A Quote by Guy Maddin

It's funny how film is the slowest art form to adapt to freedom. It's had freedom all along. It could've done whatever it wanted to. You know the same freedom that do-it-yourself punk and post-punk musicians had in the late 70s and ever since. That's about the time I started getting interested in film, and I assumed that film would be moving along with the other pop culture forms. Its finally done it but it's taken decades for it to catch up just to basement band level.
Ah, 'Pather Panchali' was the most inspiring film that I wrote music for, and it was so spontaneously done. I saw the film, composed on the spot, along with myself and only four other musicians, and everything was done within 4-1/2 hours, I think an all-time record anywhere.
There hadn't been one done since the late 70s. I was living in Brooklyn, had no connection to Roger Corman, to no one in this movie. I didn't go to film school. I'm like the person who should have never made this film. But I just decided to put one foot in front of the other. I was writing film articles for magazines at the time. I convinced an editor from one of the magazines that I was working for to give me a shot to do a piece on Roger. This was an excuse to go meet him.
On another level this film talks about that. We had tremendous freedom while making this film. We never thought about marketing. It wasn't a film made to sell merchandise or products or to reach millions of people around the world. It was a film made to say what I really felt.
Oh my God, I love UCLA so much. Their film school is great because it's unstructured, so there's a freedom to fail in there and just tell your story, and everybody makes a film. It's so important to have that freedom in film school because that's what you're there for: to learn and make a film.
To me, a revolutionary film is not a film about a revolution. It has a lot more to do with the art form. It's a film that is revolting against the old established language of cinema that had been brainwashing the people for decades. It is a film that is trying to find ways to use sound and image differently.
I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since.
If a film is very clever and well-written, that's what gives you freedom as a director. Part of the freedom in directing, for me, is that I'm also the camera operator. That's the place where things are less rigid, where I can adjust as I go along.
Doing a film and saying, I've done a really dark film and now I have to do a comedy... That's not me. If a script comes along and it's dark I'll absolutely do it and take the consequences. I'm not fussed about the image that goes along with it.
I think I had more freedom when I began making films. I did not know what could not be done. I was naive. I did what I wanted to. As you gain awareness, you start losing freedom.
Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.
Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?' Again I don't understand', Alyosha interrupted, 'Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?' Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues' credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy.
I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.
I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing, and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.
I built the film [Boy and the World] this way. I gathered all the tools I usually use such as brushes, color pencils, crayons, watercolors, and everything else I found in my studio, and I put them on top of a table. I had this feeling of freedom and possibility like if I was this boy. I was using the boy's freedom to create this film.
I don't choose to make low-budget films. But that is the reality of surviving in the Japanese film industry. However, the trade off is, since we're working on small budgets, we have freedom. You can't buy this freedom with money. With this freedom, I think there are an infinite number of possibilities.
It was an important period for us, because even though we weren't a "punk band", and what became a model for a punk band, we were able to be dragged along by the spirit of that time.
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