Quotes About Documentary

There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement.

The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.

I've often thought even ragtag gatherings of documentary filmmakers are more fun than gatherings of fiction filmmakers.

Docs, in general, are made in the edit bay, archival docs even more so.

I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did. Then when I was around 15, I did my first movie.

I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did.

The last reunion was a bit of a rushed job, we had to do a gig and documentary.

When you're shooting a feature that costs $200,000 a day with a crew of 250, you don't want accidents; you want to know exactly what's going to happen. But with a documentary, you don't, so you have to be sensitive to accidents because that is where the gold is.

The documentary 'Certifiably Jonathan' has engrossing moments in it. How can it not? It's got a great subject - the extraordinarily voluble comedian Jonathan Winters, whose constant rush of words can be like a blizzard: beautiful, maddening, exhausting, and finally beautiful again. But it's not a great film.

You don't have to be someone who likes walking a tightrope across the Twin Towers to watch 'Man On Wire.'

Filming is a witnessing process. You don't try to control it, even though sometimes you wish you could because it can go really, really wrong for you.

I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it.

The documentary feature film 'Legion of Brothers' tells the stories of the handful of U.S. Special Forces soldiers who, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, went into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and, within a matter of weeks, overthrew the Taliban regime.

In 1995 I decided to stop eating meat. I could never really quite explain why; I think it was something to do with watching a documentary where they cooked a cat and partly because I had a really crap job working for Wolves Poly and felt my life was slipping away. It definitely wasn't anything to do with any 'vegetarian month'.

In fiction film, there are so many trappings - money, glory, champagne and supermodels - that attract the wolves. But in documentary film, there's none of that, so the wolves stay away. The only people who make docs are people who are curious about other people and just like making documentaries.

In documentary, you are sometimes burdened, or you feel very responsible for dealing with - I want to say - more complicated themes. Fiction allows for greater distillation.

You have so much more time to observe and learn with a documentary because of the time between the shoots. You get a much deeper understanding of day-to-day life and its themes. It's also much more of a mess after three years; you have to comb it out carefully and see what fits together and makes sense.

My senior thesis was a documentary. By the time I graduated from college, I thought I was going to make films, and my interest in acting was there but kind of confused.

If I were writing an article for the newspaper, it would be thesis statement, information, information, supporting arguments. That would be the setup. When I'm making a documentary, the pacing of the film and the way that you sort of switch from character to character - all of those are more about storytelling than straight journalism.

The existing documentary makers still believe that it is impossible to produce drama material in this State, otherwise they would be doing it, they say.

When 'The Thin Blue Line' came out, I was criticized by many people for using reenactments, as if I wasn't dedicated to the truth because I filmed these scenes. That always and still seems to be nonsensical.

A good documentary or educational film is not raw experience. The material has passed the mill of reason, it has been sifted and interpreted.

I'm interested in reality, and I'm interested in survival. I'm interested in people who aren't the lucky ones, who maybe have a tougher time surviving, and telling their story.

I am a storyteller. I've never been interested in just taking the single image and moving on. I always like to stay with the people I'm photographing for long periods of time.