A Quote by Valeria Golino

I came to Hollywood and I loved it. It was a great time, but in my head I was still elsewhere, in Europe. I believed in a certain cinema, which I still do believe in - a certain European cinema - and as a young woman being in America, I thought I was being taken away from that.
French cinema has always been very interesting, and it's still very powerful. I think it goes to show that it's great to still have a cinema that doesn't try to emulate, for example, American cinema.
The American public is a very specialized public. The reason it is taken as a realistic film is because inside the fable, I've put that kind of reality in. And it could easily be called, instead of Once Upon a Time in America, Once Upon a Time There Was a Certain Kind of Cinema. Because it was also an homage to cinema.
I would be open to doing cinema anywhere in the world. I wouldn't want to restrict myself to a certain kind of cinema or a certain language or get typecast.
What I'm really trying to do is recreate classic Hollywood cinema and classic genre cinema from a woman's point of view. Because most cinema is really made for men, how can you create cinema that's for women without having it be relegated to a ghetto of "chick flick" or something like that?
As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us whatever the turn of fortune.
The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life. But Hollywood has forgotten that, in the past, what made Hollywood great and what made it go ahead was the fact that Hollywood was fed with, for example, Jewish directors coming from Germany or Austria and enriching Hollywood. In 15, 20 years, Hollywood became imperialistic. Cinema goes ahead when it is marriaged by other culture. Otherwise, it turns on itself.
The breakdown of the modern movement led to what later became known as postmodern-whatever the hell that means-referring to the mixture of people and backgrounds that became a common thing among artists in America. Many of the great artists in America, for example, came from Jewish families and backgrounds that fled all the way from Russia. It's remarkable, the great masters of American art and cinema who were coming from old roots in little villages there. And then Hollywood, and the haunting, hypnotic impact that American Cinema had throughout the world . . .
Actually I don't watch a lot of films but when I do, I like experimental, avant garde, European and world cinema. That is the language of cinema I am drawn towards. I don't watch much Hollywood or Bollywood.
I'm not hoping to see that day but I know that my cinema will reach Filipinos. I know that they will embrace it one day. It will happen. I'm very sure of that. I still have faith in cinema. I still believe it can affect change.
I decided that I have certain taste in cinema and I will take it forward. I know there is an audience for such cinema.
Certain subjects may no longer be taboo in cinema. But there are ways to treat them that still create shock.
This film business, perhaps more so in America than in Europe, has always been about young sexuality. It's not true of theatre, but in America, film audiences are young. It's not an intellectual cinema in America.
We're losing film, especially in projection, we're losing a great achievement of civilization. A still image and darkness make up 50% of the experience. The still images become movement in your head. That's the magic of cinema.
We can't keep thinking in a limited way about what cinema is. We still don't know what cinema is. Maybe cinema could only really apply to the past or the first 100 years, when people actually went to a theater to see a film, you see?
I don't really follow television so much, but in the old days there was a certain way TV was, and it wasn't really like cinema. I don't know how many ways it was different or the same, but it was not quite like cinema. Now, cinema can happen on television.
Photographs are still being taken but aren't being shown. There's one of a skeleton bound at the wrists with pants still around its ankles; if it was a woman, she was likely raped; if it was a man, he was possibly castrated.
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