Documentary Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Documentary Quotes from famous persons: Gigi Gorgeous, Petra Kvitova, The Iron Sheik, Edward Norton, Gaspar Noe. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the Documentary Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.

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I like to watch movies – I just saw the documentary about Amy Winehouse, which was very good and emotional.
3
Why documentary about Iron Sheik? Lotta people, they ask me about my story. They ask me how the legend come from oldest country in the world, the Iran, to come to the America to become the legend.
4
The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.
5
With documentary, you just pick up a camera and start.
6
I watched Ricki Lake‘s documentary, ‘The Business of Being Born,’ and that led me to call a midwife, and not an ob-gyn, when I found out I had conceived. My delivery was not easy – they call it ‘labor,’ not ‘a vacation!’ – but I was incredibly grateful that I did it that way.
Sarah Wayne Callies
7
If I wanted to make something that actually made a difference roughly in this industry, I would make a documentary. That would be the closest I could come to actually try and make a difference.
8
In 1993, my first documentary was about the civil war in Algeria. That was in French and in Arabic. Another short film I did was silent. What I’m trying to say is that, yes, I’m Italian, and yes, I make films with Italian money, but personally, I’ve always been invested in the broader world of film-making.
9
I’ve been fairly private about my personal life. I’ve been approached by other companies to do a documentary about cosplay and about my life, but I’ve never felt comfortable.
Jessica Nigri
10
The Highlander was a documentary, and events happened in real time.
Dana Snyder
11
There’s a really great documentary called ‘Many Rivers,’ which documents the totality of slavery from its inception, and then it gives you a little history on how America came to prominence. It’s crazy – the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explorer, with the Spaniards.
12
In a way then, the Divine Principle, this new revelation, is the documentary of my life. It is my own life experience. The Divine Principle is in me, and I am in the Divine Principle.
13
I don’t really believe that documentary is objective reality and fiction is all illusion.
14
Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?
Gene Siskel
15
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.
16
The part of television I like are things that have a documentary feel to them.
17
I watching this Disney documentary, and I’m not Disney, but I was thinking about Mickey Mouse and he became an icon. Walt moved onto other things but he made him exist. I was thinking, ‘Wow, is ‘Samurai Jack‘ my ‘Mickey Mouse?’ Am I stupid to stop working on it?’
18
Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You’re absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can’t do for you.
19
I have watched a documentary on Caster Semenya. I am inspired by how she made a comeback.
20
I was watching the Nina Simone documentary alone in my room, and I said out loud to myself, ‘Why do we not know that this woman is beauty? She is beauty! Why did no one tell me this growing up? Why was her name not next to ‘beauty’ in the dictionary?’
21
I came through the ranks of the BBC documentary department. I was lucky working during this drama doc era, where they did reconstructions, basically like cheap drama made by the factual department.
22
My weekend might not start on a Friday like everyone else‘s, because I could be working on Saturday and Sunday. But when I do get the chance to have some weekend time, I like to hang out with my friends and just chill out on the couch – maybe we’ll watch a documentary or a comedy.
23
I feel like there’s a lot of sympathy and camaraderie among documentary filmmakers.
24
Singing for a documentary that benefits the underprivileged remains one of my biggest dreams.
25
I never said that I was going to do a documentary talking about my experiences of colourism. I think people took it the wrong way with the working title – ‘Leigh-Anne: Race and Colourism.’ That’s not what I was doing, I’m here to amplify the voices of darker-skinned women and hear their experiences.
26
A stand-up comedian who‘s assaultive and decent and has managed a career that has spanned over five decades deserves a documentary.
27
When you make feature films, you have a script, which is a bible. The final result should be as it was written down on paper. And in documentary, you can write whatever you want, but life brings you situations where you have to be fast thinking, fast moving.
Danis Tanovic
28
In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.
Leslie Cockburn
29
I’ve always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality – which is not really… I don’t even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.
30
The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve gotten a little precious about music-related films as it comes to biopics. I kind of don’t want to see it; I’d rather see a documentary. And this is just coming from me. I love music documentaries; I kind of don’t want to see people embodying those people.
31
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.
32
In documentary films, you’re a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.
Garth Stein
33
I want to do a documentary about strippers, ’cause it’s a moneymaker.
Method Man
34
There is a porous membrane between a documentary that doesn’t use interviews and what you would call a neorealist hybrid film.
35
I think documentary filmmaking is a braver way to make films because it’s real, and you’re really there.
36
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.
37
‘Panto!’ is basically my life. It’s not a comedy drama; it’s a documentary. I was going to write an autobiography, but I thought I’d write this instead.
38
It took me little more than two years to complete my film, ‘Woody Allen: A Documentary.’ I conducted hours of filmed interviews with Woody, who put forward no ground rules about questions I could ask, or topics to avoid.
39
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.
40
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.
41
The last reunion was a bit of a rushed job, we had to do a gig and documentary.
Brian Harvey
42
My mother and stepfather were documentary filmmakers and, of course, had a very healthy Scandinavian mentality. When it came to cinema, my mother was very obsessed with the French New Wave. That was her generation.
43
If you had the opportunity and some talent, there was no way you couldn’t progress, because it was an open market. There was the advertising world, and there was the documentary world.
Richard Donner
44
On Monday and Thursday, I eat fewer than 500 calories a day; then I eat like a pig for the other five days. You ‘surprise‘ the body: keep it guessing. I got the idea from a BBC documentary about this Indian man who seemed about 138 years old and said his secret was severe calorie restriction.
45
What is interesting to me about film, and documentary film in particular, is that I can write about these people, and you trust my judgment, more or less, but when you’re confronted yourself with humans who are right there on the screen telling you their story, you make a judgment yourself that is conclusive.
46
If I actually invited someone to make a documentary about me, and I said, ‘Anything goes‘, and then I refused to answer any questions, that would be inconsistent.
47
I don’t know if I’d mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.
48
As a documentary filmmaker, I couldn’t afford to give my children the lifestyle I had in San Francisco growing up.
49
I like the boundaries, the kinds of conventions of a documentary and having to work within that.
50
No one has a green light when they start a documentary – not ever.
51
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.
52
If you want to see the real Pablo Escobar, go see a documentary.
53
When I did Taming of the Shrew, I was very tired, and I decided to have a holiday and make a documentary.
54
Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.
55
When I hear the word ‘documentary,’ I don’t think certain things should be left out. You’ve got to keep it 100 percent as much as you can, unless your group has a meeting beforehand and says, ‘Yo – don’t say this, ’cause boom, boom, boom.’ Other than that, it’s a documentary so let’s document, you know what I mean?
Phife Dawg
56
Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.
Nicholas Jarecki
57
If you are playing someone living, it is a different type of judgment. However much work you do, it is not a documentary. There will be things you can’t get right, and ultimately, you have to take a leap because – you weren’t there.
58
In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.
59
Monuments Men’ is not a docudrama. It’s not a documentary.
Grant Heslov
60
I have two sisters that are directors: one’s in documentary, one’s in film. My mother was a writer and a painter, so I’ve been surrounded since childhood by dynamic women and female voices in arts.
61
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
62
I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.
63
I think you can do a lot with fiction, and in some cases you can say even more in fiction than you can in straight-up documentary journalism.
64
The narrator of a documentary often comes in at the last minute and takes some of the glory they don’t deserve.
65
I was asked to perform at the Olympics Opening Ceremony. But I was up a tree in Borneo filming a documentary about Alfred Russel Wallace! So it couldn’t be done.
66
I’ve done all sorts of different kinds of action. We did a thing in ‘Blood Diamond,’ the attack on Freetown, where I carefully staged the action but did not show the camera operators what we were going to film – so it has the feel of documentary, trying to capture something, and that gave it a whole different feel.
67
In a drama, the camera doesn’t exist. In a documentary, it does.
68
I really loved working on ‘Laguna Beach,’ and I’d do it all over again. I’m one of the luckiest kids in the world, but I thought it was going to be a documentary about kids in high school, and they exaggerated all this drama. When it came out, it was this weird thing. People feel that they know you.
69
So it is that one side effect of the HD revolution has been the gratifying and edifying return of the nature documentary – films about the hugely varied forms of life that eat, sleep, stalk, mate, fight, thrive, suffer and struggle on our dear and embattled old Earth.
70
In late 2011, I watched a documentary by Stephen Fry called ‘The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive.’ He shared his story of bipolar disorder and depression, and it sounded exactly like me. I just cried.
71
Most women I know are not actresses, but they work for the U.N. or are documentary filmmakers, anthropologists.
72
And in reality, I don’t think it’s a real documentary. It’s more a story of her life. It’s a story of survival. It’s a story of the time in which she lived. The story of success and failure.
Maximilian Schell
73
For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you to make sure the images will act as their advocate.
Giles Duley
74
The first documentary I saw that tried to show the actual experience of being a soldier in combat was ‘The Anderson Platoon,’ by French director Pierre Schoendoerffer, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 1967.
75
Documentary is reality. It shows the truth.
76
I learned how to tell stories with Jay-Z on ‘City Is Mine.’ I learned how to film and choreograph dancing on ‘Can I Get A…,’ and I got to kind of be a documentary filmmaker with ‘Hard Knock Life.’
Steve Carr
77
Photography has always been about documentary, the depiction of the instant, a moment, sometimes a place. Each project is somehow an experimentation of a specific context or a character.
78
Everything I’ve made – it doesn’t mean they’ve all been good – but everything I’ve made so far, big or little, fiction or documentary, has been something that I’ve been really enthusiastic about.
79
In documentary, you are sometimes burdened, or you feel very responsible for dealing with – I want to say – more complicated themes. Fiction allows for greater distillation.
80
I love ‘Robot Chicken,’ ‘The Boondocks’ and ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’ Then there’s this show called ‘The First 48.’ It’s a documentary about killings where they try and find murderers. They interrogate people and they tell on each other – it’s hilarious.
81
In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.
82
I think making a documentary gets you out and about more, with people. With stand-up, you’re talking at people. With documentaries you’re talking with people, and you’re listening a lot more.
83
‘Wag’ is not some kind of documentary; it’s just looking at the tools that are available. Now you’ve got more tools – you’ve got social media – and just post stories through all types of back channels that can get some traction.
84
One of the other things that I love about Miyazaki’s films, is that when he sets a film in Europe, it’s not a documentary – it doesn’t really look like Europe, but it’s something he internalises, synthesises and weaves into his work. I love seeing that cross-cultural exchange.
85
The first time I thought about attempting a body suspension was after watching a documentary on rites-of-passage ceremonies from other cultures. I was completely intrigued by what these people put their bodies through.
86
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.
87
I eat raw vegetables. But my 30 for 30 documentary better include sit-down interviews with Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders and Little Debbie.
88
A documentary film-maker can’t help but use poetry to tell the story. I bring truth to my fiction. These things go hand in hand.
89
A documentary film is a great way of helping people understand because, somehow, when one is able to see the people involved, it lends a certain immediacy and understanding that is hard to get on the page.
90
What’s great about documentary, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of ‘documentary.’
91
To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.
92
I really liked that documentary, ‘Room 237.’
93
While the documentary community is way ahead of Hollywood, it is still nowhere near where it needs to be. Filmmakers of color rarely get hired by the powerful production companies, and they are not getting supported enough by broadcasters and funders to tell their own stories.
94
If you are playing someone living, it is a different type of judgment. However much work you do, it is not a documentary. There will be things you can’t get right, and ultimately, you have to take a leap because – you weren’t there.
95
All the great novels, all the great films, all the great dramas are fictions that actually tell us the truth about us or about human nature or about human situations without being tied into the minutia of documentary events. Otherwise we might as well just make documentaries.
96
I don’t think the subject of a documentary film should be producers on it.
97
I feel like directorial teams aren’t quite as uncommon in documentary.
98
I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn’t have the resources to do that.
99
You see a documentary, you want to see it on Aerosmith or Jon Bon Jovi or Kiss, a band that’s been established and sold millions of records and done something notable.
100
I watched the ‘Food, Inc.’ documentary and was like, ‘This has opened my eyes to the meat industry – maybe I should go vegetarian.’ And my friend told me, ‘Sadie, you’re not gonna last a week.’ But I’m very competitive.
101
Cinema is not truth. Even when you make documentary films, you can choose to show this shot and not the other shot – this side and not the other side. In cinema, there’s one truth – not ‘the truth.’ It’s only ‘my point of view.’ Cinema is powerful because of that.
102
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.
103
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.
104
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.
105
I’m a documentary filmmaker by training. You got to start with the real people and the real place.
106
I love Humphrey Jennings. People ask me who my favorite documentary maker is, and he’s certainly in the top three.
107
But after the TED talk went viral, I called Sara Hirsh Bordo, who had produced TEDxAustinWomen, to ask her advice. She told me she’d like to do a documentary, and that we should work together on anti-bullying efforts.
108
Especially when you talk about the power of documentary filmmaking, you can’t really have a slant; financially, you can’t have a slant on the end goals.
Amy J. Berg
109
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
110
For someone like me, making a documentary – I don’t kid myself. There’s no influence at all. What I do is entertainment. I would even say much the same about the column I write in ‘The Sunday Times.’
111
I’ve always been a fan of these travel shows and documentary series.
112
In Austin, you work in anything that will pay and a lot of things that don’t. The documentary filmmaker may also be a gaffer on a feature and producer for a commercial series and web host. Everyone just does a little bit of everything, and you have to because it’s a secondary market.
113
I would say one of my favorite books is ‘Blood Brothers,’ a documentary about Malcolm X.
114
As the documentary ‘True Son’ illustrates, my campaign for city council started really small – with eight mostly political neophytes in my living room and with young people knocking on doors.
115
When you make a documentary, you have to adapt to what reality imposes upon you.
116
We get so many requests like, ‘We want behind-the-scenes access,’ or ‘We’re going to show people what it’s really like to be on the campaign with Donald Trump.’ But there is just no way that a camera or an episode or a documentary could capture what has gone on.
Hope Hicks
117
I will always make films that champion outsiders, because I still feel like one, even though I’m now governor of the documentary branch of the Academy.
118
I wasn’t setting out to write a documentary; if I had, I would have done it in a completely different way. I was asked to write a drama that would appeal to a big audience in America that had no knowledge or interest in The Tudors at all.
119
My next project is ‘Venus Vs,’ which is a documentary that follows tennis star Venus Williams and her effort to get equal-award pay for women at Wimbledon. Most people don’t realize that Venus fought for years to make sure women and men winners of that tennis championship received the same amount in award money.
120
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.
121
As a kid, I watched every Madonna documentary and tour. I was obsessed with her – and with any pop star of the ’80s.
122
If a documentary crew were to follow me around, they’d probably think they were making a film about the saddest person in the world.
123
Sure, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was my first documentary. What a wonderful experience. I saw Al Gore doing his slideshow presentation, and had this nutty idea that we had to make a movie out of it.
124
The key fact missed most often by social scientists utilizing documentary films for data, is this: documentary films are not found or reported things; they’re made things.
125
On its surface, the HBO documentary series ‘Hard Knocks,’ about the New York Jets‘ training camp, resembles another HBO series, ‘The Sopranos.’ Both star the stout patriarch of a New Jerseyfamilypreoccupied with food, intimidation, and florid profanity.
126
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.
127
I can sit down and watch the Discovery channel and see something on nuclear submarines that gets me thinking about torpedoes and darts . Or I can see a documentary about someone preparing for a big challenge and I’ll use the same techniques. You always need to aim to get better.
128
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.
129
For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you to make sure the images will act as their advocate.
Giles Duley
130
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.
131
I was at the National Film School and was a cinematographer there. I got quite a lot of experience on documentary film-making and with directors who were interesting – maybe they weren’t using scripts or were using non-actors.
132
The worst thing that can happen to a comedian is to do a documentary on your life and you’re watching it with an audience and there’s not a laugh.
133
I’ll read a book. I’ll watch a documentary or a film or whatever. I’ll go to an art exhibit and just try and open myself to influence.
134
A lot of the times, reality shows don’t like people to break the fourth wall. With a docu-series or a documentary, everyone breaks the fourth wall because you’re talking to the camera quite a bit.
135
In the documentary ‘Facing Ali,’ nearly half the fighters involved required subtitles despite speaking English, their speech slurred by the physical toll of their ring lives. This was their reward for testing their furthermost physical and mental boundaries.
136
When I look back at the way that I was in that documentary I cringe.
Benjamin Cohen
137
As a documentary filmmaker, I try to be sensitive to my subjects.
138
The very first film, documentary that I made, was called ‘The First Year.’ It was 11 years ago and I followed these five novice teachers. I was actually with them on their first day of school and followed them for their first year.
139
‘The Look’ is my first documentary, and I enjoyed the freedom of working within a small team.
Angelina Maccarone
140
I don’t really believe that documentary is objective reality and fiction is all illusion.
141
I had long been resistant to doing a documentary about my mother for personal reasons. And I thought there was no way she’d want to, but then I asked her and she said ‘yes.’
Rory Kennedy
142
Reality television hasn’t killed documentaries, because there are so many great documentaries still being made, but it certainly has changed the landscape. There is this breed of gimmicky documentary that is basically a reality show.
143
I am obsessed with John Mayer. I love him. I just think he’s so talented. I have his documentary in my iTunes. I watch it all the time.
144
My books are based 98 percent on documentary evidence.
Irving Stone
145
In 2008, A.J. Schnack recruited Thom Powers to start the Cinema Eye Honors to recognize the artistry and craft that go into making documentary films.
146
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
147
The reason I call myself a documentary photographer is the idea of how photographs contain and participate in history.
Catherine Opie
148
This is not a documentary. Are there essential truths that are captured by this movie? I think unquestionably the answer is yes. Do you have to change certain things to make it work? The book is called ’13 Hours’; the movie is two hours long.
149
You see a documentary, you want to see it on Aerosmith or Jon Bon Jovi or Kiss, a band that’s been established and sold millions of records and done something notable.
150
You have so much more time to observe and learn with a documentary because of the time between the shoots. You get a much deeper understanding of day-to-day life and its themes. It’s also much more of a mess after three years; you have to comb it out carefully and see what fits together and makes sense.
151
I am obsessed with John Mayer. I love him. I just think he’s so talented. I have his documentary in my iTunes. I watch it all the time.
152
We all identify with the people we see, and in a good documentary, we are not just reading an account of the world, we’re seeing and hearing our world.
153
People aren’t familiar with wheelchair sports. The only film crew in Athens for the Paralympics was the documentary crew.
154
Everybody was apprehensive about a documentary. When we’re all dead and gone, we don’t want to leave something that is not going to be representing the band in a true and honest way that shows everything that’s important.
155
Every time you are getting ready to make a shot in a documentary film, you are asking yourself questions about your cinematographic approach. You are approaching the truth, but the image is never the truth itself.
156
I’d seen Jose Padilha’s ‘Elite Squad 1′ and ‘2’, and I’d seen his documentary, ‘Bus 174’.
157
I was so used to documentary filming, where it’s one take. You can’t really say, ‘Make that elephant charge again!’ And you talk to the camera. With movie filming, you’re talking to someone else.
158
It had an enormous impact to the point of the United Nations passing a resolution against the killing and hunting of these whales as they are an endangered species. This was a documentary on the plight of the whales.
Wavy Gravy
159
Maybe if I found something I was really passionate about, which is entirely possible, I would make another documentary, but it’s not a good career choice for anybody. I don’t recommend it.
160
Watching a documentary with people hacking their way through some polar wasteland is merely a visual. Actually trying to deal with cold that can literally kill you is quite a different thing.
161
In documentary, mostly, people are going to say untoward things; people are going to have gnarly beliefs. People aren’t perfect.
162
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.
163
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?
164
‘The Look of Silence‘ was an unforgettable, chilling documentary.
165
There are a lot of female directors in documentary, very talented. But it’s always lower budget.
166
People may assume ‘The Act of Killing’ is a historical documentary about what happened in 1965. But our purpose was to expose a present-day regime of fear for what it is.
167
Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.
168
To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can’t write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.
169
I feel like we’re going to see a lot more movies that mix documentary style with fiction, more along the lines of ‘District 9.’
170
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.’
171
Post my parentsdivorce, when I was 10, my mother, Deepa Motwane, took up a job as a line producer with documentary filmmaker Shukla Das, who was a cousin of hers. When I was 17, she did a TV talk show and I helped her with research and assisted her as she was also producing that show.
172
In film, I believe things should either be documentary or drama.
173
Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?
Gene Siskel
174
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.
175
I can’t pick a favorite animal; I love so many! But I guess if I have to choose, I pick bees! There’s this brilliant documentary called ‘Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?’ I think it’s important for people to be educated about bees – they pollinate almost all the food we eat. They are amazing!
176
In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.
177
The video for ‘Whatever’ is kind of a documentary in a way. It’s showing that love can last. Not just in your early 20s or your late 30s, but in your 50s, 60s and 70s. There’s an awful myth out there that when you get married, love and lovemaking fade. It’s not true.
178
In a way then, the Divine Principle, this new revelation, is the documentary of my life. It is my own life experience. The Divine Principle is in me, and I am in the Divine Principle.
179
Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.
Nicholas Jarecki
180
The power and appeal of Documentary is the way it alters and plays with the way the viewer relates to and understands the subject.
Ben Edwards
181
I stay at home a lot by choice but go out a lot due to work. As I’ve grown older, the simple pleasure of sitting on the couch with someone you love and watching a documentary is about as good as it gets for me.
182
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. Then when I was around 15, I did my first movie.
183
I think the reality-show format is brilliant, has endless possibilities. It’s documentary! But unfortunately, it’s rarely executed well. So it becomes just a scripted show, but without actors.
184
As far as entertainment, ‘The Right Stuff’ is a good movie. As far as a documentary of the early space days, which they purported it to be, it is not at all.
185
In college, I actually did some work on a documentary project talking to Vietnam vets about the images of war and how it changed. When they grew up, it was like ‘Sands of Iwo Jima’ and there was this, you know – after Vietnam, there was a whole different way of looking at war.
186
The great thing about ‘The Exorcist‘ is it’s dead serious horror. No comedy, no self-reference, it’s a documentary style.
187
Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the ’80s.
188
I’ve often thought even ragtag gatherings of documentary filmmakers are more fun than gatherings of fiction filmmakers.
189
People have said to me, ‘Oh, you are much nicer making documentaries than you were in politics.’ So I should be. If you are making a documentary, you are having fun. You are not under any pressure, normally.
190
Documentary makers use other people’s lives as their raw material, and that is morally indefensible.
191
The work of WikiLeaks is with principal documentary evidence; that’s where the truth lies. It gets to the heart of the matter. It educates people and in turn empowers them.
Sarah Harrison
192
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.
193
I love documentary because it’s alive.
194
There’s a really great documentary called ‘Many Rivers,’ which documents the totality of slavery from its inception, and then it gives you a little history on how America came to prominence. It’s crazy – the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explorer, with the Spaniards.
195
Well, it was actually – I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.
196
Ben Affleck exec-produced a documentary for HBO called ‘Reporter‘ about my 2007 win-a-trip journey. I take the trip each year partly to encourage young people to think about global humanitarian issues: I think blogs by a student may be more compelling for that audience than my own work.
197
Well, like any time you’re shooting documentary stuff, you’ve got to be in the moment, and you’ve got to be able to be in control enough to capture what’s happening.
198
I went on a cross-country trip with three buddies to find out what our generation is about. I bought a video camera, started shooting, learned as I went, and ended up with ‘Our Time,’ a feature-length documentary about what it’s like to be young in America. I was hooked.
199
I was like 4 years old when I started playing piano, and I was like 10 years old when I saw a documentary on the Dutch MTV about Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, and all of the Dutch DJs, and it really inspired me.
200
With a free afternoon, I’d probably put on a onesie, find something like a really dark, uncomfortable documentary on Netflix, and order pizza with a lot of ranch on the side.
201
I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.
202
On ‘The Office,’ so much of the show is about disguising your true feelings and your romantic feelings because it was a mock documentary.
203
I think independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers – they are journalists.
204
I like the idea of the documentary as a portrait. There’s not a chronological beginning, middle, and end structure. You build something in the editing room that’s shaped by getting to know the person and digging deeper, unpeeling the layers of them as you get to know them.
205
Whatever storytelling muscles you’ve developed as a documentary filmmaker will be extremely helpful as a narrative filmmaker.
206
Raman Raghav’ was shot on location, but there are many stylistic things in it. I like this mixture of documentary and extreme stylization.
207
The first thing that I ever made was a documentary that I shot… in downtown L.A. about a group of homeless people.
208
We all need to be huge supporters of the theatrical documentary.
209
I never wanted to do a documentary or write a book.
210
I watched the Sandra Bland documentary and her tape itself over and over and over and over again, and just the reality of that, the fear in that.
211
With newspapers cutting foreign bureaus and budgets shrinking for long-form, investigative journalism, documentary filmmakers are often filling a void nowadays in the media landscape with their ability to spend time with their stories and subjects.
212
Well, like any time you’re shooting documentary stuff, you’ve got to be in the moment, and you’ve got to be able to be in control enough to capture what’s happening.
213
I would do a documentary about Jay-Z. Yes, I would.
214
I can do a documentary on myself, and it would be, like, 10 minutes.
215
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.
216
If I wanted an open space, I could do a documentary about fishes. Then I would have an open space to play my music. That’s not how I visualize the work I’m doing.
217
Those are just some of the people whom we interviewed in the documentary, but that should provide you with a good sense of the credibility of the individuals who bolster the case that this administration lied us into a war.
Robert Greenwald
218
You kind of form a bond with your subjects, in a way. You’re in it together. To a degree that people don’t realize, documentary films – or at least the kind of documentary films I’m interested in – are a collaborative undertaking with the subjects.
Steve James
219
It’s weird writing for a documentary because I have all these ideas for what I want to happen, but what actually happens is obviously completely different.
Chris Cubas
220
We’ll be back to our nature documentary, ‘Baggy the Anorexic Elephant’ in just a second.
221
What little return documentary filmmakers get often comes in the form of recognition by their peers and the critics who influence doc audiences around the country.
222
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.
223
With a documentary, you can cut away, you can do jump cuts, cut to a photograph at any point to bridge two scenes.
224
I was driven to give the best possible performance I could based on the material that was given to me and that material was documentary footage of the President speaking to people.
Timothy Bottoms
225
The documentary genre, shows like ‘Making a Murderer’ and ‘The Jinx’ on HBO, there’s been a whole raft of long-form docs.
226
There’s an amazing documentary, ‘The Day After Trinity,’ which is crazy good.
John Benjamin Hickey
227
I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx.
Aaron Siskind
228
Kadamban’ is not a documentary, although it’s set in a tribal backdrop. There’s dancing and a whole lot of entertainment.
229
Singing for a documentary that benefits the underprivileged remains one of my biggest dreams.
230
I’ve watched ‘Senna’ – a documentary film about a Formula One driver – three or four times now. I’m not a massive Formula One fan but I watch it and think ‘God, what a waste.’
231
It’s such a rich experience when you enter into a subject from a documentary point of view. It’s hard for fiction to compete with that.
232
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.
233
Most of the photographs people take with their cameraphones are of little value in terms of documentary.
234
There was no model how to make a documentary production company work. I figured it out as I went along.
235
The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.
236
My first narrative films developed out of a documentary process – finding someone who was willing to be filmed, watching, listening, taking copious notes and many hours of video footage.
237
No one has a green light when they start a documentary – not ever.
238
Because ‘Call The Midwife’ is a gentle drama, not a documentary, it’s not appropriate to portray Sister Monica Joan‘s condition in all its brutal reality.
Judy Parfitt
239
I’m still hesitant to call myself a journalist. I see myself as a documentary maker who is trusted with hard-hitting current affairs issues.
240
My paid gigs allow me to pay for my documentaries, like a drug habit, I suppose. If I’m lucky enough to be working steady, however, it leaves little time for the documentary hobby.
241
Even a fiction film is hard to end. You can going on shooting and editing a documentary forever.
Leos Carax
242
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.
243
I regard sports first and foremost as entertainment, so dry documentary narration is not for me.
Jack Brickhouse
244
Any nature documentary or TV show will always make you start thinking differently about what surrounds us and how to take care of it.
245
Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You’re absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can’t do for you.
246
The reason I call myself a documentary photographer is the idea of how photographs contain and participate in history.
Catherine Opie
247
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
Rod Serling
248
The making of the documentary is an involving and collaborative process where you go deeper unlike in movies where you just borrow someone else’s script.
249
I was very impressed with Davis Guggenheim’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ He’s inspired me as one of the newer, cutting-edge documentary filmmakers. I see those films, and I’m just instinctively drawn to them.
250
I have taken advantage of my husband, to the extent that I even got HBO to do a documentary with me.
251
Documentary is reality. It shows the truth.
252
I would encourage people that, if you are waiting for the end of ‘The Office,’ to re-tune in right away. It is the beginning of the end, where we start to break down what’s going on with this documentary and see behind the scenes with who is involved.
Greg Daniels
253
Documentary people have to know that, particularly nowadays, they have to be on a mission. And part of the mission is to – is to be like good journalists: search for the truth, have an open mind, listen to as much as you can of different sides of things.
254
In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.
Leslie Cockburn
255
For a documentary filmmaker, I do very well.