Quotes from Bernardo Bertolucci

Although some people call me anti-feminist, I know I wasn't because Germaine Greer supported me.

I think that I used to love Hollywood movies. I remember great phases and moments. But, unfortunately, now is not the moment.

I remember being young in the 1960s. We had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.

I was writing poems when I was young, you know, because my father was a poet, so it was absolutely normal to follow my father.

My father basically had two ways of judging anything. Either something was poetic or it wasn't.

I accept all interpretations of my films. The only reality is before the camera. Each film I make is kind of a return to poetry for me, or at least an attempt to create a poem.

I lived in a kind of dream of communism.

Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.

I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting 'Last Tango in Paris,' I was thinking I was doing a political film.

I wanted to have a reaction from the audience. I wanted to be able to talk to somebody, and not be talking just to myself. That's when I did 'The Conformist,' 'Last Tango in Paris,' etc. And I found it was incredibly rewarding, something new.

I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks.

When I shoot, I try to feel the body and the face and the weight of the actor, because the character until that moment is only in the pages of the script. And very often, I pull from the life of my actors. I'm always curious about what these characters and these actors are hiding about their lives.

There's no more film; now everything's digital. I welcome this. It's fantastic for me to have a new chance.

Commuting in a wheelchair is not easy. I live in a very old part of Rome. These cobbles everywhere... terrible! In London, it is the same. Every pavement is uneven.

I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important.

English dialogues are always just what you need and nothing more - like something out of Hemingway. In Italian and in French, dialogues are always theatrical, literary. You can do more with it.

Film students should stay as far away from film schools and film teachers as possible. The only school for the cinema is the cinema.

You live day by day. You can't build your life.

I started in '69 to have psychoanalysis, and I realised very soon that I was changing, and that's I think why my movies were changing. They became much more open to dialogue.

I saw 'Avatar' and liked it very much. It was a great achievement.

I am in love with the idea of doing a movie in 3D. I think 3D would be great in a kind of realistic normal story without throwing objects to the camera, but using the 3D on the emotions in an intimate story.

I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.

I think politics is a higher build in life. You know? If you diffuse under normal, common sense of a story, you make it political. If you choose a conventional way for a story, or refuse to use the conventional way, you make it political.