A Quote by Kim Longinotto

I watch mainly fiction. The films I like watching are films where you see people change, like with Boyhood. You see a moment in someone's life where it's a breakthrough. For me, the breakthrough in Boyhood is that amazing moment right at the end when he finds somebody he can feel relaxed with, and who will maybe be a friend for the rest of his life. I like that it doesn't end in a love affair or marriage. It just ends in, "Wow, I found people I can relate to for the first people in my life. These people accept me, I like them."
I personally feel like people shouldn't have to come out. That, to me, was like a moment for myself where I was coming out to myself with, like, 'Okay, I can be the artist that I want to be, and as long as the music is good, people will accept me. It doesn't matter who I am, what I look like. If the music is good, they will like me. The end.'
I always tell people there's nothing greater than a crisis to create a breakthrough. Because that's when we breakthrough usually - most people don't proactively breakthrough - they breakthrough because they have to. And the beauty of crisis is it doesn't feel beautiful, is it melts us down. And when you're melted down you can recast your life in a new way.
I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films. Whenever I go to have a meeting at Universal, the security guard just leaps to his feet and comes over, bumps my hand, and says, "Thank you! Thank you, I love your films!" And it's people who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, who like my films, and I like that.
I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.
I think that what I learned then, I didn't know I was learning. I just knew that I was very privileged to see somebody who was a writer, a great poet, and very smart-faced. Suddenly Pasolini becomes a director, so he has to invent cinema. It was like watching the invention of cinema. But I found out that Pasolini taught me a lot. It was, especially, the kind of respect that he had for reality. He had kind of epiphanies in his movies, like when a moment becomes full of grace, and it is like as if it was the most important moment in the life of a character.
I was like, wow, this guy's [Donald Trump ] going to do well. And I remember people laughed at me. People were like, oh, you silly ignorant person who's just come to this world. You clearly shouldn't be at "The Daily Show" 'cause you don't know what you're talking about. And I was like, but I don't know. He seems like he connects with people. I can relate to him as a performer. I can see what tools he's using. He's good at riffing. He's good at taking the crowd on a journey. I can see what he's doing.
People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-headed goat. A monster from some other planet. They keep reminding you of your pain. You see how they look at me? They’re stuck on that person I used to be. They can’t see that old life as just a moment in time that I’ve moved on from. It was a horrible life.
I feel like I'm doing something that's worthwhile. I feel like I'm showing something other people haven't shown. I don't get to talk to the people who I photograph, I just go, along, banging away. So I don't really have a relationship with them. A lot of people think it's very important. I don't. It's like love at first sight. I have an impression when I see somebody, and I have an idea of who they are, or what they are.
Watching people is a good hobby, but you have to be careful about it. You can’t let people catch you staring at them. If people catch you, they treat you like a first-class criminal. And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe it should be a crime to try to see things about people they don’t want you to see.
I literally feel like books saved my life. I found these people. Me reading Camus and Kafka, all of the tortured teenager stuff of someone who's falling in love with books. These people, these writers had the questions. They may not have had the answers, but they're not afraid to look at the questions head on. It was just life-changing for me. Yeah, books, honestly, I can't even tell you. I feel saved by books; I feel like they let me be who I was and find the world I wanted to be in.
I know from the elders that it's not so easy to sustain a life in music, a presence in the music world, for decades on end. And that's what we're here for: we're thinking about the long game. If that is dependent on other people's desire for me, then it becomes extremely vulnerable to change. Rather than subject myself to that vulnerability, I'd rather embrace change and allow myself to transform, and maybe that means that what I do next week, the people who liked me last week won't like anymore, but maybe that will also lead people to like something else.
I may not get the opportunity to make movies for my whole life, but I'm going to make movies for the rest of my life. Maybe studios won't pay for it, but I'm going to do it because I love it. So, I just have to be proud of what I make, and what I'm trying to say in what I make. If people don't like it or people don't see it, that's beyond what I can control. I'm a storyteller, and people are going to listen or not and like it or not. That's only solidified over time.
You go overseas and people are oppressed and scared and worried but we're not like that... we're more like my films and how people come out at the end of seeing them - they feel good.
I like to see people put themselves into films, which is part of the reason why I love Woody Allen films so much - I believe his actors' work. I have a feeling that many actors in his films are similar to their characters, and I like that.
I like to do realistic films as well as sensible humourous subjects, just because I think these films are only capable to attract people to the theatres. Though I agree that serious movies are also good and I like to watch them, it is a fact that majority of the people are hesitant to go to theatres for those films.
I did not enter the industry to create a certain image. People happened to see me as the friend/sister/daughter next door. I like that association very much. It's close to what I am in real life. As for films, I just focus on the job.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!