I am not the kind of director who sits in a chair smoking a cigar talking with a microphone to 10 assistants. I need to move. To touch. To put a painting on a wall. To arrange a set.
Interpretation
Fellini emphasizes the importance of physical involvement in the creative process rather than passive management.
This quote by Federico Fellini highlights the interactive and hands-on nature of his directorial style. He contrasts typical director behavior, where one might delegate tasks while remaining detached, with his own need for personal engagement and tactile involvement in the artistic process. Fellini believes that real artistry stems from direct action and personal connection to the work, rather than mere oversight.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of active participation in creative projects.
I’m just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it’s far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It’s not just an art form; it’s actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story.
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.
No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.
A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.
What's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters.
We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.
To express your emotions, you have to be very loose and receptive. The unconscious will come to you if you have that gift that artists have. I only know if I'm inspired by the results.
I don't design. I get what I think is a big idea, and I put the idea down. I'm not a designer. I'm a communicator.
I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.
Film buffs who don't live in Hollywood have a fantasy about what it's like to be a director. Movies and the people who make movies have such glamour associated with them. But the truth is, it's not like that. It's very different. It's hard work.
I don't know if music can change the world overnight but I know that music can help someone make it through a difficult night.
Never apologize for your cooking.
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