Documentaries Quotes

In documentaries, there's a truth that unfolds unnaturally, and you get to chronicle it. In narratives, you have to create the situations so that the truth will come out.

I'm kind of a twisted social documentary photographer.

I have made more documentaries in my time than I think I care to remember, though I am immensely proud of all my work.

With documentaries, you go in with an open-mind but knowing what you want.

The thing about making a documentary in Las Vegas is there isn't much to film apart from other people making documentaries about Las Vegas.

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.

My interest in painting is recording things. I think of myself as almost a documentary filmmaker... I've gotten into some curious situations.

I love doing fiction. I love doing performance films and I love doing documentaries that don't have music. I love to shoot and I love to shoot things I'm enthusiastic about.

I love those documentaries where everyone is fabulous and always perfect.

If we have anything to offer, as filmmakers and as TV makers now, it's this ability to feel as close to a documentary as you can get in a narrative form.

I'm a documentary photographer. That's what I've always wanted to be; that's where my heart and soul is.

Documentaries are a form of journalism.

I don't think the subject of a documentary film should be producers on it.

[Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928)

At home, I watch fights and documentaries - that's it. If it's not about the birth and death of stars, 'Frozen Planet,' or someone getting punched in the face, I'm probably not watching it.

I became a documentary filmmaker because I wanted to make socially conscious films. I never studied filmmaking - everything I have learned has been on the field.

I want to do more documentaries and travel to places I haven't been. That is where I think I can be fulfilled.

With any rock documentary or band documentary you always recognize things that you've experienced some version of.

A good film is also a documentary

There's a documentary film-maker called Werner Herzog, who's a German film-maker. I really dig his stuff, I'd love to chat with him.

Monty Python: A documentary series on everyday life in Great Britain.

Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive.

Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s.

I travel because I want to know. Books and documentaries will only get you so far. If you want to know, you will have to go.

I love documentaries. It's actually my favorite medium of film.

There's a tradition of reenactment in documentary which is about sort of illustrating what the past might have been like.

I've always been a fiction filmmaker and I've been heading in the direction of fiction filmmaking, doing documentaries along the way.

As an actor, your text is your bible, so you're not making a documentary, but you still have to follow the choices made by your writer.

Every documentary is subjective. It's a total lie to say there are objective documentaries.

Investigative journalism has been relegated to a very, very tiny space in America. We don't really have much investigative journalism left. And the last refuge for it is documentary filmmaking.

A remarkable documentary that's also one of the most beautiful nature films I've seen.

A lot of the commercials that I was doing were very slice-of-life, emotional, documentary-style, not big and cinematic and ultimately like the kind of movie I wanted to make.

Reportage is interesting only when placed in a fictional context, but fiction is interesting only if it is validated by a documentary context.

I'm a huge fan of the Ken Burns documentary style, big time. I love documentaries full stop. I'm a big documentary fan. That's my reality. I don't like reality TV. I like it like that.

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.

My wife likes history and documentaries, but I'm not so keen on them. I generally go and do some work if there's one of those on.

I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that.

I'm fascinated by documentaries, to begin with. Because of the nature of television, as opposed to theatrical, documentaries can be in this long form and take you on a journey.

Documentary is, therefore, an approach, which makes use of the artistic faculties to give vivification to fact - to use Walt Whitman's definition of the place of poetry in the modern world.

Everybody should have a documentary made about themselves. It's amazing what you see and what you learn.

I operate the camera, I always do it when I'm the director, and I like to approach it as a documentary, finding the images based on what happens, as it happens.

Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world - good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.

I've been producing documentaries on global warming for 20 years and have seen the early warnings of extreme weather events come true.

I hate those earnest TV documentaries that are the world according to people with glasses who know better than you.

I don't think that there is any hard and fast rule that says that documentary has to be linear at all.

If I weren't making documentary films, I suppose I'd be teaching.

I love going on BBC6 and BBC7 and listening to documentaries.

A film is not a documentary. And what's wonderful about film is that it's a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.

I am particularly pleased to see that there are so many women working in documentary film.

I have always felt that documentaries are an opportunity for me to witness a world that I know nothing about.