There is only one language in cinema.

Hitchcock said this to Truffaut back in the day. You know, when they scream in that shower they’re screaming in Tokyo the same way they’re screaming in Paris. It isn’t the language that’s making them scream. It’s not the words, man. It’s the pure cinema that is effective. And when you’re speaking with the images, and you’re putting those images together, they way they’re supposed to be put together, then you’re speaking the language. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Serbia, or in a fucking igloo with Eskimos. You’re speaking that one universal language, and that’s the language of the cinema. And that’s holy.

~ Abel Ferrara Ten Lessons on Filmmaking

Hitchcock and Leigh on the set of Psycho

The stronger the evil, the stronger the film.

Alfred Hitchcock

Hunters In The Snow – Bruegel

Stanley Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell on the set of A Clockwork Orange.

Since so many different interpretations have been offered about A Clockwork Orange, how do you see your own film?

Stanley Kubrick: The central idea of the film has to do with the question of free will. Do we lose our humanity if we are deprived of the choice between good and evil? Do we become, as the title suggests, A Clockwork Orange? Recent experiments in conditioning and mind control on volunteer prisoners in America have taken this question out of the realm of science-fiction. At the same time, I think the dramatic impact of the film has principally to do with the extraordinary character of Alex, as conceived by Anthony Burgess in his brilliant and original novel. Aaron Stern, the former head of the MPAA rating board in America, who is also a practising psychiatrist, has suggested that Alex represents the unconscious: man in his natural state. After he is given the Ludovico “cure” he has been “civilized,” and the sickness that follows may be viewed as the neurosis imposed by society.

Tempo di Viaggio

Thanks to Other Directors: from Tempo di Viaggio

Andrei Tarkovsky answers a question read by Tonino Guerra in a letter from a youth. “If you had to talk to today’s and yesterday’s great directors, for what reasons would you thank each of them for what you feel they gave you?”

http://vimeo.com/21194535

Message to Young Directors: from Tempo di Viaggio

…they should be prepared for the thought that cinema is a very difficult and serious art. You should belong to it, it shouldn’t belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa. Therefore I think that this is the most important…

http://vimeo.com/21192373