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The notion of civilisation as a thin layer of ice resting upon a deep ocean of darkness and chaos,
An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. William Faulkner
Television creates loneliness. This is why sitcoms have added laughter tracks which try to cheat you out of your solitude. Television is a reflection of the world in which we live, designed to appeal...
In ancient Greek the word chaos means gaping void or yawning emptiness. The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema.
The Catalogue of Dwarfs from the Icelandic Poetic Edda, an extraordinary collection of Old Norse poems compiled in the fourteenth century and probably handed down, in the oral tradition, a thousand ye...
Even back in 1968, the first time I was at the Berlin Film Festival with one of my films, I found it ossified and suffocating. I felt the festival should be opened up to everyone and screen work in ot...
Unlike most people, I didn’t have the privilege to choose my profession. I didn’t even ask myself whether I could do it, I just pushed on with things.
During the Second World War, Goebbels gave an order to all cameramen at the front: The German soldier always attacks from left to right. That was it, no further explanation. Sure enough, if you look a...
Today I look at Munich and see a city empty of all significance, invaded by Prussians and stripped of its Bavarian spirit.
Speak a lively Spanish compared to formal Castilian Spanish, as if the conquest of the New World paralysed language back home, creating some kind of impasse that has yet to be overcome. When a languag...
Reactions to Even Dwarfs Started Small seem to depend on people’s feelings about their inner dwarf.
We will be blamed for having not thrown hand grenades into television stations and laying waste to their institutionalised cowardice, for not taking up arms and occupying such debased places which ven...
When it comes to the kind of filmmaking I do, the free market is a harsher but more vibrant structure to function within. It’s where the real battle is fought. If you can leave the respirator and subm...
It’s possible to learn to play an instrument as an adult, but the intuitive qualities needed won’t be there; the body needs to be conditioned from an early age. The same could be never said for filmma...