Walker Evans
Photographer
"That’s my idea of what a portrait ought to be, anonymous and documentary and a straightforward picture of mankind."
Documentaries quotes
Documentaries
182 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Alfred Hitchcock
Director, Producer, Screenwriter
"In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life."
Sun Myung Moon
Religious Leader
"In a way then, the Divine Principle, this new revelation, is the documentary of my life. It is my own life experience. The Divine Principle is in me, and I am in the Divine Principle."
Dieter Roth
Artist
"An eyewitness account is evidence that an artist has proposed a work of art. But documentary evidence (i.e. a photograph) is more conclusive."
Clive James
Writer
"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."
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Topics related to Documentaries
Browse quotes that often appear alongside documentaries — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Documentaries quotes (page 1 of 10)
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"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."
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"Monty Python: A documentary series on everyday life in Great Britain."
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"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."
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"I've always been a fiction filmmaker and I've been heading in the direction of fiction filmmaking, doing documentaries along the way."
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"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."
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"The documentaries were something that I could do for a small amount of money, and then I felt like as long as I found the truth in the stories I was telling as a doc, I could teach myself filmmaking through doc filmmaking."
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"I love to see the rarest movies, the most talked-about movies and documentaries. I read all the reviews and compare them to see if its worth going! I have a secret movie critic blog I have shown no one or promoted, and I intend to keep it that way."
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"I think most albums deserve a documentary because [an album] is a visual book. You don't have to read up on it because you can listen and watch the whole story. I would love to see lots of albums [become films.]"
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"In a one-hour documentary, you can tell maybe ten stories. That's how the documentary is structured. I wrote to forty of the greatest historians of both African and African-American history, and hired them as consultants. I had them submit what they thought were the indispensable stories, the ones they felt this series absolutely had to include."
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"I hate making TV documentaries."
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"It's not exactly an interview that's going on [in documentary]. I guess we do ask Edward Snowden some questions and we're recording him answering them and so on like that."
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