For us music is mainly part of the entertainment world and is often a luxury.

Final cut is overrated. Only fools keep insisting on always having the final word. The wise swallow their pride in order to get to the best possible cut.

Whoever came up first with that saying a picture is worth a thousand words didn't understand the first thing about either one.

To evoke the classic period of Italian cinema in a little film seemed like a great, fun thing to do. I had relations to that period. I had known Fellini and I had known Antonioni. I had made a movie with Antonioni and I had visited Fellini in his studios. So, it seemed like something worthwhile doing. You bring yourself to that mythical cinema.

Images are no longer what they used to be. They can't be trusted any more. We all know that. You know that. When we grew up, images were telling stories and showing them. Now they're all into selling. They've changed under our very eyes. They don't even know how to do it anymore. They've plain forgotten. Images are selling out the world. And at a big discount.

So I am getting a little bored with defining one type of film as American and the other European or from somewhere else because the division is no longer true.

Pina Bausch's motto was Dance, otherwise we are lost. She really meant it, that dance was her answer to life and to the troubles and to the problems that can arise. That was her way to deal with everything, to dance.

Any film that supports the idea that things can be changed is a great film in my eyes.

I remember that even my first impression of Italian cinema was pictures by paparazzi because my mom was reading all of these trash magazines with paparazzo pictures.

If anything, I see myself as a witness. I'd also be pleased, if you'd call me an interpreter. I try to hear and see the message of a place and pass it on, into that other language, the universal one of images.

Filmmakers and critics wrote about each other and sometimes very harshly. This no longer exists.

What is generally referred to as American-style films are, in fact, studio productions.

Filmmakers tell actors to adjust their body language, and the famous presence of the actor is his or her body language. That is what makes them special and a movie star. An actor's capital is his body.

In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world -- in America first but also in Europe -- has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance.

The Cuban people have an amazingly strong and unbroken spirit.

Take opera for example -- to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.

The last adventure left on this planet is creativity because we've been everywhere. There's not much left to explore. But there's a lot of exploration left in the human imagination.

Ibrahim tells his story without a grain of complaint, and this was true for all of the band members. This is very much part of the Cuban spirit and soul.

It's very hard to find critics or a magazine today that will publish material that is genuinely independent and written without any concern about being cut off some distributor's list or not be invited or flown into screenings.

The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.