A CANON of
FILMMAKERS & PHOTOGRAPHERS
Filmmakers AND Films
"There is another world, and it's inside this one."
—Paul Eluard
(click on listings for more information)
KHALIK ALLAH, Urban Rashomon (2013)
“Ultimately my films aren’t just films—they’re channels, portals.”
MICHAEL APTED, The Up Series (1964-2012)
BANKSY, Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film (2010)
“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules."
HERBERT J. BIBERMAN, Salt of the Earth (1954)
JOE BREWSTER and MICHÈLE STEPHENSON, American Promise (2013)
CHARLES BURNETT, Killer of Sheep (1978)
"We need to be critical of the police and power structure, we need to stand back and solve these problems, and films need to point to that. There are too many stories that end happily and say very little about life."
RYAN COOGLER, Fruitvale Station (2013)
ALFONSO CUARON, Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
JULIE DASH, Daughters of the Dust (1991)
VITTORIO DE SICA, Ladri di Biciclette/Bicycle Thieves (1948)
"When I make a picture I love all the characters, their vices and defects. My work is human work. There is always an excuse, even for the criminal. Humanity is a very deep mystery."
ROBERT FLAHERTY, Nanook of the North (1922)
STEVE JAMES, Hoop Dreams (1994)
KAHLIL JOSEPH, Flying Lotus, “Until The Quiet Comes” (2012); Black Mary (2017)
BARBARA KOPPLE, Harlan County, USA (1976)
"We never really know what's around the corner when we're filming–what turn a story will take, what a character will do or say to surprise us, how the events in the world will impact our story."
SPIKE LEE, When the Levees Broke (2006)
JENNIE LIVINGSTON, Paris is Burning (1990)
"All of the things that James Baldwin wrote about were in this ballroom. How do we construct our identity? How do you live in a consumerist society while not having access? How do you love yourself when you don’t look like what society says you’re supposed to look like?"
KENT MACKENZIE, The Exiles (1961)
CHRIS MARKER, La Jetée (1962)
"Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined."
ALBERT and DAVID MAYSLES, Grey Gardens (1975)
ERROL MORRIS, The Thin Blue Line (1988)
STANLEY NELSON, JR., Freedom Riders (2010)
"I want to be able tell black people something they don't know, something about their own lives."
RITHY PANH, L'Image Manquante/The Missing Picture (2013)
"I believe in pedagogy more than in justice. I believe in working in time, at the work of time. I want to understand, explain, remember–precisely in that order."
LAURA POITRAS, Citizenfour (2014)
DAWN PORTER, Gideon's Army (2013)
SATYAJIT RAY, The Apu Trilogy (1955-9)
"Somehow I feel that an ordinary person–the man in the street if you like–is a more challenging subject for exploration than people in the heroic mold. It is the half shades, the hardly audible notes that I want to capture and explore."
ALAIN RESNAIS, Nuit et Brouillard/Night and Fog (1955)
LENI RIEFENSTAHL, Triumph of the Will (1935)
BERNARDO RUIZ, Kingdom of Shadows (2015)
GUIDO SANTI and TINA MASCARA, Chris & Don: A Love Story (2008)
OUSMANE SEMBÈNE, La Noire/Black Girl (1966)
FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, Les Quatre Cents Coups/The 400 Blows (1959)
MELVIN VAN PEEBLES, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
"I make a film like I cook for friends. I hope they like it, but if they don't, I'm prepared to enjoy it all by myself."
DZIGA VERTOV, Chelovek s Kinoapparatom/Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
WIM WENDERS, Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
FREDERICK WISEMAN, Welfare (1975)
"I've found that in so-called ordinary experience there is as much comedy, tragedy, sadness as there is in great drama. And I don't invent it, I recognize it."
“The real film takes place where the mind of the viewer meets the screen.”
–Frederick Wiseman
PHOTOGRAPHERS
"You just have to live and life will give you pictures."
—Henri Cartier-Bresson
BRUNO BARBEY
“The photographer must learn to merge into walls. Photos must either be taken swiftly, with all the attendant risks, or only after long periods of infinite patience.”
ROBERT CAPA
“The pictures are there, and you just take them.”
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON
“It’s a recognition of an order which is in front of you.” (slideshow & talk)
GRACIELA ITURBIDE
“I find my artistic inspiration in life—in what I see, and in what I do.”
ANDRÉ KERTÉSZ
“The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.”
GORDON PARKS
“I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.”
CARRIE MAE WEEMS
"The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely."
