National Cinema Quotes

It's not simply that British films do well at the box office and generate revenue, it's that they provide a window to the world of what Britain and its culture is about.

National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word 'industry' is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.

Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.

In fact, it is amazing how much European films - Italian, French, German and English - have recovered a certain territory of the audience in their countries over the last few years.

All the arts are predominantly national, and therefore the Australian Film Commission should be funding us. The battle gets more and more vicious each year.

French cinema has always been very interesting, and it's still very powerful. I think it goes to show that it's great to still have a cinema that doesn't try to emulate, for example, American cinema.

I'm from Australia, where the film industry is potent but small.

I have always thought we should think less about the British film industry as an entity, and more about getting British talent working.

The reason why I always wanted to make an American film was because of the Western genre. It is something that I would very much like to make in the future, because it's very uniquely American, and I can't make a Western film in Korean.

I don't want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.

I don't really consider myself an American filmmaker like, say, Ron Howard might be considered an American filmmaker. If I'm doing something and it seems to me to be reminiscent of an Italian giallo, I'm gonna to do it like an Italian giallo.

When Americans shoot movies they aim at the entire planet. When the French make movies, they aim at Paris.

I'm less comfortable making American movies because I don't know them so well.

Canada's a small market. I think sometimes we do too much of supporting American stories in Hollywood and not enough supporting our own.

It's something I want to do going forward - make a movie that is commercial and universal and will play in any movie theater or living room in the States or the UK, but is definitively Canadian. I don't think there's such a thing as prohibitively Canadian.

People have to identify with their own stories, with their own lives, so a movie belongs to a country and to a culture. Sometimes we can share, but it's very rare.

But it's just that the whole country is making generally lousy films these days and has been for quite a while. That's the big problem that we all have to think about.

I would sooner play in a good British picture than in the majority of American pictures I have seen.

One of the best things about the award season is that when a British film succeeds at the Oscars and BAFTAs, such as 'Slumdog Millionaire' in 2009 and 'The King's Speech' this year, the British public get right behind it with an immense sense of national pride.

I always try to preserve my cinematographic style, even while I work in the US. I wish to always be European.

There's something that people misunderstand about screen quotas. It's not about rejecting or hating other countries' films, but about protecting our domestic film industry.

There are different cinema traditions in France, Spain and other European countries. There's a much stronger intellectual tradition: cinema is seen in a more serious way.

I absolutely refuse to accept the fact that any country in the world goes into a kind of film-making crisis. What happens is they lose confidence, they lose focus and the young film-makers of any particular generation can very easily get lost in that mix. It's happened in Italy, happened in France, happened in the U.K. during my lifetime.

However, that old mode of Polish filmmaking virtually disappeared.

I'm influenced by a lot of filmmakers; I like English filmmakers because I feel a kin to them.