Haile Gerima Quotes

• I am not interested only in telling a story, but I want to tell it my way. I don't want my accent, my temperament, my narrative style to be compromised to fit into a mold of the Hollywood type.

  Haile Gerima

  Style, Mold, Hollywood

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  14 Copy quote

• When you don't work together you can't emerge as a force. It becomes what some call a "lonely struggle" and individual self-destruction.

  Haile Gerima

  Lonely, Struggle, Self

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  14 Copy quote

• The true story is that black people need to tell their history. Very few films are made by black people about slavery. That itself is a crime because slavery is a very important historical event that has held our people hostage. Forget white people's role in it. In the end what's important is black people remain and live with the scars and psychological issues.

  Haile Gerima

  White, Issues, People

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  10 Copy quote

• The system knows how to cherry pick black people. It's like affirmative action - once a year, one is recognized. But what has to occur is self-emergence so if they ignore you, you don't have to disappear.

  Haile Gerima

  Self, Years, People

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  10 Copy quote

• There are filmmakers like me in different parts of the world that have a story they want to tell, and it's a story that comes out of a certain historical reality within their own life. Then you get committed all the way and however long it takes, stay very committed.

  Haile Gerima

  Reality, Long, Historical

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  12 Copy quote

• For any movement to emerge, it has to be innovatively independent from the mainstream cinema, and I don't see that much.

  Haile Gerima

  Independent, Cinema, Movement

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  10 Copy quote

• There's no other way but struggling, forging ahead to do the film.

  Haile Gerima

  Struggle, Way, Film

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  9 Copy quote

• When the system does not recognize me I'm not devastated.

  Haile Gerima

  Doe, Devastated

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  7 Copy quote

• Most young people make films to be accepted, to be discovered, when in fact that was the last idea with the group I went to film school with. To be discovered was not our intention. Our intention was to tell our story our way, and make our own mistakes and learn from film to film.

  Haile Gerima

  Mistake, School, Ideas

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  12 Copy quote

• Success is really when you create a space, a piece of art, and people come in and say, that's my story - when they claim it.

  Haile Gerima

  Art, Space, People

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think not many young people are willing to pay the price of telling their own story.

  Haile Gerima

  Thinking, Pay The Price, People

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  8 Copy quote

• If you never did anything for your own freedom, you're not worth a human being in my view.

  Haile Gerima

  Views, Humans, Ifs

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  5 Copy quote

• You have to keep yourself busy, you have to like the subject matter. If you do it for other causes, other reasons, it doesn't hold you for a long time. There's no other way but struggling, forging ahead to do the film.

  Haile Gerima

  Struggle, Long, Matter

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Names, Venice

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  6 Copy quote

• To me, entertainment is really the new plantation. It's the new sugar, the new cotton, that black people work for somebody else to be richer than them.

  Haile Gerima

  People, Black, Cotton

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  6 Copy quote

• There has to be consistent emergence of two or three films - narratively, stylistically, consistently demonstrating you are here to go on. And on that kind of basis, I'm not seeing much. I'm just waiting to see.

  Haile Gerima

  Two, Waiting, Three

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  5 Copy quote

• You have to have a very strong cash flow for a film to really stay in theaters. You have to have the advertising capacity to sustain and follow the kind of press coverage.

  Haile Gerima

  Strong, Cash Flow, Kind

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's not always expected of filmmakers to do stereotyped stories. But one has to be willing to travel to festivals and hook up with people, engage people intellectually about your passion and the kinds of films that interest you, and sooner or later you find people that have the same affinity that you have.

  Haile Gerima

  Passion, People, Hook

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• For me, I think [art] exists in a cave. I am in a cave. I have my own editing place, but I'm not powerful enough to amass the resources to keep doing movies every two or three years.

  Haile Gerima

  Art, Powerful, Thinking

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• A lot of young black people in America, and even in Africa and Brazil, would say that they are telling their story, but most of the films are like application forms with the formulaic ideas of Hollywood.

  Haile Gerima

  Ideas, America, People

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• Tarantino is a spoiled little white kid. He can do any movie he wants and nobody can do anything about it.

  Haile Gerima

  Kids, White, Want

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think once you have films in certain festivals you begin to have name recognition, and there are possibilities. Especially for independent filmmakers, it's always good to try the international market because it doesn't have the same kind of baggage.

  Haile Gerima

  Independent, Thinking, Names

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• To me the industry has always said that the lovers and haters and principal characters will always be white in Hollywood, and black people will always be appendages of those kinds of dramas, or they will be comedic outlets. It will never change.

  Haile Gerima

  Drama, Character, White

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  7 Copy quote

• Most, especially the young filmmakers, do not see strength in communal or collective existence. They just think they're going to conquer the world as individuals. There is no world like that. In cinema it's always, even in Hollywood, a collective surge.

  Haile Gerima

  Thinking, Conquer The World, Hollywood

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm organizing documentary films, and whenever scriptwriting gets too tedious I go to my editing room and start to edit the documentary, even if I don't have the full funding yet. So you have to keep yourself busy, you have to like the subject matter.

  Haile Gerima

  Editing, Matter, Documentary Films

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

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