James] Baldwin "was one of greatest intellectuals of his time. He was an important voice, period, not an important black voice."

Face your reality. You, black or white, are not innocent anymore. Either you have the courage to face it or you will go down together with the whole idea of the American Dream.

Film is carrying a lot of ideology. It's carrying an image. It's forging an image not only of the rest of the world, but also of yourself, you know.

Only if you were lucky to be born in the right class, the one Donald Trump was born in, then of course you have a beautiful view of the world. You find that everybody else is an imbecile, because he doesn't think like you, he doesn't dress like you, he doesn't have the same girl as you, etc. But I call that ignorance.

I can't tell a story just by deciding to tell a story, do it in a didactic way. I need to have my own emotion, to feel, 'Wow, there is something I can discover, I can create.'

I have refused money sometimes for a film. I have refused films when I felt that it was not for me. When it was just a job or just about making money, I said no. I wanted to make every film count, and when you are true to yourself, this gives you a certain integrity and a certain reputation.

I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.

James Baldwin is probably, for me and for many other people, one of the most extraordinary authors in this country, black or white. And he is somebody who changed my life.

I think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time... not just African-American. He singled-handedly revolutionized the political, artistic, and historical discourses about America.

I tend to believe that film can try to save what still can be saved, in terms of our histories, our memories. Because a lot of things are disappearing very quickly, things are changing. We are living in very quick times, and we have a new generation who basically know nothing about events 30 years ago.

You're telling me Beyonce is a revolutionary? Thirty years ago, you had those guys who raised their fists at the Olympic games, and they paid 30 years of their lives because of that gesture. And you're telling me a superstar who put one fist in the air is a revolutionary? But that's the superficiality of this time.

I started to read James Baldwin very early on in my life. At a time, as a young adult in the Sixties, when there were not that many authors in whom I could recognize myself, he was an important guide and mentor to me, as he was to many others. He helped me understand who I was and decipher the world around me.

There's an apparent freedom, an apparent liberty of access to everything, but you can't use it because it's too much. Everything is at the same level. You even have fake news. You have to go through fake news to make up your mind. Facts and lies are treated as equal. There are even people who are against the idea of climate change.

Making a film is just layers and layers of work of edits and trial and error.

The only direction I can give to an actor, a good actor who knows his skills, is, 'Here are those words. They're yours. Make them yours. Don't tell the text but be the text.' That means you have to be the emotion of the text.

When I have people trust me with their money, I am obligated to give them a great film. I am not obligated to give them a profit.

We forget that everything has a meaning, everything has an impact on you. It's what we call soft power today. Nothing is innocent.

People don't realize how black people, minorities, women as well, all their lives, they have had to make the effort to understand everybody else. All my life, I've known American culture very well. I probably know American literature more than the average American.

You can binge a TV series or watch a reality show, and they're not innocent. They take a lot of room in your brain, and you don't have any space left for your own thoughts. They give you a scripted reality. It's an ideological tool.

I never considered myself as somebody in exile because, different to my father who, yes, was in exile because he left Haiti as an adult, for me it was just to be somewhere else. I carried Haiti with me everywhere, but I also carried, you know, my youth in a public school in Brooklyn. It's part of who I am as well.

If there is something that determines my motivation in the work I do, it's the sense of injustice.