I was always intrigued with European cinema, and hated most American cinema. I didn't like the one, two, three - boom! style, with a neat and tidy ending. That was never my scene.
The third line of cinema today is neither art nor commercial but categorized as good and bad cinema. I think two films - 'Main, Meri patni aur Who' and 'Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon' were the base films for this new line of cinema.
French cinema has always been very interesting, and it's still very powerful. I think it goes to show that it's great to still have a cinema that doesn't try to emulate, for example, American cinema.
There is more to Indian cinema than just Bollywood. I think regional cinema, especially Tamil and Marathi cinema, are exploring some really bold themes.
There is more to Indian cinema than just Bollywood. I think regional cinema, especially Tamil and Marathi cinema are exploring some really bold themes.
My father used to say that you could only access culture before cinema by learning to read and write, but that once cinema was invented, knowledge was available to anybody.
'Black cinema' I don't even know what that means. It's just cinema. When Paul Thomas Anderson makes a movie, we don't just say it's 'white cinema.'
There are different cinema traditions in France, Spain and other European countries. There's a much stronger intellectual tradition: cinema is seen in a more serious way.
When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema, its violence, its naivety, the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films, violence is made consumable.
American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is - along with Jazz - the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.
To me, cinema is cinema. Cinema is one big tree with many branches. The same as literature. In literature, you don't just say, 'Oh, I bought some literature.' No, you say, 'I bought a novel' by so-and-so, or a book of essays by so-and-so.
Cinema is not about format, and it's not about venue. Cinema is an approach. Cinema is a state of mind on the part of the filmmaker. I've seen commercials that have cinema in them, and I've seen Oscar-winning movies that don't. I'm fine with this.
Some people feel that the purpose of cinema is entertainment - which in itself is a healthy enough goal, provided you define what constitutes entertainment. But I come from a family where I grew up believing that cinema - art - should be used as an instrument for change and that's the kind of cinema I've largely done and been attracted to.
Seventies cinema - 'Taxi Driver,' 'Deliverance' - that was the best period of American cinema.
I think American cinema, particularly, has become so disposable. It's not even cinema, It's just moviemaking.
Cinema is capitalism in its purest form.... There is only one solution - turn one's back on American cinema.