Pirjo Honkasalo Quotes

#1. I went to England when I was 13-years=old and then I went again when I was 14. When I went for the second time I felt like the first summer I was there it was a waste because I didn't exist yet.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#2. I had worked in fiction a lot before I started making documentaries, but when I was around 32 or 33-years-old I suddenly got so fed up with the world of fiction, which is so money-centered.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#3. When I make a documentary I shoot very little but I hang around with my camera for a long time. I look at the people for a long time through the loop and then when I see something interested then I shoot. I think that I have become very sensitive to these things.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#4. You give your film away to the audience once it's done. I never look at my films after the premier. The film needs to start its own history.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#5. As my films are born at the moment when they are reflected into another person's mind and memories, there are no misconceptions. I totally accept that different people have seen a different film.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#6. I like to get something that is impossible to verbally order. Sometimes it's something the person is not even conscious of, and it's something you could never ask of them specifically. It's just there.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#7. I think that too often we, film directors, think that a big epic novel and feature film are the same. It's a lie. A feature film is much closer to a short story actually.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#8. It's said that if two documentary filmmakers meet they talk about the world, if two fiction filmmakers meet they talk about the million that they don't have to make their film.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#9. I don't think the concept of "directing actors" exists in the sense that if you get what you order from an actor you'll always get bad acting. Every actor is scared just like a regular person.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#10. There is one thing where people are always right. It is when they are describing what they have been feeling when watching your film. You cannot say: No, you did not feel like that!

Pirjo Honkasalo

#11. Being a female director become as professional as your male colleagues and forget the whole question about being female. You are female anyway and it is going to work in your favor. The scope of female professional superiority can be understood by so few men that mostly they do not miss it.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#12. The cinematography was of course incredibly important to me because I graduated as a cinematographer.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#13. Every documentary is subjective. It's a total lie to say there are objective documentaries.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#14. In all my documentaries I did all the camera work, but in fiction I didn't want to do it myself. I think the machinery is so heavy and demanding that you would leave the actors alone for a long time.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#15. We exaggerate the difference between documentary and fiction. I think that on some level a fiction film is also a documentary on the actors. You can't wash away your life's history, which is written on your face, unless you get a facelift.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#16. At 13 I was someone that didn't have a personality yet. It's a fascinating period in a human life. It's so exciting because you are in between childhood and adulthood.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#17. If you fill your time as a director talking about lights and technique with the crew then it's frightening for the actors to be left alone. Somebody has to keep them safe from the mess that is the machinery.

Pirjo Honkasalo