A Quote by Mano Khalil

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

Quote Topics

Between Border Deal Documentaries Documentary Documentary Film Feature Feature Film Feelings Fiction Film Filmmaking Good Happiness Harder Itself Just Laughter Look Making Me Most Movie Much People Real Real Feelings Real People Reality Reflect Sadness Same Say Than Think Try Wall Why Working

Quote Author

Mano Khalil
Born: 1964

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

Whenever I'm making a feature film, I wish I were filming a documentary, because making feature films is so stressful. It happens every time.

Fatih Akin

I've always slightly harboured a dream of making a film, a documentary feature. Somehow, I just got into a way of working a routine of making TV docs.

Louis Theroux

You know so many documentaries now are very carefully scripted before you start, and then people are sort of put in chairs which are beautifully lit, and they tell their stories and you do that with another 10 people and you then construct a story from what they say. You do a sort of paper thing, and then you put some images in-between, and that's your film. And that's so not what I think is a good documentary. It can be so much more than that, it should be much more of an adventure and much more uncertain... like real things are.

Nick Broomfield

In fiction film, there are so many trappings - money, glory, champagne and supermodels - that attract the wolves. But in documentary film, there's none of that, so the wolves stay away. The only people who make docs are people who are curious about other people and just like making documentaries.

Marshall Curry

When you're making a real documentary, you shoot it and the movie happens. You don't make - this sounds corny - you don't make a documentary, a documentary makes you. It really does.

Chris Rock

I've always slightly harboured a dream of making a film, a documentary feature. Somehow I just got into a way of working a routine of making TV docs. It's not as though you do that enough and then graduate - you sort of need to make a conscious decision to work in a different way.

Louis Theroux

I don't think there's so much difference between making documentaries and feature films. I think it's even harder to make documentaries.

Danis Tanovic

To the documentary director the appearance of things and people is only superficial. It is the meaning behind the thing and the significance underlying the person that occupy his attention... Documentary approach to cinema differs from that of story-film not in its disregard for craftsman-ship, but in the purpose to which that craftsmanship is put. Documentary is a trade just as carpentry or pot-making. The pot-maker makes pots, and the documentarian documentaries.

Paul Rotha

People outside the documentary world don't realize how time-consuming making a documentary film is there is a lot of responsibility, and in order to make something good you need time.

Alex Hammond

In documentary we deal with the actual, and in one sense with the real. But the really real, if I may use that phrase, is something deeper than that. The only reality which counts in the end is the interpretation which is profound

John Grierson

I believe every time you film anybody, you create reality with that person - whether it's fiction or nonfiction. If you acknowledge that filming is an occasion where people express things they might not otherwise express, that offers a much more insightful analysis of why documentaries - even of the fly-on-the-wall variety - are powerful. I think that our task as filmmakers is to create the most insightful reality given the most pressing questions.

Joshua Oppenheimer

I came from a very avant-garde documentary kind of film making world. I like cinema verité, documentaries. I liked non-story, non-character tone poems. And that's the film making that I was interested in.

George Lucas

I began my filmmaking career by shooting a feature length documentary in China in 2004, the year I graduated from film school.

Lee Isaac Chung

A film is not a documentary. And what's wonderful about film is that it's a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.

Cate Blanchett

With fiction, you are creating an imaginary world. And it can be a very mechanical process. In a fictional film, you create the characters who become "real people" when facing the camera. When you stop shooting, they change their costumes and become someone else. And people tend to believe in documentary more than fiction. Even if the fiction is based on a true story, everybody will say, "Oh, they're only actors."

Mano Khalil

A Quote by Mano Khalil

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors