A Quote by Whit Stillman
I'm anti-verite. I think the verite style is a completely false thing. Most things are false to arrive at a truth; verite is falsity without acknowledging its falsity.
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Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite. The only true cinema verite would be what Andy Warhol did with his film about the Empire State Building - eight hours or so from one angle, and even then it's not really cinema verite, because you aren't actually there.
She whispered, 'C'etait la Verite?' Was that Verity? Or perhaps she just meant, Was that the truth? Was it true? Did any of it really happen? Were the last three hours real? 'Yes,' I whispered back. 'Oui. C'etait la verite.
I think now more than ever there's so much available honesty that you can find on the Internet. You can go on to YouTube and find really, really vulnerable, really verité stuff. It's not even verité, it's real! It's people confessing very private things. In a world with "It Gets Better" videos where people are trying to keep themselves alive and speak out to other people and are really brave and courageous.
There's a real difference between a documentary that was all about facts and history and information. People just don't get as engaged in that kind of documentary - they don't fall in love, they don't cry, they don't forget who they are, they don't ride with you. As we realized we had richer, vérité kind of people, what we wanted to do is focus in on the vérité story.
If someone tells you that George Bush is not the 43rd president of the United States, they might be engaged in wishful thinking, or denial, but if they make that claim, it's either true or false! And you can assess that, regardless of whether there's an omniscient narrator, or an unreliable narrator, or it's shot in vérité, or it's manipulated, it's agitprop, whatever! It makes no difference! It's a style!
My films are as much concerned with truth as anything in vérité. Maybe more so.
Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite.
I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth.
The question of relevance comes before that of truth, because to ask whether a statement is true or false presupposes that it is relevant (so that to try to assert the truth or falsity of an irrelevant statement is a form of confusion).
Truth exists independent of style. It involves all kinds of issues. Properly considered, it's a quest, a pursuit. To say that vérité is more truthful than something that is narrated is just misplaced. Completely wrong. And the fact that people still talk about it as though they're really talking about something... it puzzles me greatly. A moment of reflection about it tells you that it makes no sense!
I believe we have two ideas about how movies are made in our heads. Idealizations. Platonic ideals. One of them is of a movie that is completely uncontrolled, and another is a movie that is completely controlled. The auteur theory vs. cinéma vérité.
Exactitude is not truth.
[Fr., L'exactitude n'est pas la verite.]
For seven years, I made films in the cinema verite tradition - photographing what was happening without manipulating it. Then I realised I wanted to make things happen for myself, through feature films.
Even if I made pornography, the trauma would show, though. It will always be there because it's my verité. It's my kind of narrative, it's my kind of storytelling. It's not style; it's just there.
I don't necessarily believe in the ideology of cinema verité. I think by the very fact that you have a camera there you are affecting the story and you are influencing it.
The opposite of what is noised about concerning men and things is often the truth.
[Fr., Le contraire des bruits qui courent des affaires ou des personnes est souvent la verite.]
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