Documentary Filmmakers 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 often thought even ragtag gatherings of documentary filmmakers are more fun than gatherings of fiction filmmakers. — Marshall Curry

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

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

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

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

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

Post-war filmmakers gave us the documentary, Rob Reiner gave us the mockumentary and Moore initiated a third genre, the crockumentary. — Michael Moore

If we have anything to offer, as filmmakers and as TV makers now, it's this ability to feel as close to a documentary as you can get in a narrative form. — Mark Duplass

My advice to emerging documentary filmmakers would be: try to find other people, a group, a cooperative that you can work with. Filmmaking is hard and lonely and decidedly unglamorous. Find like-minded souls and share the joy and the misery. — Pamela Yates

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

I certainly don't believe you documentary filmmakers. Like me, you are involved in making fiction, and your fiction is just as well organized and just as well predicated, but the big difference between me and you is that I'm honest and you're dishonest. I know I'm telling you lies. — Peter Greenaway

There are many documentary filmmakers who have a tough time because they don't really get what they need to do what they want. There are so many people with good visions that should be encouraged and helped. And they will deliver, I'm sure. — Max Von Sydow

I wanted to describe the world at the same time, through image, express what I felt. It was the time of the great documentary filmmakers: Richard Leacock, Joris Ivens. Today, television has put an end to this type of filmmaking. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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

I think documentary filmmakers need as much protection as possible under journalist's privilege. How else is the public to know what is going on? — Robert Redford