A Quote by Abbas Kiarostami

In my mind, there isn't as much of a distinction between documentary and fiction as there is between a good movie and a bad one.

Abbas Kiarostami

Quote Topics

Bad Bad One Between Distinction Documentary Fiction Good Good Movie Mind Movie Much

Quote Author

Abbas Kiarostami
Iranian - Director
June 22, 1940 - July 4, 2016

Most people look at a feature film and say, "It's just a movie." For me there is no border or wall between fiction and documentary filmmaking. In documentaries, you have to deal with real people and their real feelings - you are working with real laughter, happiness, sadness. To try to reflect the reality is not the same as reality itself. That's why I think that making a good documentary is much harder than making a good feature film.

Mano Khalil

In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is mourning, there is dancing. Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom.

Henri Nouwen

We exaggerate the difference between documentary and fiction. I think that on some level a fiction film is also a documentary on the actors. You can't wash away your life's history, which is written on your face, unless you get a facelift.

Pirjo Honkasalo

I would make a huge distinction between theater improvisation and film improvisation. There isn't much improvisation in film - there's virtually none. The people that theoretically could be good at this in a theater situation don't necessarily do this in a film in a way that will work, because it's much broader on a stage. But in a movie, it has to be real, and the characters have to look entirely real because it's being done as a faux documentary, so there are even fewer actors that can do that on film.

Christopher Guest

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

Nawal El Saadawi

I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same.

M. Scott Peck

This whole business of documentary being a second-class citizen is bullshit. A documentary can be as interesting, as dramatic, as sad, as funny, blah, blah, blah, as a fiction movie. Or it can be as awful as a fiction movie!

Frederick Wiseman

Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions.

Farley Mowat

I figure if people don't want to make the distinction between a Muslim and a terrorist, then why should I make a distinction between good scared white people and racists?

Aasif Mandvi

I know the difference between right and wrong, and I can tell good from bad. But I also know that the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest calls of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.

Oliver North

The distinction between the world of commerce and that of "culture" quickly became the distinction between infrastructure and superstructure, with the former clearly determining the latter.

Allan Bloom

In my experience with print journalists, the distinction between remarks being uttered on- or off-the-record is held sacrosanct, but the distinction between truth and falsity sometimes isn't.

Sam Harris

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

Jim Butcher

Distinction between species and specimen is very much like the distinction between images and actual pictures, or, you know, objects that have a definite material identity. The classifications, the categories, the stereotypes, and the images are on one side, and the material pictures, statues, texts, and so forth are on the other.

W. J. T. Mitchell

The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.