Top 1200 Documentary Film Quotes & Sayings

We've turned film into such an industry that we pursue naturalism just by shaking the camera and cutting the film to ribbons to provoke a bogus sense of documentary. But we haven't done the homework. To push the depth that the Actor's Studio did or the Russian theatres did with their actors is to rehearse, to spend time, to dig, to excavate.

We have a documentary film festival in Mexico. It's really original. It's called Ambulante, and it's a film festival that travels around several cities in Mexico.

When you make a documentary film, after many years the only thing you remember is what you put into the film, not what you took out.

The magic of documentary is that I keep being surprised and amazed by the things I film.

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.

But one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made.

I am particularly pleased to see that there are so many women working in documentary film.

We exaggerate the difference between documentary and fiction. I think that on some level a fiction film is also a documentary on the actors. You can't wash away your life's history, which is written on your face, unless you get a facelift.

In 1993, my first documentary was about the civil war in Algeria. That was in French and in Arabic. Another short film I did was silent. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, I'm Italian, and yes, I make films with Italian money, but personally, I've always been invested in the broader world of film-making.

As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.

I was a documentary film-maker for 26 years before I became a full time actor.

When I graduated from Brown after majoring in women's studies, I made my first PBS documentary, 'Women of Substance.' My first feature documentary was called 'American Hollow,' which I did for HBO and was at the Sundance Film Festival.

With any rock documentary or band documentary you always recognize things that you've experienced some version of.

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

What's great about documentary, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of 'documentary.'

There's a documentary film-maker called Werner Herzog, who's a German film-maker. I really dig his stuff, I'd love to chat with him.

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.

I got five kids, and my oldest is a documentary film maker and camera man, and still photographer.

Working on 'The War Room' was a thrill, not only because we were given such exquisite access to the nerve center of Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, but for me personally, it was so exciting to be producing my first film and working with documentary filmmaking legends D.A. Pannebaker and Chris Hegedus, who were the film's directors.

This is indeed not only relevant to Documentary but is evident is most type of film making. The film often mirrors the experience, understanding and politics of the director.

Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?

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.

If you're a great documentary filmmaker, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a great narrative filmmaker. There are fantastic documentary filmmakers that can't direct actors. You don't have to do that in a documentary, if it's a real documentary.

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.

I need there to be documentary photographers, because my work is meta-documentary; it is a commentary about the documentary use of photography.

My hat's off to documentary filmmakers. I don't know if I'm ever going back to it. You're treated like a second-class citizen at most film festivals. You take the bus while everybody else is flown first-class. If you're a feature film director, you're put in a five-star hotel, and if you're a documentary director, you stay in a Motel 6.

I would love to direct a documentary film if any good subject comes my way.

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 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.

I'm not somebody who comes in with a whole outline, and says, "Here's the movie we're going to make." That's not what a documentary is for me. I think a documentary is about capturing events as they unfold in real time.

I'm ready for all forms of dialogue about the film The Conquest. There will be a lot of political talk, but I don't think the film itself will be scandalous. For the French, there are so many emotions relating to Sarkozy and politicians in general that I think the film will generate a lot of passion, whether it be negative or positive. Above all, it's a fictional film. It was important not to make a documentary and to really pay attention to the images. From the choice of the actors to the mise en scene, the film is completely cinematographic. It's not just a boring political movie.

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.

There is a porous membrane between a documentary that doesn't use interviews and what you would call a neorealist hybrid film.

I don't think the subject of a documentary film should be producers on it.

I was at the National Film School and was a cinematographer there. I got quite a lot of experience on documentary film-making and with directors who were interesting - maybe they weren't using scripts or were using non-actors.

I'll read a book. I'll watch a documentary or a film or whatever. I'll go to an art exhibit and just try and open myself to influence.

When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was.

Like theatre, crafting a documentary film takes tremendous commitment, patience and passion.

When I'm able to bring together the two worlds that I love so much - film and TV - is a documentary feature, it's nirvana!

Even a fiction film is hard to end. You can going on shooting and editing a documentary forever.

A good documentary or educational film is not raw experience. The material has passed the mill of reason, it has been sifted and interpreted.

When the American documentary filmmaker Donn Alan Pennebaker wanted to do a film on Dylan, Dylan asked him what he'd already done, and Pennebaker answered, Nothing except shots in the street. Dylan asked to see them, and he agreed to let him do the film.

I take care to only teach courses about fiction film. I believe that this balances and broadens my documentary work.

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.

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.

Phantom Films is an established production house and it will help to spread awareness about the documentary film 'Katiyabaaz' among the audience. I saw this film and I loved it. Then we decided to support this film.

In film, I believe things should either be documentary or drama.

You can't tell by looking at a film-clip whether it is a drama or a documentary without knowing how it was produced.

What's great about documentary genre, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of "documentary."

Making an independent documentary film is so hard that usually, the usual model is that your film becomes a model for advocacy, so you can enlist that support group and get as much juice out of your film as possible. That's just practically, financially, what you need to do.

'This is Spinal Tap' was a film we felt really had to be done like that. It wouldn't have worked any other way. And it turned out to be the first time a fiction film had really been made in a documentary format. I continued to do that, obviously, because it's a fun way to work.

What is interesting to me about film, and documentary film in particular, is that I can write about these people, and you trust my judgment, more or less, but when you're confronted yourself with humans who are right there on the screen telling you their story, you make a judgment yourself that is conclusive.

There is a documentary element in my films, a very strong documentary element, but by documentary element, I mean an element that's out of control, that's not controlled by me. And that element is the words, the language that people use, what they say in an interview. They're not written, not rehearsed. It's spontaneous, extemporaneous material. People

For me, every film is actually a form of documentary.

We have this film that we hope to finance, it's called 'Southern Rights.' It's a documentary about segregated proms that are still happening in the South of America. So there's a black prom and a white prom, so we hope to finance a film soon about that.

It's a funny thing with documentary films - you want them to feel as entertaining and as gripping as a fictional film. With a fictional film you want it to feel as realistic as a documentary film.

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.

I didn't realize that, in doing a documentary, there is this process of discovery. It's not like a film or a play with a set script. It sort of reveals itself.

A good film is also a documentary

Documentary film without nuanced journalistic sourcing risks being sensational, tendentious or broad-brushed.