When you say documentary, you have to have a sophisticated ear to receive that word. It should be documentary style, because documentary is police photography of a scene and a murder ... that's a real document. You see, art is really useless, and a document has use. And therefore, art is never a document, but it can adopt that style. I do it. I'm called a documentary photographer. But that presupposes a quite subtle knowledge of this distinction.
When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.
To me, money is a vehicle; it's a tool. I could use it as a weapon to destroy things or money can create-you can create an opportunity, you can create a charity, you can create things for your family, you can go do something for your family that nobody else would ever do. You can create educational opportunities, you can feed people overseas. And there's a tremendous leverage with money, or you can destroy people with it.
I run a fast pace on my sets, man. I like the energy of the scene to be the energy on the set. I think it affects the actors, and I think it affects the crew. There's that sensation like you're really shooting it for real, like in a documentary.
There is no way I could have ever dared to make a documentary, much less have the money to make a documentary, if it was on 16mm. But, with the magic of digital.
Anger, stress, tension, depression, sorrow, hate, fear - these things start to retreat. And for a filmmaker, having this negativity lift away is money in the bank. When you're suffering you can't create.
Ignore the glass ceiling and do your work. If you're focusing on the glass ceiling, focusing on what you don't have, focusing on the limitations, then you will be limited. My way was to work, make my short... make my documentary... make my small films... use my own money... raise money myself... and stay shooting and focused on each project.
In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.
It's difficult to make movies. For me it was easier, as a refugee in Switzerland, to make documentary films, because I didn't need a lot of money for it. The way I tell my story or my opinion would be very similar in both fiction and documentary forms. But I found I could speak more effectively to convey this brutal reality through documentary than I could through fiction.
Style has replaced elegance. Before, I believed that style is something a person embodied. But now it's so easy to buy good style if you have the money.
Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth.
The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.
Documentary: That’s a sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear… The term should be documentary style… You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless.
A good joke provides tension, and then, release of that tension. You build the tension by saying things that are controversial. The release is the laugh. The bigger the surprise or insight in your joke, the bigger the laugh.
Styles tend to not only separate men - because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrine became the gospel truth that you cannot change. But if you do not have a style, if you just say: Well, here I am as a human being, how can I express myself totally and completely? Now, that way you won't create a style, because style is a crystallization . That way, it's a process of continuing growth.
To me, God is an intelligent, loving, conscious energy and why do I say that? Well you need energy to create. You have to have a source. It's undifferentiated energy which has intelligence or it couldn't create.