Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered.
You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.
I don't tend to watch TV. I'm like a Netflix junkie. I watch a lot of documentaries and movies on Netflix. I like 'Downton Abbey.'
I've always wanted to make Australian art interesting. To get a different audience watching art documentaries would be great.
I watch documentaries for information. I watch films to be entertained.
When I made the switch from strictly entertainment news to more of these natural world documentaries, it's really been all about wanting to make saving the world cool.
No, I worked a lot for European television, doing documentaries in Brazil.
I wanted to be a police detective. In my work, particularly in documentaries, I am obsessed with finding things out, seeking ever-new facts and perspectives - each project can involve years of research.
Documentaries are a powerful and effective way of bridging the gap between worlds, breaking through to new audiences that wouldn't otherwise be engaged - in essence, not preaching to the choir.
When I was 16, I made some little 35mm documentaries about the poor in London. I went round Notting Hill, which was a real slum in the 1950s, shooting film.
I've always been weirdly interested in food documentaries.
The message films that try to be message films always fail. Likewise with documentaries. The documentaries that work best are the ones that eschew a simple message for an odd angle. I found that one of the most spectacular films about the Middle East was 'Waltz With Bashir,' or 'The Gatekeepers,' or '5 Broken Cameras.'
Most of my films have been documentaries, but I'm also very interested in narrative filmmaking.
I watch movies occasionally, and I watch documentaries. Virtually nothing else.
I discovered the 7th art at home when I was kid, through Charlie Chaplin's movies and those of my father who shot documentaries. He was my biggest influence. So I took his camera and started shooting.
That's why I have always admired documentaries, because they open windows that can make you understand much better where you come from, much better than fiction, I think.
There's so many documentaries out there right now and everything's exposing wrestling.
When I do documentaries, my best information ends up on the cutting-room floor. People have trouble dealing with sexual honesty.
So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.
I'm addicted to documentaries. That's all I watch on television.
I really like 'The Three Kings' DVD. I love that movie and all the extra footage and documentaries.
I had seen some films made about the underground music world in Tehran, and most of them were short documentaries about 30 or 40 minutes long. And I always wondered why they weren't publicized more. Really, their only flaw was they were short documentaries.
From making documentaries all these years, it doesn't feel right to lead someone. In narratives, I'm always trying to shoot as though it's really happening, and I trust my actors are going to make decisions that I'm going to be following. I want to follow them.
People in general have a preconceived idea of what prison is, from seeing documentaries or whatever.
I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room.
When I make a film, I never want the film to become a vehicle of social propaganda. If I wanted to do that, I'd make documentaries.
I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to.
We didn't really have television when I was a kid. Around 30, I discovered films and started systematically catching up. I collect interesting documentaries and films, and watch a few nights a week.
I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films.
My philosophy as a filmmaker is to inform and entertain at the same time. And when I went away from documentaries into miniseries like 'Roots,' I did the reverse. Instead of just entertaining, I want to inform at the same time.
After I read all the medical journals and watched all the documentaries, I still didn't understand the physical sensation of ticking and where it comes from and what it feels like.
Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it's not a matter of 'if' they should be performance. They are performance, and they are performance precisely where people are playing themselves.
Ten years ago I was not heavily involved in the film world but on reflection it was a boom time with the mineral boom happening, so there was immense growth for industrial training films, documentaries to do with the mining, and the outback world.
Non-fiction or documentaries can tell any kind of a story because they don't have to adhere to the rules of what's possible. When you're making something up, you have to say, 'Well, this is what would happen here,' but in reality, stuff happens that seems impossible.
I'm a huge 'Game of Thrones' fan. I'm really into the 'Colbert Report' and 'Last Week Tonight.' And I really like to get on Netflix and watch, like, TV documentaries about: What happened to the mastodon? Or who was Jack the Ripper?
I started in documentaries. I started alone with a camera. Alone. Totally alone. Shooting, editing short documentaries for a French-Canadian part of CBC. So to deal with the camera alone, to approach reality alone, meant so much. I made a few dozen small documentaries, and that was the birth of a way to approach reality with a camera.
