7 Up Documentary Quotes & Sayings

In documentary, which is the only thing I'm really very familiar with, women are very easily relegated into a producer role. — Liz W. Garcia

If I weren't making documentary films, I suppose I'd be teaching. — Brian Lindstrom

The only award I've been nominated for is a Scottish BAFTA. A Scottish BAFTA, it's like hearing that the animals have their own Olympics. You hear all this stuff about TV being faked. Of course it's faked. It's all faked. That documentary a couple of weeks ago about tribal warfare among monkeys, that was all filmed in a Yates wine lodge in Dundee. Comic Relief is faked. Everybody in Africa is fine. — Frankie Boyle

When I make a documentary I shoot very little but I hang around with my camera for a long time. I look at the people for a long time through the loop and then when I see something interested then I shoot. I think that I have become very sensitive to these things. — Pirjo Honkasalo

Films are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks, are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power and pleasure. — Bell Hooks

I've been encouraging documentary filmmakers to use more and more humor, and they're loath to do that because they think if it's a documentary it has to be deadly serious - it has to be like medicine that you're supposed to take. And I think it's what keeps the mass audience from going to documentaries. — Michael Moore

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. — Raymond Depardon

[Taken from a BBC documentary]
Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1943. A Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his communist parents. — Tariq Ali

But if anyone
so much as threatened them because of what Kaia
had once done, she would turn the Slumber Party
Massacre into Blood, Bath and Beyond, a
documentary by Kaia Skyhawk. — Gena Showalter

It's said that if two documentary filmmakers meet they talk about the world, if two fiction filmmakers meet they talk about the million that they don't have to make their film. — Pirjo Honkasalo

I suppose the primary intention of a documentary photographer is to document facts. My work often does this but it is not the primary intention. My intention is to make the best pictorial image I can. — Richard Billingham

From time to time you'll see documentaries about low-ranked wolves who somehow rise to the top of the pack - an omega that earns a position as an alpha. Frankly, I don't buy it. I think that, in actuality, those documentary makers have misidentified the wolf in the first place. For example, an alpha personality, to the man on the street, is usually considered bold and take-charge and forceful. In the wolf world, though that describes the beta rank. Likewise, an omega wolf - a bottom-ranking, timid, nervous animal - can often be confused with a wolf who hangs behind the others, wary, protecting himself, trying to figure out the Big Picture.
Or in other words: There are no fairy tales in the wild, no Cinderella stories. The lowly wolf that seems to rise to the top of the pack was really an alpha all along. — Jodi Picoult

Celebrate your victories and mark your defeats. Ultimately documentary filmmaking is not a job, it's a calling. — Pamela Yates

I directed 24's pilot. I felt we should follow the characters around as if we were a documentary crew, using available light, hand-held cameras, split screens, sound that isn't always what it should be, to suit the reality of the premise. — Stephen Hopkins

When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War. — Trevor Nunn

My instinct was that it was Sidney's childhood in the Bahamas that gave him the fearlessness to fight racism. So this documentary was a kind of rounding out of what had begun in that scene in In the Heat of the Night. — Lee Grant

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

I have always felt that a lot of the most interesting work, not just mine but other people's, falls into [the] nether area, somewhere between the worlds of documentary and photojournalism (two very vague words) and the world of art. I think a lot of street photography falls into this nether area. — Alex Webb

Content is not mere facts, drummed into tender little minds under the relentless pounding of rote learning. Content--even the date of the Quebec Act, Confederation, or the Battle of Vimy Ridge, or the name of the first prime minister-- is cultural capital, a basic requirement of life that every Canadian needs to comprehend the daily newspaper, to watch the TV news or a documentary, or to argue about politics and cast a reasonably informed vote. In an increasingly complex and immediate world, cultural capital must also include some knowledge of Europe, Africa, and Asia, too. — J.L. Granatstein

'The Look' is my first documentary, and I enjoyed the freedom of working within a small team. — Angelina Maccarone

On 'The Office,' so much of the show is about disguising your true feelings and your romantic feelings because it was a mock documentary. — Mindy Kaling

I think independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers - they are journalists. — Robert Redford

Well it has been very exciting and very changing as well. Celebrating the 40th year and having the album out and the Channel 4 documentary and I resigned from Blind Date. — Cilla Black

You can't hope for a better result as a campaigner than to have the prime minister announce a major policy change within 48 hours of your documentary. — Heather Brooke

This was almost two hours of factual documentary. In our audience ratings, barely no one left the programme. The whole of his life is so fascinating and people kept watching for that reason. — Martin Bashir

I don't see how a woman in documentary photography could have children. I think it's a very difficult thing to do to raise a family, and I have enormous respect for people who do it. I'd hate to do something like that and not be good at it. — Mary Ellen Mark

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

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity. — Spike Jonze

I'm Min's fairy godmother, Charm Boy,' Liza said, frowning down at him. 'And if you don't give her a happily ever after, I'm going to come back and beat you to death with a snow globe.'
What happened to "bibbity bobbity boo"?' Cal asked Min.
That was Disney, honey,' Min said. 'It wasn't a documentary. — Jennifer Crusie