The role of the artist is to not look away.
Interpretation
Artists have a responsibility to confront reality and showcase the truth without avoidance.
This quote by Akira Kurosawa highlights the duty of artists to engage with the world around them, especially its harsh realities. Instead of ignoring difficult truths or turning a blind eye to the suffering, artists are called to observe and reflect these experiences through their work, provoking thought and inspiring change in society.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of contemporary artists in social issues.
Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one... ...I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I've liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favourite author, and he is the one - I still think - who writes most honestly about human existence.
I can't afford to hate anyone. I don't have that kind of time.
For me, filmmaking combines everything. That's the reason I've made cinema my life's work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.
A truly good movie is enjoyable too. Thereβs nothing complicated about it.
but ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.
The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something. What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.
I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don't see why I would stop.
That's still the greatest high, that feeling of being in control of 2,000 people. It's me and them, and I like the odds. It's not even so much the funny. It's getting them quiet. In the quiet moments in '700 Sundays,' I just really love that they're getting moved.
The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.
Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way.
Design is the patterning and planning of any act toward a desired, foreseeable end... any attempt to separate design, to make it a thing-by-itself works, counter to the fact that design is the primary underlying matrix of life.
Architecture does not change anything. It's always on the side of the wealthy. The important thing is to believe that it can make life better.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.