Silent River Film Festival

"You can't intellectually purge yourself of who you are. Whatever that is, it's going to come out in the wash, the film wash. What you are is going to be relevant, if not to yourself, to the movies you make. - Steven Spielberg

"In feature films the director is God; in documentary films, God is the director." - Alfred Hitchcock

"Go out and make something that reflects your interests, your taste, and your ideas. No one will pay you to make something until you have a few things you can show that you've directed. I got my start by making short films on my own." - Joseph Kosinski

documentary must reflect the problems and realities of the present. It cannot regret the past; it is dangerous to prophesy the future. It can, and does, draw on the past in its use of existing heritages but it only does so to give point to a modern argument. In no sense is documentary a historical reconstruction and attempts to make it so are destined to failure. Rather it is contemporary fact and event expressed in relation to human associations. —Paul Rotha

I'm obsessed with the power of music and image together. There's also something about music videos that are incredibly glamorous - there's a fetishistic aesthetic to them that you don't really see in movies in the same way. - Max Minghella

"I wanted to be a film student again, as a man in my 60s. To go someplace alone and see what you can cook up, with non-existent budgets. I didn't want to be surrounded by comforts and colleagues, which you have when you're a big-time director. I wanted to write personal works. - Francis Ford Coppola