Cinema Verite Quotes

#1. I think Direct Cinema's trying to be insightful by looking at reality in a very close way while, in fact, much more is staged than we like to think. In cinema verite, it's about trying to make something invisible visible - the role of fantasy and imagination in everyday life.

Joshua Oppenheimer

#2. Campaign may invite a certain skepticism about democracy, but it will surely restore your faith in cinema verite.

A.O. Scott

#3. I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.

Martha Washington

#4. For seven years, I made films in the cinema verite tradition - photographing what was happening without manipulating it. Then I realised I wanted to make things happen for myself, through feature films.

Mira Nair

#5. Where people of goodwill get together and transcend their differences for the common good, peaceful and just solutions can be found even for those problems which seem most intractable.

Nelson Mandela

#6. Imagination is manifest of thoughts by divine force.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#7. I don't think there's any border between science and art. All the fiction films I have made were always on the same subject, - a discovery of the "Other," an exploration of difference.

Jean Rouch

#8. I think it's a great pity in the Anglophone world that we conflate cinema verite and Direct Cinema; they're, in fact, ontological opposites. In Direct Cinema, we create a fictional reality with characters and pretend we're not that.

Joshua Oppenheimer

#9. I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth.

Werner Herzog

#10. Everyone runs their own race.

Tony Romo

#11. I was inspired by Maya Deren because she was the first woman filmmaker whose films I saw. I also loved Fellini and Goddard because they were so different from Hollywood films. But when I saw the cinema verite films that were made by Drew Associates with Leacock and Pennebaker I found my passion.

Chris Hegedus

#12. I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room.

Mira Nair

#13. Live life to the fullest!
Live, laugh, love!
Your life is what you make of it!

Talina L. Collier

#14. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

Werner Herzog

#15. I think that narrative, fiction filmmaking is the culmination of several art forms: theater, art history, architecture. Whereas doc filmmaking is more pure cinema, like cinema verite is film in its purest form.

George Hickenlooper

#16. Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite.

Crispin Glover