Filmmaker's Perspective Quotes

It's tricky to ask a filmmaker to explain his own work; usually we're the least qualified to make sense of what we've done, unfortunately, because of the tunnel vision required to create anything over four years.

I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment. From a filmmaker's standpoint, that's so rare and pure in a way that I'm sure is way more complicated than it appears.

I'm a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn't understand what was going on with every single ingredient, I could be qualifying for, like, the lunch food job at my daughter's school.

I find that I don't lie about the big things in life. The things that matter. And about me. While I'm talking about myself, I rarely lie: I know who I am, my level of talent, that I'm not the most versatile filmmaker, the person I am. I don't lie about myself because I don't lie to myself.

The people I met for the first time in the period when I was making films like 'Tum Bin,' 'Ra.One,' 'Dus,' 'Cash' would often remark that I was very unlike the person who had made those films. This is not the best thing for a film-maker to hear because your film should reflect your personality, thinking, philosophy and character.

Cinema is not about format, and it's not about venue. Cinema is an approach. Cinema is a state of mind on the part of the filmmaker. I've seen commercials that have cinema in them, and I've seen Oscar-winning movies that don't. I'm fine with this.

The more I learn and grow, the more I feel fulfilled, and even if I'm shooting a commercial for a car or a computer, I try to deliver a filmmaker's point of view where I can learn from the experience. Then I really enjoy it.

Well, Toronto, I consider to be the birthplace of my films. I've made three films and this is the third one to premiere here in the same theater on the same day at the same time - they are my audience. They're the people that I think about while I'm writing, directing, and editing. I specifically make movies for them.

A lot of those old ideas are dying with the people who created them, and there's this new generation of filmmaker that's saying, "We're in this together, these are issues that we all deal with, let's just present issues to screen without bias and figure out what the audience has to say about them."

I make a film - and once I've made it, everyone comes along and says 'Ah! This is a film that's political, or social', or whatever. But I'm not telling the story that they see. I made a film, told a story, but I wasn't thinking about exactly what it all meant.

When I'm shooting, really the audience I'm thinking the hardest about is that first test screening audience who I want to like the film and that first opening weekend audience.

Just because I make movies in the scary world doesn't mean I want to visit scary worlds.

I think what I love about the documentary process is that you bring yourself to the documentary. And hopefully that makes you ask good questions, and hopefully that makes you reveal a little bit about yourself as well.

Film is subjective, and we must be careful with that. The kinds of films I love are those that observe, and I give possibility for people to talk. No need for me to tell people what to think - even when I make a film like 'S-21.' It's only one point of view. It's still a film; it's not a tribunal.

I think as a filmmaker one should make all kinds of films. It is not that one should make only one kind of film. I love to see romantic films; I loved watching 'Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge,' 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.' If I make such films, I will make it with my yardstick, according to my parameters.

Don't get seduced by your own stuff. Don't get high on your own supply. The hardest thing as a filmmaker is when you're watching a film that you've worked on for several years. You know every frame so intimately that holding lots of the objectivity of a new viewer who has just seen it for the first time is the hardest thing. Every aesthetic decision you make - and you make thousands of them every day, have to - in theory, must be done from you being a blank slate. You almost have to run a program, like a mind wipe, every time you watch the movie.

When I grew up, a director was Cecil B DeMille, a guy sitting down with a megaphone speaking. He was the voice of God, the image of God. When I went to start making docs, I quickly turned the megaphone to my ear not to my mouth. It's more about funneling in the words and listening as doc filmmaker.

Curiously, directing my own films have made me more tolerant and patient. I've always been an extremely impatient actor. Waiting around drove me nuts. But now I'm much more sympathetic to a director's struggle.

I love directing scenes that I'm not in because suddenly I really feel like a filmmaker which is a different thing.

The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you'll have, is to find your point of view.

For my part, as a filmmaker, I've never been a fly-on-the-wall documentarian. I have no commitment to that method. I believe it's a lie.

If you ask a filmmaker to analyse his own film, it would take three or four years to do that, honestly. Because when you make a film, you have to be convinced about it. You are married to that film for a year.

Eventually, the outcome of a film is not in my hands. What I do while making the film is in my hands, and that is what translates onto the screen.

Generally in my films like 'Hearts of Darkness' or 'Picture This,' I try not to make myself a presence in the film.

What can possibly be the common factor in a Kim Jee-woon film? I think what really ties a lot of my projects together is that there is always a character that believes his life is not exactly the way he wishes it to be. My regard for that character turns out to be a very sympathetic one.