It seems that film-makers are being divided between those working in digital and those who are not. I think it's not something predetermined - it all depends on what project we have in mind, and on that basis we choose the medium.
I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts.
As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
I think Woody Allen is Woody Allen, and no matter where he goes he still makes his Woody Allen films.
The only thing that I can do is hold a mirror in front of men and women, in front of the viewer in the theater, to reflect. There is nothing but reflection that I could intend to offer the viewer of the film.
I have received the digital camera as a blessing. It has really changed my life as a filmmaker, because I don't use my camera anymore as a camera. I don't feel it as a camera. I feel it as a friend, as something that doesn't make an impression on people, that doesn't make them feel uncomfortable, and that is completely forgotten in my way of approaching life and people and film.
The film [Close Up] made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn't directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.
The Iranian government as a whole has no relationship with my films. They're not particularly interested, perhaps this kind of cinema is not very interesting to them.
There were years when Hitchcock was like a master to me, but now I think he's so artificial. I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I'm not impressed by any technicality.
In my experience as a director, I think there is obviously something of the way men - maybe that's a common point with Shirin - the way men see women in the film, and the way these two characters see each other.
With the RED, I didn't have this impression at all. I felt that it was as heavy as a film camera. Having this great crew, with the DP and his assistants, I found it making as much of an impression as a very big film camera. I didn't relate to it as much. I remember avoiding it during the shooting rather than paying attention to it.
Close-Up has affected later films that I've made.
I think I'm no different to my friends who are doctors or businessmen or architects - we all started watching films of the golden age together. But whether I'm making films or writing poetry or doing photography, it's very much rooted in my sense of unease. And that's really where everything goes back to.
I'm not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend.
Everybody knows that I am not usually patient enough to actually sit down and watch one of my own films from the beginning to the end - I never do.
The fact of having this very new context, this unheard-of way of working, for me was very pleasant. I didn't feel that I was working, that I had any kind of burden to wear, to carry. I really was very happy and very lighthearted during the whole process of making the film [Certified Copy], of shooting it.
I think life is so difficult to catch, it's so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.
It is a very important film, Life And Nothing More, in that what was filmed was inspired by a journey I had made just three days after an earthquake. And I speak not only of the film itself but also of the experience of being in that place, where only three days before 50,000 people had died.
I never intended to write poems, nor to be a photographer, nor to be a film-maker. I just took many, many pictures and I would put them in an album, and then some years later I decided to show them and suddenly I was called a photographer. Same thing with my poetry. They're notes that I'd written in a book and it may be considered poetry.
The [Iranian] government grapples with more important issues and we can maybe say that these films don't really exist for them. It's not about whether they like it or don't; it's just not very important to them.
Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can't limit it to one particular culture.
I really think that I don't mind people sleeping during my films, because I know that some very good films might prepare you for sleeping or falling asleep or snoozing. It's not to be taken badly at all.
I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.
I didn't just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.
My last experience of film-making was Tickets, a three-episode film in Italy, the third of which is directed by myself. It's not for me to judge whether it's a good film or a bad film, but what I could say is that nobody had a cultural or linguistic issue with what was produced.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: