Black Film Quotes

#1. I think back to back romantic comedies are good for black film.

Taye Diggs

#2. There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the likes of Jurassic Park. There are none, nor will there ever be one. That ain't about to happen!

J.J. Johnson

#3. Here's the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it's put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don't call them a white film. I'm trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

Kevin Hart

#4. Every black film feels like it's Tyler Perry, and that just needs to stop. But people seem to slowly be looking for what else is out there - 'Is there something else besides this type of humor?' 'I'm tired of seeing men in dresses.'

Issa Rae

#5. 'College Road Trip' is colorless. It's not a black film. It's not a white film.

Kym Whitley

#6. If you are going to call a film a 'black film' then you have to make a film that represents everyone that's black, which is almost impossible. That is why white films are not called white films, they are just called 'films.'

Idris Elba

#7. My experience I consider an accident in the Hollywood system. I don't believe it should be a reference for a black film maker, or an example for any young film maker, because it's purely luck.

Euzhan Palcy

#8. On the outside, America looks like this great melting pot, but on the inside, there's this segregation in American cinema. Why does a Latino film have to be for Latinos? Why is a black film just for black people? Why?

Gurinder Chadha

#9. 'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

Gina Prince-Bythewood

#10. MAN: Do you have black and white film posters?
BOOKSELLER: Yes, we do. They're over here.
MAN: Do you have any posters of Adolf Hitler?
BOOKSELLER: Pardon?
MAN: Adolf Hitler.
BOOKSELLER: Well, he wasn't a film star, was he.
MAN: Yes, he was. He was American. Jewish, I think ...

Jen Campbell

#11. I'm a dark blonde, yes. I dyed my hair blue, then black, when I was 14. I thought the colour was more flattering and matched my skin tone. I don't think I'd ever change back unless it was for a film.

Eva Green

#12. To me, a poem that's in rhyme and meter is the difference between watching a film in full color and watching a film in black and white. Not that a few black and white films aren't wonderful. So are certain successful pieces of free verse.

X.J. Kennedy

#13. When you look at Darling and the Oscars, it has to be luck. It was a black and white film and it was the last time that there was a black and white Oscar.

Julie Harris

#14. My film (Black Venus) had been very emotionally draining and difficult because I had identified so much with the lead character, Saartjie Baartman.

Abdellatif Kechiche

#15. I set out to do a horror film with 'Dog Soldiers,' and what I came out with at the end of the day was something that was more of a cult movie, more of a black comedy with some horror elements in it. It kind of went over the top.

Neil Marshall

#16. I did a dance sequence in my second short film, which was my best short film, called 'Hairway to the Stars,' and I think Chris Wink, the founder of Blue Man Group, was in that. It's a black-and-white dance sequence. We were Glorious Food waiters together.

David O. Russell

#17. The more film I watch, the more John Ford looks like a giant. His politics aren't so good, and you have to learn to accept John Wayne as an actor, but he's a poet in black and white.

Jonathan Lethem

#18. Up until the middle to late '60s, it was a choice to film in black-and-white or color. But then television became so vital to a film's finance, and television won't show black-and-white. So that killed it off, really.

John Boorman

#19. He had a face right out of film noir, a face meant to be shot in black and white, parallel shadows of venetian blinds slashing across it, a plume of cigarette smoke spiraling beside it.

Khaled Hosseini

#20. When I photographed Marilyn Monroe, I mixed up my cameras - one had black-and-white film, the other color. I took many pictures. Only two color ones came out all right. My favorite picture of Marilyn hangs always on the wall in my office. It was taken on the little patio of her Hollywood house.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

#21. I am just pitifully nostalgic. I can't help but roll my eyes at myself frequently. I mean, I still shoot black-and-white film. And I am constantly reminiscing about the 'good old days.' I'm 28 years old. There haven't even been that many 'good old days.' But still, I love to look back.

Chris Lowell

#22. It never occurred to me that I was hired because I was black. But it did occur to me that because I was black it would give a different historic element to the film.

Duane Jones

#23. The Sixth Sense is not a good white film. Insomnia is not a good white film. They're just good films. So why we can't we have good films that happen to have black people, or Asian, or Latino, or any other minority group in them?

Eriq La Salle

#24. The very first film I ever saw was a pirate movie called 'The Black Swan' with Tyrone Power. And I thought that was great stuff. Of course, in those days, Technicolor was really Technicolor; there was no such thing as desaturation. Everybody looked super suntanned.

Ridley Scott

#25. It's about the characters, it's about the film, it's about the process of making stunning visuals and a huge, epic movie. It doesn't matter if my head was covered in a black plastic bag and I was bouncing around in a space hopper: That's the villain of Chris Nolan's 'Batman!'

Tom Hardy

#26. I like black and white films. I don't exactly know why - probably because there is a stylization which is removed from actual life, unlike a color film.

Norman McLaren

#27. I have never been afraid to go a bit out there with what I am wearing on film. I tend to be a bit more conservative in real life, with mountains of black in my closet.

Jane Badler

#28. I think black people have to be in control of their own image because film is a powerful medium. We can't just sit back and let other people define our existence.

Spike Lee

#29. Full-color images lack the poignancy of monochrome ... Black-and-white film inherently peels off interesting images from the world; it sees things we do not see, and thus insists on the existence of a phantom presence within reality, a world we cannot perceive.

Peter C Bunnell

#30. I come from the best era of film I believe; when people were taking chances on films. It's time for us to bring more truth to the story and not necessarily carry a torch for every Black person in America; just tell a story, and a good one too.

Romany Malco

#31. Time will tell ... whether folks want to point and stare at the black woman filmmaker who made a certain kind of film, and pat her on the back, or if they want to actually roll up the sleeves and do a little bit of work so that there can be more of me coming through.

Ava DuVernay

#32. When I started out, there were three things that made film people look at me with condescension, I was young, I was black, and I was female. I have won a certain respect, but I think the film community still sees directing as a male job.

Euzhan Palcy

#33. Life isn't a vintage film," Christopher said. When he saw my confused face he explained. "Things aren't always black-and-white.

Eileen Cook

#34. I made this movie for $40,000, which was this little black-and-white horror film called Dementia 13, which we made in about nine days.

Francis Ford Coppola

#35. I'm a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don't know that it's my first one. I think if you're just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I'm a black filmmaker, I'm a Spanish filmmaker, I'm a whatever.

John Waters

#36. My film is very simple: An Eastern European story full of black humor about things everyone can feel and understand.

Malgorzata Szumowska

#37. The TV shouted an old black-and-white film he didn't recognize, wheelchairs facing it like church pews.

Sere Prince Halverson

#38. A film like 'Good Night And Good Luck,' you make that for $7 million because you know it's a black-and-white film, and it's not an easy sell. If you make it for $7 million, then everybody can have a chance to make a little bit of money, and you get to make the film you want to make.

Grant Heslov

#39. I'm an Englishman who did a film on Mogadishu, 'Black Hawk Down.'

Ridley Scott

#40. I'm doing a film called 'Black Mass' where I play James Bulger. The reason to play him is obvious to me. He's a fascinating character. It's not like anything I've done before on that level. I'm very excited to slide into that skin for a little bit.

Johnny Depp

#41. She remembers an eerily young Sean Connery, in that first James Bond film, using fine clear Scottish spit to paste one of his gorgeous black hairs across the gap between the jamb and the door of his hotel room.

William Gibson

#42. I'm a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film.

Kara Walker

#43. 'The Butler' has virtually nothing in common with its source material, the life of White House butler Gene Allen, except for the fact that the main character of the film and Allen were both black butlers in the White House.

Ben Shapiro

#44. It's been 50 years since I was on the roof of my parents' house shooting Hag in a Black Leather Jacket when I didn't even know there was such a thing as editing. I thought you just shot the film and showed it. That's exactly what I did. I'm not that different 50 years later.

John Waters

#45. As a black actress, all I was offered in British film was the best friend role, whereas in TV I was offered a whole spectrum of parts.

Sophie Okonedo

#46. Richard Price got a million dollar advance on one fake film book based on a paragraph outline and is able to seduce gullible White reviewers who know less about ghetto life than he. The New York Times has devoted more space to Price's tourist, ghetto writing than to any Black writer in history.

Ishmael Reed

#47. I don't like to see projects that are all black or all white. It's how life is. I do like to make sure that I do a nice black family film; that's like keeping my home base. I do other things, but I like to always come back to a positive family film, because of all the negative influences today.

Vivica A. Fox

#48. When my film went to the Venice Film Festival and won the best script writing, the jury [prize], it didn't go to my head. I know how many black filmmakers that I am operating with whose name will never be mentioned. But I'm part of them in that silent existence.

Haile Gerima

#49. 'Strictly Business' is about a young black man who is learning about himself, and that applies to a lot of young black men, those who are trying to find jobs. This film gives them a good look at that situation.

Tommy Davidson

#50. My first film goes into production in October. It's called White Boy Shuffle and it's based on a novel about a young black kid and it's sort of reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye.

Ryan Phillippe

#51. I haven't done a lot of things in my career that my kids can watch, because they are 8, 6 and 3, and they are pretty young; so given the concepts that the film was about a superhero, it was a black superhero, and it was a father and son type partnership.

Blair Underwood

#52. The resistance to [black-and-white] is huge, in the way that you have to sell the film. It's difficult to distribute around the world.

John Boorman

#53. Our personal past is only available to us now through black-and-white film, it's a medium for communication with the dead, including our dead selves, the way we used to be, which is why we're drawn to it.

Frank Lentricchia

#54. It is the fear of death
24/7 in every shade of hospital white and doomsday black
that sells the pharmaceutical, political, financial, film, and food product promising to make good the wish to live forever.

Lewis H. Lapham

#55. The film 'Black Hawk Down' paints the Somali people as wild savages.

Brendan Sexton III

#56. I'm in a 'I can do whatever' phase. I'm taking this '106 & Park' opportunity into full force. I'm really focused on doing my best with it. This is my 'Fresh Prince' moment. I want to be the black Ryan Seacrest of film, TV, and more.

Bow Wow

#57. I did this Super-8 film at art school called 'Tissues,' this black comedy about a family whose father has been arrested for child molestation. I was absolutely thrilled by every inch of it, and would throw my projector in the back of my car and show it to anybody who would watch it.

Jane Campion

#58. Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith.

Spike Lee

#59. After Halle Berry does her films and Queen Latifah does her films, it's left to all the black, Latino and Asian actresses to fight over a couple of roles. I opted for some TV. There's just not a ton of work in film.

Gabrielle Union

#60. I don't want people to go to a film of mine because they feel guilty, like, 'I have to support it because there's black folks in there.' I want them to go because it's a good movie.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

#61. When they were making black films in the '60s and the '70s, everyone knew their place, if you get my drift. You understand? Everyone knew the rules, and everyone knew their place. Everyone knew what to say. They had the written rules in Hollywood film, and the unwritten rules.

Paul Mooney

#62. My first film was a movie shot in 1974. I was 18 on that movie set. It was called 'Big Bad Mama.' I turned 19 on the next movie I worked on, which was a black 'Blazing Saddles.' I worked in the art department. It was called 'Darktown Strutters.'

Bill Paxton

#63. Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.

Petra Haden

#64. Finally, the complexities of black relationships are being portrayed in television and film.

Lisa Nicole Carson

#65. I have a bee in my bonnet as to how few black historical figures one sees on film; incredible stories, stories from which we are living the legacy and which just don't get made.

David Oyelowo

#66. It will be difficult if people can't get past their prejudices; I don't mean Black and White; I mean people automatically assume because a film has a predominantly Black cast, that it is a particular quality of film.

Romany Malco

#67. Many people are walking along the shore, turning poetic springtime faces towards the sea; they're having a holiday because of the sun. [ ... ] The true sea is cold and black, full of animals; it crawls under this thin green film made to deceive human beings.

Jean-Paul Sartre

#68. 'The New Black Yoga' originally was born from a film that I had made prior called 'Black Yoga.' And I was living in Berlin at the time, dealing with a lot of anxiety and stress around the project that I was working on, which is not an abnormal thing for me.

Rashid Johnson

#69. I like making black and white films in natural surroundings, but I much prefer shooting a color film inside a studio where the colors are easier to control.

Claude Chabrol

#70. Either you're going to shoot us or you're not. The ball always lands on red or black, never both.

V. Alexander

#71. A film fable so structured that all alchemical searchings are clearly filmwise (gold being discovered cinematically in each sequence ot mixed black-and-white and color) so that when the drama-discovery is actually made, it acts as a deliberate anti-climax of aesthetic perfection.

Stan Brakhage

#72. You and I are black and white - a film noir, filled with gestures, poignant and tender

John Geddes

#73. The thing about '48 Hrs.' that really isn't thought about much is that's the first film where the black and the white criticize each other.

Nick Nolte

#74. [The Land] is a film that just happens to be directed and written by a Puerto Rican guy with a black dad. It seemed like a very natural, human interaction between people who all just came from one common cesspool of bad luck.

Erykah Badu

#75. The whole series is black-and-white, so when I went to shoot one of the women I only had black-and-white film with me. She had reddish hair and was a very pretty girl, a nice girl.

Helmut Newton

#76. I definitely am drawn to strong females who are successful, smart women because I am a woman like that. I think it's important to portray those kinds of women on film and television. Especially as a black woman, I think it's important.

Megalyn Echikunwoke

#77. I'm totally in love with Jane Austen and have always been in love with Jane Austen. I did my dissertation at university on black people in eighteenth-century Britain - so I'd love to do a Jane Austen-esque film but with black people.

Naomie Harris

#78. We're told that independent film lovers ... folks that are used to watching art house films, won't come out and see a film with black people in it - I've been told that in rooms, big rooms, studio rooms, and I know that's not true.

Ava DuVernay

#79. Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed 'Dr. Strangelove' as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece.

Tim Cahill

#80. I've been fascinated by the Internet from the very start. In 2001, I had made a funny black-and-white film called 'How to Dance Properly,' a short video of me dancing to a Madonna song. I sent it to 17 of my friends on a Thursday, and by Monday, one million people a day were logging on to view it.

Ze Frank

#81. It's one thing to put on your nation's uniform to give your life for your country. But to dress up in black-market khakis and head into battle in a borrowed bush hat, armed only with a Nikon camera, 10 rolls of film and notebook, is definitely another thing.

Peter Arnett

#82. Yeah I think Pitch Black was edgy, I think that's what worked for our film.

Radha Mitchell

#83. I did a film called 'Black Dynamite' that was very, very funny. That seems to be a film that's kind of a cult classic.

Kevin Chapman

#84. I wanted to make a movie about a black family in Middle America. I wanted to make a film where everyone can look at them and say, 'This is my family.'

George Tillman Jr.

#85. 'Precious' is so not P.C. What I learned from doing the film is that even though I am black, I'm prejudiced. I'm prejudiced against people who are darker than me.

Lee Daniels

#86. This is a career about images. It's celluloid; they last for ever. I'm a black woman from America. My people were slaves in America, and even though we're free on paper and in law, I'm not going to allow you to enslave me on film, in celluloid, for all to see.

Angela Bassett

#87. I root through your remains,

looking for the black box. Nothing left

but glossy chunks, a pimp's platinum

tooth clanking inside the urn. I play you


over and over, my beloved conspiracy,

my personal Zapruder film

Erin Belieu

#88. It was 100 feet of 16 mm black-and-white film of a car coming to a stop sign, and driving off. I had to decide how to frame and light it. It was magic. There was a sense of mystery.

Conrad Hall

#89. Black and white are the most ravishing colors of all in film.

Penelope Gilliatt

#90. Harvey Weinstein bought our film, and he's an animal. He's got us out there campaigning and everything because honestly it's a silent black-and-white film.

Penelope Ann Miller

#91. It was a black and white film [at first]. And then it changed to colour film, and I was surprised and culture shocked when I was six or seven years old. And then HD, then 3D now. So what's going? What's coming next? It's so exciting.

Hiroyuki Sanada

#92. The film 'Black Orpheus' is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.

Win Butler

#93. I grew up as an artist. Science fiction allows for design and creatures and guns and all the stuff that I like as well. So I think most of the films I make, I'm sure, will be in that category. But I can also see myself making a film like 'Black Hawk Down,' and I could also totally do horror.

Neill Blomkamp