My Advice to Young Filmmakers is This: Don't Follow Trends. Start Them!
I always try to be a trend setter. That's what I always tell young people when I'm giving them advice. To go with their heart and don't follow the trends.
Don't follow trends, start trends.
If African film makers had one-tenth the amount commanded by film makers the world over - even the amount used by so-called shoestring film makers - I think we would see quite an explosion of African films on the world scene.
It's important to me to try and expose young people to the things they believe are off-limits to them. I tell them, 'There are no walls, only the ones we put up.' My advice to young people looking at my life is not to follow my footprint but to go out there and make their own.
Film-makers in Belgium are seen as arts and crafts makers. It is a small country. There is not really a film industry there at all.
At the time I left film school there wasn't a lot of hope for young film-makers. It was a calling card of film school to be quite slick and commercial, which might lead to getting some stuff on telly.
I don't think I'd give advice. That never pays off. That's always a bad idea. If they follow your advice and it doesn't work out, or if they don't follow your advice, somehow you're on the hook for it.
In the 1970s, a lot of critics didn't understand video. I got a lot of bad reviews. But film-makers didn't understand what we were doing, either. There were actual fistfights between film-makers and video-makers. I was witness to one.
I've spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That's where the film-makers come from, it's where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed.
My mother always taught me to wear clothes for myself and not to follow trends as trends will end!
Follow sound business trends, not fashion trends.
If the advice is simply to respect yourself and follow the path that you want to follow, that would be the best advice I could ever pass on.
I don't like the idea of 'trends' at all. If you follow trends, then everybody looks the same. The best shopping experiences are in local markets, especially in foreign cities.
I always tell young film-makers, 'Find the song that only you can sing.' It doesn't just come to you. It's trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity.
Successful artists don't follow trends; they create them.