Top 8 Quotes & Sayings by Gordon Quinn

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a film director Gordon Quinn.

Last updated on December 18, 2024.

Gordon Quinn is Artistic Director and founding member of Kartemquin Films and a 2007 recipient of the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Gordon Quinn has been making documentaries for over 45 years and has produced or directed over 30 films. His recent directing credits include Prisoner of Her Past and A Good Man. His producing credits include the films Hoop Dreams; In the Family;Vietnam, Long Time Coming; Golub: Late Works Are the Catastrophes; 5 Girls; Refrigerator Mothers; and Stevie. Most recently, Gordon executive produced Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita and The New Americans, for which he directed the Palestinian segment. Currently, he is executive producing several new films for Kartemquin.

Film director | Born: 1942

Source: Wikipedia

'Hoop Dreams'was an unbelievable struggle. We were trying to raise money in the midst of shooting it, and just explaining to people took a lot of effort. I remember talking to someone who should have gotten it, this person was in Public Television, and they didn't think we had a story, until 'maybe something bad happens to one of the boys.' Besides being somewhat heartless, it was also wrong.

Gordon Quinn

None of our films look alike, we are very dialectical in our approach to each one, and 'Hoop Dreams' was no exception. That's what I love about documentary filmmaking, we never know where the story is going, we don't know what is going to happen next, and we're inside a culture of people that you have to figure out in many ways. It's a relationship between what you thought might have been the story, and what happens in the 'field.' Out of that comes the story, which was exactly what happened with 'Hoop Dreams.'

Gordon Quinn

What makes 'Hoop Dreams' such a powerful film, is that it carries a message that maybe we can do something about our problems in America, reflected in the resiliency and strength of those families that we portrayed. The film was where we really saw the characters that we care about, interwoven with a analysis that is trying to help the audience understand what is happening in these people's lives. And in what is happening, there is an understanding of the larger power relationships in the world.

Gordon Quinn

Gentrification can be a plague, as it eats up neighborhoods.

Gordon Quinn

'Hoop Dreams' brought us back to our roots in veríté filmmaking. What we saw in the powerful emotional scenes within it - at nearly three hours long and with no star power - was an outreach to a different and more important audiences. There were the similarly involved folks who saw it that were part of the struggle, but there was also a new audience that weren't empathetic or sympathetic to the people we were portraying. They would never watch a film about inner city families, but they watched 'Hoop Dreams.'

Gordon Quinn

That's what I love about documentary filmmaking, we never know where the story is going, we don't know what is going to happen next, and we're inside a culture of people that you have to figure out in many ways. It's a relationship between what you thought might have been the story, and what happens in the 'field.'

Gordon Quinn

Leon Golub was a painter. He was an artist struggling to make it in the New York City art world, but at the same time he was a very political guy, and engaged in the world around him. In the film, we saw how that world eventually encroached into his painting. One of my favorite lines in the film was how he had to be more precise, 'but now the pants have wrinkles, I hated to do it, but I had to do it.'

Gordon Quinn

Every ten years or so, I liked to do a film about an artist - this allowed me to reflect on our own work.

Gordon Quinn

Top 8 Quotes & Sayings by Gordon Quinn

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