Quotes & Sayings About Documentary Film

If everyone knows so much about it, why do they need to make a documentary? — Brigid Pasulka

I got a phone call from George Miller [the director] asking me to play this role. We sat down and he showed me on his computer a documentary-type montage sequence of real penguins swimming, in an Esther Williams synchronized sort of way, and doing things I have never seen them do. Then he explained his vision of the film, asked me to read the script and to voice the character. I was cast a little bit later, and he let me do the singing as well! — Brittany Murphy

Unlike the book, with a documentary, you get a chance to show much more texture and color. Film gives you get a chance to focus on much more individuals who are pivotal in changing the landscape of American culture. — Steve Stoute

An important documentary that sheds light on one of the most terrifying realities in the U.S. today - the commercial sexual exploitation of young girls. TRICKED is a comprehensive portrait of all the players in this human rights abuse: survivors, traffickers, johns and cops. Everyone should see this film. — Rachel Lloyd

A local director had teamed up with ESPN to tell a story about the Baltimore Colts Marching Band, and the film came out in October of 2009. The 30 for 30 documentary entitled The Band That Wouldn't Die was about how the band stayed in existence for 12 years after the team's painful midnight exodus to Indianapolis and how they eventually became the Marching Ravens. — Ted Patterson

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! — Dori Berinstein

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. — Pamela Yates

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. — Finn Jones

So much of art-making is about reducing things to the essentials, so I don't feel particularly crippled by this. I don't want it to look natural because then I would be making a documentary film. — Jenny Holzer

A good film is also a documentary — Eric Rohmer

Former Vice President Al Gore starring in a new documentary about global warming. I believe it's called [Leno snores] ... The film actually features Al Gore and explores his journey on how he first got interested in temperature change. It started back when he was vice president. He noticed how the temperature would change, like whenever Bill would walk into the room, it would get warm and whenever Hillary walked into the room, it got cold. — Jay Leno

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. — Terry Zwigoff

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. — Rory Kennedy

Why you choose happiness, so you think that the sad moments like somebody dieing - it's equal to happiness?
!?!?!?!??!
So you think that time crimes like this in auschwitz which don't have proof so far from what they say in the reports from Mr.Death (Documentary film!)... so this is equal to (How to say it???!?!) to happiness??
WTF, crime equal to happiness, sadness also so what's left?
Oh, oh I know the Joker (Note: He is a nice character isn't he?) — Deyth Banger

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. — Marshall Curry

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. — Errol Morris

documentary The Invisible War (which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and — Nancy Sherman

Documentary film is the one place that our people can speak for themselves. I feel that the documentaries that I've been working on have been very valuable for the people, for our people to look at ourselves, at the situations, really facing it, and through that being able to make changes that really count for the future of our children to come. — Alanis Obomsawin

Of course no documentary is completely 'objective.' Every decision you make - who to interview, how to edit, where to hold the camera - imposes a point of view on the film. — Marshall Curry

The power of the documentary film, when done well, I think is usually more impacting than a narrative, at least for me. Documentaries are also cheaper, they are more accessible to make. — Richard Ray Perez

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. — Marshall Curry

The camera cannot leave the man, but the man can leave the camera. It's in the style of documentary where you make an agreement between a camera and a man and say, "I'm going to film you now." — Tobias Lindholm

I want to venture into film more, and I think that a nice way to transition into doing that would be a documentary. I think it would be interesting to find one person that really fascinated me or maybe a band and travel with them, but I don't think I could do it like I used to do it. — Ryan McGinley

Spitz and Michael Wadleigh's documentary film Woodstock — Andrew Gentes

When I left university I was working for a documentary film company for six or seven years to the great relief of my father whose greatest waking fear was that I would become an actor. — Sam Neill

Michael Moore announced that his next documentary film will attack the health care industry in America. He's not out to get the pharmaceutical companies. He's just looking for something to relieve the redness in the center of the country. — Argus Hamilton

I had two projects that fell apart during preproduction. The first one was this movie that Judd Apatow and I had written about two guys following the Rolling Stones. It was going to be half concert film, half pseudo-documentary. It was Mick Jagger's idea.The other one was Simple Plan, based on a novel by Scott Smith. It's a great book - really stark, not a comedy - about a guy who finds $4 million in a plane crash and decides to keep it. — Ben Stiller

I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it. — Ruth Ozeki

When I think about the new film, I think I can do whatever I want with fiction, but the more documentary it is, the better it will be because that's what I'm good at. I'm good at observing people's behavior and putting these unspoken things into movie contexts in ways that other people can sometimes miss. — Robert Greene

I remember when I took Quentin Tarantino with me to a very private screening of the documentary 'Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,' which shows some of the legal irregularities of his case. I was involved by the film, and it was an amazing experience to see people weep at the end of it. — Harvey Weinstein

Other people's creativity inspires me. Seeing great art, or reading a fab book or watching an interesting documentary or an exciting film - these things make me want to let my own imagination fly. — Kate Cary

The thing about making a documentary in Las Vegas is there isn't much to film apart from other people making documentaries about Las Vegas. — Clive James

After I got kicked out of CalArts, I moved to Lawrence Kansas where my sister lived. I began working on A William S. Burroughs documentary. I had no idea it would turn into such a big film. — Yony Leyser

I had a very short time on that film [The Possibilities Are Endless] and it was quite strange because the process was kind of like a documentary, which was different for me. The way everything was filmed was very casual. — Yasmin Paige

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. — Ken Burns

I tried [being a mogul]. It bores me. I don't really want to produce other people's movies. Because they're either grown-up filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh or Kathryn Bigelow that didn't really need me - and I've produced both of them. It's fun to sit around with them and be collegial, but they don't need me. They can make the film without me. I make my own stuff. There are tons and tons of other things I'm interested in that have nothing to do with movies or are documentary projects. — James Cameron

If I were writing an article for the newspaper, it would be thesis statement, information, information, supporting arguments. That would be the setup. When I'm making a documentary, the pacing of the film and the way that you sort of switch from character to character - all of those are more about storytelling than straight journalism. — Marshall Curry

The documentary we are working on is about my mother, Bev Umehara, for whom our film company, Bev's Girl Films, is named after. It is a passion project that I have wanted to make since her unexpected passing in 1999. The film is about my mother's calling which came late in life, at 47, when she made the sudden transformation from a humble hardworking secretary and mother of four, into a labor activist, a respected union leader, and a role model for rank-and-file workers, women of color, and for all Asian Pacific Americans. — Garth Kravits

In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life. — Alfred Hitchcock

Idea For A Short Documentary Film
Representatives of different food products manufacturers try to open their own packaging. — Lydia Davis

I've been called a spy of Israel since 1996, and since I made my documentary film in 2000 the FBI has investigated me as an agent of Iraq. The FBI has also opened up an investigation into my wife calling her a KGB spy. — Scott Ritter

It's impossible for one or two people to go out and shoot a narrative film; you need to have a cast, the person shooting sound, whatever. But you can legitimately have a couple people and go and do a documentary. — Jeremy Coon

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

I don't have a horror film in me just because I don't like to be scared. But I definitely have a documentary in me, and I certainly have dramas. — Todd Phillips

Until I was 16 or 17, I had heard practically nothing about the history that preceded 1945. Only when we were 17 were we confronted with a documentary film of the opening of the Belsen camp. — W.G. Sebald

The problem is we are not eating food anymore, we are eating food like products. (Hungry For Change Film) — Alejandro Junger

Whenever I'm making a feature film, I wish I were filming a documentary, because making feature films is so stressful. It happens every time. — Fatih Akin

People aren't familiar with wheelchair sports. The only film crew in Athens for the Paralympics was the documentary crew. — Mark Zupan

I became a documentary filmmaker because I wanted to make socially conscious films. I never studied filmmaking - everything I have learned has been on the field. — Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Rape culture is a concept of unknown origin and of uncertain definition; yet it has made its way into everyday vocabulary and is assumed to be commonly understood. The award-winning documentary film Rape Culture made by Margaret Lazarus in 1975 takes credit for first defining the concept — Joyce E. Williams

THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA(1929) the 'honesty' of documentary as compared with fiction film, the 'perfection' of the cinematic eye compared with human eye. — Steven Jay Schneider

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. — Gael Garcia Bernal

Most of my life, I thought that I would end up a novelist. But then, in New York City, after college, I started a company with a college friend where we made documentary video for museums. In that capacity, I shot, directed, edited and began to learn the vocabulary of film. — Jon Spaihts

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. — Tim Hetherington

And if you tell a good story, it feels is. A couple looked at this film and said it was the first time that they had ever felt that as they watched something, that they felt as if what they were watching was happening now rather than in the past. And that is the highest compliment someone could ever pay. They might say it was the greatest documentary ever, but it wouldn't be the same thing as it felt as if it was happening now. There was a familiarity. And that is what we wanted. We wanted to remove the distance between us. — Tom Roston

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. — Jonathan Demme

For a documentary it's so important to find the characters and to find people who will give you access to film — Adam McKay

I feel as if I became a documentary film-maker only because I had writer's block for four decades. There's no other good reason. — Errol Morris

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

A remarkable documentary that's also one of the most beautiful nature films I've seen. — Roger Ebert

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

I'm pretty interested in documentary film, and I'd watch almost anything. At some point, I stumbled upon 'shoot interviews' and found out that wrestlers were now talking openly about things that were going on in wrestling that we as viewers were not privy to. This fascinated me. — Box Brown

First there was Caine's patently false "confession." Then there was the fact that the FAYZ Legal Defense Fund racked up three million dollars in its first two weeks. Then there was a judicial panel that took statements from eminent scientists and concluded that the FAYZ was in fact a separate universe and thus not covered under California law.
Finally, there was a shift in public opinion following the involvement of the two popular movie stars, the McDonald's documentary starring Albert Hillsborough, the likelihood of a major Hollywood feature film, and the kiss seen round the world. Polls now showed 68 percent of Californians wanted no criminal charges brought against the FAYZ survivors.
The kiss alone would have wrecked the career of any prosecutor or politician who had anything bad to say about Astrid Ellison or Sam Temple. — Michael Grant

One of the top challenges is the fact that you are dealing with survivors. Every time you deal with a documentary film subject it is fraught with obvious minefields but when you are dealing with a population that is severely traumatized and trying to recover from that trauma there is an extra level of vigilance and care and attention that has to be implemented all the time at every level. — Amy Ziering

I agreed to film after my rookie year in Golden State. I was more used to cameras and felt that my journey to the NBA was a story worth sharing. Little did we know how much bigger the platform and documentary would become after Linsanity. — Jeremy Lin

You're making a movie, not a documentary. If you made a film like the historians would like you to make, you're not going to go and see it. I'd rather see paint dry. — Dougray Scott

You try to do as much as you can on set because practical looks cool and practical looks great. Until you get to a point where the reality is you look at it - and I went through this in my last movie which was a war film, which my brother fought in Iraq and I did a ton of research and as much as I could made it documentary-like - and then at some point on set, the reality is somebody says to you, "You know, you can use a real squib and you can have three hours of clean up and you can lose five shots or we can do that blood explosion in post and you can get those five extra shots." — Kimberly Peirce

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. — Cate Blanchett

Like my father and grandfather, Philippe and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, I've dedicated my life to exploring and protecting our seas, in large part through documentary film. — Philippe Cousteau Jr.

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. — Paul Rotha

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

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

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

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another. — Dennis Hopper

"Plaza de la Soledad" is a documentary about Carmen, Lety, Raquel and Esther, four strong women - middle-aged and older - who want to break a vicious circle that began with abuse and abandonment suffered from an early age. They simply want to have a better life. The film follows their quest to find true love and their capacity to transform themselves. — Maya Goded

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

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. — Ben Edwards

And he saw the studio he was about to abandon for his bed as it might have appeared in a documentary film about himself that would reveal to a curious world how a masterpiece was born. — Ian McEwan

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

There is a saying among the peoples of the Northwest Coast: "The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife," and Robert Davidson, the man responsible for carving Masset's first post-missionary pole, imagines this edge as a circle. "If you live on the edge of the circle," he explained in a documentary film, "that is the present moment. What's inside is knowledge, experience: the past. What's outside has yet to be experienced. The knife's edge is so fine that you can live either in the past or in the future. The real trick," says Davidson, "is to live on the edge. — John Vaillant

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

You can start a documentary with just a camera, as opposed to a fiction film where you need actors, a crew, a script, a lot more start-up resources. It may be self-perpetuating. — Thom Powers

film crew up there, enraptured by the charming rodents. The crew had come to shoot a documentary about the massacre; they had expected teen angst and American social Darwinism. They were seduced by the tranquillity - less than a hundred yards from the school. They shot hours of footage of the twelve-inch prairie dogs. The Japanese crew saw this place somewhat differently than Americans did. Their depiction was by turns tumultuous, brutal, explosive, and serene. — Dave Cullen

With documentary-film projects, you hope you highlight an area of concern people haven't thought about before. A lot of times, I'm asking myself - 'This seems to be a significant problem. What can be done that hasn't been done?' — Paul Allen

Maybe it's good a thing that people see me this way [in the documentary film]. They expect to see me with the high heels, the glamour looks, but now they will see me running through an airport with flat shoes! Also, they'll discover that stylists with "names" are in general nicer, sweeter, have a heart, have great relationships with family and friends, and that's important. It shows that people in fashion aren't just freaks. — Carine Roitfeld

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. — William Shatner

In documentary you sometimes see the tyranny of the linear, but what I've noticed in the last ten years in narrative film is the tyranny of the non-linear. — Brian Lindstrom

If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind. — Salman Rushdie

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. — Pirjo Honkasalo

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

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

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. — Alex Hammond

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

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