Documentary Aesthetics Quotes

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps.

I don't know if I'd mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.

I really admire Werner Herzog and Spike Lee. They're amazing documentarians. If you took away all the narratives, they'd just be amazing documentarians.

I'm not trying to acquire a reputation as serious documentary maker for its own sake.

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.

I've studied documentarians extensively to come up with my own in-house style. I'm a student of Michael Moore's films, of Eisenstein, Riefenstahl. Leave the politics aside, you have to learn from those past masters on how they were trying to communicate their ideas.

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.

I love documentaries. My problem is when the filmmaker becomes the star.

I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.

The message films that try to be message films always fail. Likewise with documentaries. The documentaries that work best are the ones that eschew a simple message for an odd angle. I found that one of the most spectacular films about the Middle East was 'Waltz With Bashir,' or 'The Gatekeepers,' or '5 Broken Cameras.'

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.

In my early career as a documentarian, I suppose I was trying to make films which - where it was all about making a big cinematic statement, and I think with 'Marley,' I slightly changed my direction and adopted a more mellow approach.

Many people have this memory of traditional TV documentary-making that aims to portray pure reality, and I just don't see that as the only option.

One of the books we read a few years ago that had a big effect on us was Repeated Takes by Michael Chanan.

I don't want to be on a soapbox, but I feel like a lot of documentary filmmakers are part of the ancient tradition of writing down notes, of saying, 'Hey people, hey people!'

With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye.

I think that documentaries are bound by journalistic ethics, and I think they have the pressure of trying to entertain someone for 90 minutes. It's hard, but it's the same question no matter what you're doing. Every film I've done, I've approached it the same way with the same level of respect.

If you acknowledge that filming is an occasion where people express things they might not otherwise express, that offers a much more insightful analysis of why documentaries - even of the fly-on-the-wall variety - are powerful.

I love Humphrey Jennings. People ask me who my favorite documentary maker is, and he's certainly in the top three.