Sanjay Leela Bhansali Quotes

When I have been told that my films remind people of Ozu, I have never been too convinced.

I was criticised for making 'Devdas' so ostentatious. But stark and realistic cinema isn't the only real cinema in this country.

Being a wannabe auteur and my favorite filmmakers being part of the dead canon of European, Japanese art-house masters, I want to say that I don't want to care about genre and how it's limiting and all of that stuff.

I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.

My gaze is very different from that of Ekta Kapoor's, and that is quite visible in those two films - 'Ragini MMS 2' and 'Jism 2.'

I went through a period of watching probably too many Bergman films in a row. I felt like I'd discovered the answer to what cinema should be.

I've followed Mysskin sir's work, and I really like his style of filmmaking.

The select group of people who do make realistic cinema, who do make cinema perhaps a little more acceptable to the Western audience, is a very small percentage.

I've been making films since the '70s and trying to develop that best possible fiction-film style that I feel is the most expressive. At a certain point, I felt I was winding up making the same film stylistically and I found that boring.

Well, I certainly was exposed to and learned to appreciate the work of great directors early on. As a kid, my mother used to take me to see really interesting arty films in Los Angeles.

There is more to Indian cinema than just Bollywood. I think regional cinema, especially Tamil and Marathi cinema, are exploring some really bold themes.

I'm a huge Spike Lee fan. I saw 'Do The Right Thing' twice in the same night when it first came out and had long conversations with all my friends about the issues in it.

For filmmakers who've made multiple movies, they have experience, but they only have experience of themselves as a filmmaker. Whereas I'm bouncing around from different skill sets: the organizational ability of Ridley Scott to the precision of a Ron Howard to the artistic sensibilities of a Peter Weir... to the scope of a Tom Hooper.

I realised that there's a more muscular approach to film-making that I found very inspiring.

The demarcation between an art house film and an entertainer has blurred, only because a larger section of the audience has accepted such realistic films.

I don't approach films purely in context of genre.

I think Ingmar Bergman, Francoise Truffaut - all these people created images in my mind, beautiful pictures, I loved what was known at that time as the foreign film.

I have been very influenced by the director Maurice Pialat, who I continue to be in conversation and conflict with and get inspiration from.

The cinematic language and interior destiny of each Iranian film-maker is different. The international influences on them vary from Rossellini to Fellini, Akira Kurosawa to Hou Hsiao-hsien, but there is a strong sense of solidarity.

I had grown up thinking of movies as something to eat popcorn with. Bergman and the other European directors were the first ones to open my eyes to film as art.

I always try to make popular films. Even in black-and-white and silent.

I loved David Lean, he had a huge influence on me when I was going to film school.

I love what many of my contemporaries are doing, especially people like Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, P. T. Anderson, and Alfonso Cuaron.

Most of the available Indian films in Australia are Bollywood. I did not watch them. In my early days, I watched Satyajit Ray's 'Apu Trilogy,' which was a beautiful take on social realism.

With a lot of these social realist films, the first thing you do is drain the color.