Quotes & Sayings About Documentary

You know, a documentary is only interesting once in a while. If you look at a whole book of Dorothea [Lange]'s where she has row after row of people bending over and digging out carrots - that can be very tedious. And so it's only once in a while that something happens that is worth doing. — Imogen Cunningham

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

A mockumentary is supposed to be real, and we were frustrated with mockumentaries on TV, which are so rampant because of the success of 'The Office.' It's not real. You watch and ask why is there even a crew there. They never set it up in the narrative. You have a documentary crew following families for reasons we don't understand. — Benny Fine

I have a 22-year-old son, and when my son was born I made a decision to raise him. My husband and I took turns working, and it's easier to raise a kid in the documentary world, where you go away for two weeks or three weeks rather than the months that you spend on a feature. That was and still is much more open to women DPs than the world of fiction. — Maryse Alberti

Professional historians approach such stories with great caution, knowing there will certainly be many fake baubles in the pile. Some accounts will be almost entirely untrue. All will be somewhat distorted according to the prejudices of the author and the political requirements of the moment. Different accounts must be weighed against each other, as well as the documentary evidence and the archaeological record. Sometimes the surviving records are scant and confusing. — Richard Fidler

A lot of the distinctions that we make between drama and documentary are spurious. We're deeply confused about these issues. About the difference between the two, about where documentary ends and drama begins. — Errol Morris

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

In the U.S., the '50s and '60s marked the documentary's golden age, especially at CBS, where pioneering television journalist Edward R. Murrow, immortalised in George Clooney's 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' produced such landmark investigations as the CBS Reports programme 'Hunger in America.' — Naomi Wolf

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

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

I didn't really know what to expect, but I thought there aren't a lot of rap groups that can say they have a documentary done about them, so my attitude was like, 'Shoot, why not?' I'm sure there are a lot of people that would like to take our place. I felt like we should all embrace it. — Phife Dawg

There's a tradition of reenactment in documentary which is about sort of illustrating what the past might have been like. — Joshua Oppenheimer

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

I have seen the Gore documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth,' just released in the States, and admired the acutely revolutionary delivery of the slideshow assisted talk he has now been giving for some 16 years. — Saffron Burrows

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

Her boys were growing up, too. William would start nursery school in January of 1987 at four and a half. The most exciting part for William was the uniform, "which he is thrilled to bits about, especially as Harry is very envious of his big brother!" The next year would find Diana and Charles in Portugal, Spain, and Germany. "It never stops and it's certainly no holiday package tour!" How true. I'd seen that for myself in Washington.
I had been thrilled to catch a television documentary on the royal couple and had said so in my letter. Diana wrote, "An awful lot of money was raised for very worthy causes so that made the intrusion much more worthwhile!" This comment exemplified the conflict Diana faced between her desire for privacy and her desire to do good. — Mary Robertson

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 image of evolution as a process that reliably produces benign effects is difficult to reconcile with the enormous suffering that we see in both the human and the natural world. Those who cherish evolution's achievements may do so more from an aesthetic than an ethical perspective. Yet the pertinent question is not what kind of future it would be fascinating to read about in a science fiction novel or to see depicted in a nature documentary, but what kind of future it would be good to live in: two very different matters. — Nick Bostrom

What's your pick?"
"Jesus Camp"
"Never heard of it, Is it a slasher flick?"
'It's a documentary." We all laughed but he didn't seem to be joking. "I'm telling you, if that movie doesn't scare you, nothing will."
Jared looked at hi in astonishment. "A documentary about religion?"
"It's not about religion. It's about fanaticism. Not the same thing."
Angelo was looking thoughtful, and I knew we'd have a copy by the end of the month. — Marie Sexton

Two remarkable men
one young, one old
fuel each other's spirits in the beautiful documentary Keep On Keepin' On. — Leonard Maltin

Reportage is interesting only when placed in a fictional context, but fiction is interesting only if it is validated by a documentary context. — Jean-Luc Godard

There's nothing attractive about doing a documentary. Nothing. It's hard, hard work, and I find having all the attention of the day on me a very unattractive proposition. — Elaine Stritch

You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected. — William Shatner

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

I love documentary because it's alive. — Josh Fox

Every documentary is subjective. It's a total lie to say there are objective documentaries. — Pirjo Honkasalo

Most people see a documentary about the meat industry and then they become a vegetarian for a week. — Jason Reitman

The documentary style is an incredibly flexible and useful one. It's a wonderful tool for establishing the credibility of the version of things that's in the photograph - a kind of rhetorical device or rhetorical strategy. It's always felt very natural to me, because I want a person to end up thinking about the world, and to think about it in a way that is transformed by the experience of art. — Frank Gohlke

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

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

The Mars Committee and its various offshoots have struggled consistently over the years on behalf of the public interest. Their work is presented with great documentary force in Dr. Stanley V McDaniel's 1993 book, The McDaniel Report, published by North Atlantic Books of Berkeley, California. This report should be required reading for anybody who cares about the future of public science. — Whitley Strieber

NO greater love has a husband for his wife than to watch a 2hr documentary on an elite ballet competition. — Mark Venturini

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

Comics shouldn't be 'tools' for anyone's agenda except for the characters. And I am speaking only of super hero action comics. I love many of the alternative comics that are like journalistic stories. Documentary comics, a mix of reportage and fiction. Those are just great. — Ann Nocenti

We'll be back to our nature documentary, 'Baggy the Anorexic Elephant' in just a second. — Colin Mochrie

Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day. — Anita Diament

I try to learn from both, from features and documentaries. In both cases you have to find a way to make the camera as discreet as possible, and flexible enough to be able to capture the moment when it happens. I know from documentary how to not have a preconceived idea of what the scene could be. — Michel Gondry

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

If you care about the 2012 election and value the voices of regular Americans who lost hope in their hope and change candidate, this is one documentary you won't want to miss. — Jedediah Bila

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

I wouldn't do nudity in films. For me, personally ... To act with my clothes on is a performance; to act with my clothes off is a documentary. — Julia Roberts

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

If my courage was a man, I imagined that he would be big, scarred, and wear a kilt. I'd seen a documentary once — Elizabeth A. Reeves

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

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple. — Leslie Cockburn

I use people's real voices because I want realism. So often I mention the actors' physicality because I want it to be like a real documentary. — Ricky Gervais

And shooting things in a documentary style was a good way to create tension and energy without money. — Michael Patrick Jann

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

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality. — Jean-Luc Godard

Photography is the typical means of expression of a society founded on a civilization of technicians, conscious of the aims it has set for itself ... Its power of exactly reproducing external reality, a power inherent in its technique, lends it a documentary character and makes it appear as the most faithful and impartial process for the reproduction of social life. — Gisele Freund

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

As I get older it gets harder and harder to hold on to the ephemeral excitement. When a documentary, or a screenplay, or even just a brainstorming session is going well I get to experience sense of hope, and expansiveness, even if it's just for a moment. — Andrew Neel

A lot of the commercials that I was doing were very slice-of-life, emotional, documentary-style, not big and cinematic and ultimately like the kind of movie I wanted to make. — Dan Trachtenberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

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

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 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

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

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

'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

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

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

Yeah I'm telling real stories, but if you pick up a documentary on strippers, you're going to want to see some stripping, so we definitely got that in there. — Method Man

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

The first documentary I watched on hydraulic fracturing was Gasland by Josh Fox. Since then I've read, watched and listened to many articles, reports, speeches and blogs about fracking but Gasland remains the stand-out piece for me. The Sky is Pink by Josh Fox and the Gasland team can be seen on Vimeo and YouTube. — Rosamund Lupton

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. — George Orwell

I love the unexpected and I think that's why documentary is an attractive genre to me because you don't know where it's going to go, so I tend to involve that as much as possible in the production process. — Seth Gordon

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 — Errol Morris

I have tried to bring about better communication between people. I believe that humanitarian photography is like economics. Economy is a kind of sociology, as is documentary photography. — Sebastiao Salgado

I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

With everything that I've done with YouTube and podcasts for so many years, it's been: you can record it, edit, and then upload that day. With the book and documentary, it's been such a longer process. — Tyler Oakley

I know a lot of other actors that don't like to look at other references to their characters and things. But I like it. I always look at everything, I read all the books. I read Dieter's "Escape from Laos." I watched the documentary again and again and again. I recorded it just to listen to him a lot. I just don't suffer from feeling like I'm getting caught into an imitation. I just feel like I want to steal some good stuff if it's in there. — Christian Bale

[Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928) — Pierre Mac Orlan

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

I have a great career, and no matter what I am doing, a big blockbuster movie ... or my small documentary, David Letterman will call and say I would like you to sit on my couch. — Rosie Perez

Investigative journalism has been relegated to a very, very tiny space in America. We don't really have much investigative journalism left. And the last refuge for it is documentary filmmaking. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

I was fully intending to cook you something complicated and delicious," Meg said. "But then I started to watch this nature documentary, and a fluffy baby seal was being chased by a polar bear, so I muted it and shut my eyes, and when I woke up it was two hours later. How does soup and toasties grab you? — Cari Hunter

Ten years ago I saw a documentary on the siege of that Moscow theater. After just forty-eight hours of the terrorists confining the hostages to their seats with no sleep, the lights blazing and being forced to pee their pants-although if the had to shit, they could do so in the orchestra pit-well,more than a few hostages just stood up and walked to the exit knowing they'd get shot in the back. Because the were DONE. — Maria Semple

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

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