Documentary Filmmaker Quotes & Sayings

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. — Alexander Skarsgard

I've never seen myself as a documentary filmmaker. I see myself as a filmmaker, period, and I am interested in drama as well as in documentary. — Errol Morris

I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things. — Errol Morris

I live in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. and spend time in the West Village, where my wife Elizabeth Cotnoir, a writer-producer and documentary filmmaker, has an office. — Howard Shore

As a documentary filmmaker, I'm very respectful, and my interview style is not intrusive. I don't really have an agenda. I just go in there, I mumble something or other, I wait for them to speak, and I wait for them to stop. — Tony Kaye

It's a privilege to have the career I have, to love every day and be following my passion, the stories that interest me, to remote locations and people. So nothing stops me from that - but yes, it seems redundant in documentary-filmmaker circles today to say the biggest struggle was financing. — Pietra Brettkelly

While it is increasingly possible for filmmakers to find an audience on their own (something that is particularly popular amongst documentary filmmakers) I'm still a believer in the "specialist". By this I mean, I back myself as a filmmaker, but I leave the marketing and distribution of my films to the experts. — Leanne Pooley

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 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

I've been a documentary photographer for much longer than I have been a filmmaker. — Lauren Greenfield

The underwear bomber was so incredibly nervous that he decided to wear the bomb three weeks before his mission, and that's how he ruined it. He was willing, and he tried to kill a plane full of people - but what he actually did was burn his crotch off. There happened to be a Swedish documentary filmmaker several seats over. When he saw the fire and the bomber fiddling with his explosive, the Swede hopped over seats from the other side of the plane and beat the crap out of him. Other passengers joined in. — Gary J. Byrne

I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that. — Anna Deavere Smith

I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did. — Daniel Bruhl

It is clear from a common sense viewing of the program that coarse language is a part of the culture of the individuals being portrayed. To accurately reflect their viewpoint and emotions about blues music requires airing of certain material that, if prohibited, would undercut the ability of the filmmaker to convey the reality of the subject of the documentary. — Jonathan Adelstein

Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways. — Dana Spiotta

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

Laura Waters Hinson, an award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Washington, D.C., described it to me: If you think about the fact that 95 percent of all movies you see are created through a male lens - that's a staggering thought. The vast majority of the media that we consume, that is shaping our souls in a lot of ways, is created by men. And I love men! But no wonder so much of it is violent or sexualized. This — Katelyn Beaty

Witnessing is the essence of being a documentary filmmaker. Capturing moments in time; never knowing how history will judge them. — Pamela Yates

I have major credibility as a hip, out-there documentary filmmaker, and I'm not going to say, 'I'm only a drama filmmaker' anymore. — Gillian Armstrong

I'm a documentary filmmaker by training. You got to start with the real people and the real place. — Simon Beaufoy

For a documentary filmmaker, I do very well. — Michael Moore

My interest in painting is recording things. I think of myself as almost a documentary filmmaker ... I've gotten into some curious situations ... — Jamie Wyeth

I come from a documentary background and my natural tendency, as a filmmaker, is to make a movie, if I have something to talk about. If it's not about anything that matters, I don't feel like doing it. I'm not against people who make movies just for fun, but I'm not one of those guys. I just want to provoke thinking and debating about certain issues. — Jose Padilha

The main reason why I'm a documentary filmmaker is the power of the medium. The most powerful films I've seen have been documentaries. Of course, there are some narrative films that I could never forget, but there are more documentaries that have had that impact on me. — Richard Ray Perez