Film Festivals Quotes

It's always really special to be at the New York Film Festival, and always a real privilege.

[The Raindance film festival] is literally the first time we've ever screened the movie ["Selling Isobel"] to anyone, and people are a little bit traumatised by it.

Cheryl [Hines] and I sat through two screenings at the Sundance Film Festival and during the second one, we said to each other: "You know, we don't have to get sad about this. Let's try to enjoy this. Let's just watch it. It's a happy movie [Waitress]."

Jewish people, we're repulsed by Hitler, but we're obsessed with him. If you ever want to rob a Jewish person's house, all you have to do is call them up and tell them there's a Hitler film festival down at the multiplex - watch them file out.

It's a very strange experience to watch yourself in a movie anyway. I most frequently don't do it, but if I was going to do it, I would do it in a private way, not at a public screening at a film festival, which is just an overwhelming experience.

I watch many, many, many independent films every year that you see once in a film festival and they're never heard of ever again. Many of them are very, very good.

When my film went to the Venice Film Festival and won the best script writing, the jury [prize], it didn't go to my head. I know how many black filmmakers that I am operating with whose name will never be mentioned. But I'm part of them in that silent existence.

Doing that, then doing a lot of theater, which I love. Doing guest stars, did two independent films that are going around to all these festivals. Both of them are going to be at the Lake Tahoe Film Festival.

After that really, I spent the majority of the spring going to tons and tons of regional festivals throughout America. Every corner of the country, I took the movie to twenty film festivals or something to that extent. I've lost track. Probably done Q&As 40-50 times at this point. It's always hard to watch something I've made, but I've got a little more objectivity and kind of see the film as not just an extension of myself.

Film festivals are a great vehicle for gaining an audience for your film, for exposure for the talent in the film and for the film makers to leverage opportunities for their films. I love the energy that film festivals bring.

When you go to a film festival as an audience member, it's so much fun. But when you bring your own film there, you carry so much stress and excitement.

We have a documentary film festival in Mexico. It's really original. It's called Ambulante, and it's a film festival that travels around several cities in Mexico.

It's a reality of film festivals that you can't see everything. You're dividing your time between seeing films and utilizing that unique space to have meetings with people that you can't otherwise.

Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed.

Well I'm Superman, just not action. I'm kind of looking for something with a lot less action and more talking and listening. I also have a film that's premiering Vegas Film Festival, short film, directed by Joel Kelly, it's called Denial and it's a story, short film, 35 mm short film and it's about a man's struggle to choose between the woman of his dreams and his reality, so it's definitely different than Superman. So I'm really proud of that.

Salma and I had run into each other once or twice at film festivals because I was doing the press for Real Women Have Curves at the same time she was doing the press for Frida. She had seen Real Women Have Curves, and when the idea of Ugly Betty came up, she thought of me. Her enthusiasm about the project was so infectious-she spoke of it with such expectation. Everyone that was involved was really excited about the project. I really wanted to be a part of it.

I know sometimes when I go to a convention or a film festival occasionally people bring me really valuable and really rare memorabilia that I have never seen before.

This January, Kevin Costner will be honored by the Palm Springs International Film Festival for his contribution to film. This gives Costner just two months to make a contribution to film.

I have an Italian comedy at the Venice Film Festival.

What's great about the Sundance Film Festival is the festival takes over that town as it's intended to do. But, it's very focused on a lot of other filmmakers and distributors so it almost feels like, while they're a lot of so-called civilians there, it's an opportunity that you have to see, to show your stuff to the other folks, your peers really, and to get that reaction.

All these women had directed movies that I loved on the film festival circuit, but couldn't get a job making television. That's how locked down TV is.

The really cool thing is all about being able to take your movie around and show it. It puts you in direct contact with people who are like-minded and interested in similar things. I think the film festival circuit has certainly helped to foster the community.

A lot of the young people make beautiful films or big films or are able to finance them, but they can't get anyone to distribute them, they can't get anyone to see them, so they go to these thousands of film festivals. So I still believe that even though a young kid might be able to make a masterpiece or something that changes the direction of cinema, the issue of how to get it to people is still not solved.

I went to the Tokyo Film Festival in Japan because I love Japanese cinema.

I'm the mother of two daughters, one of whom is going to get possessed. It's really spooky and great. I'm shooting it right now. That's why I'm in Chicago. I wanted to tell you about the other direction that this trying-to-get-more-female-characters thing has taken, which is that I launched my own film festival last year.

I'm happy that my films were discovered by chance by foreign film festivals. That makes me realise more that there is a world outside Japan too. For me, it's an occasion to meet many people and to experience directly the response of international audiences to my films. But for me as a director, my attitude towards making films hasn't changed with the fame. I feel it's not good to change as a person anyway

The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn’t trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.

I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.

I remember when I was like 19 years old and I started a desk calendar company to pay for my first short film, just so I could say one day that my daddy didn't pay for my first short film. And I really established myself in the film festival world.

There's a lot of hyperventilation that takes off before the [Sundance Film] Festival, a lot of buzz. Every year we hear, this is going to be the new this, this is going to be the new that, and it never is. The buzz just doesn't mean anything. I'm glad it doesn't. Because I think the festival shows that what succeeds is content.

It's great to meet people in a setting where it's really conducive to hanging out and having fun. Most film festivals are really low-stress, and good times to hang out with buddies and talk about what you're working on and come up with new ideas.

On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible.

For many years I enjoyed the pleasure of cruising on my yacht all summer long and these were my best holidays. In mid-May, we'd start in St Tropez. I'd collect my bikinis from my home there and then we'd go up to Cannes for the Film Festival, on to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix and then to Italy.

Arguably, the Venice Film Festival is the second best film festival in the world, after Cannes.

I'll never forget the first screening at the Berlin Film Festival. As soon as the film ended there was an outbreak of booing, which made us look at each other with some surprise.

To be honest, I was just honored to be in the same festival [ Raindance Film Festival's ] as Johnny To and Dominik Moll.

I play the guitar. This year at the Sundance film festival, I joined the band from 'The Guitar' on stage. We warmed up for Patti Smith, and then the director Michel Gondry got on the drums to play some songs from the soundtrack to his film Be Kind Rewind with Mos Def. It was pretty mad.

Rent Control was an interesting movie. It was directed by... I had done a couple of plays off Broadway, and this Italian director came, his name was Gian Luigi Polidoro, and he determined I was the person to play the lead in his low-budget comedy. He'd won an award at the Venice Film Festival, and... He was, y'know, a skilled director.

The biggest difference for me is that the tales really have no logical outlet, no particular infrastructure in which to present them as you would have with a film festival. There's no IMDb for audio dramas. So there's a lot of work with no particular reward.

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.

When you're battling against the minds of the studios and the money that can go into promoting larger budget films, it's very hard for a very small-budget Australian film to get a look in. You can get critically acclaimed and go to various film festivals around the world, but that doesn't necessarily mean the majority of people are going to hear about it.

The film festival is in a town in Arkansas, a quintessentially American town with a little town square. It's to champion women and diversity in all media, so TV, movies, eventually, digital, whatever you get into. That's the goal. We're using the same philosophy as my institute, which is to make it research-based and really try to work directly with filmmakers and content creators and move the needle. It's the only film festival in the world where the prizes are guaranteed distribution.

Whenever you take a subject you're obsessed with or that haunts you, and make a movie about it, you're converting it into work units that need to be completed. You gotta turn it into a treatment, a script, a grant application, a bunch of forms to be filled out, a shooting schedule, casting sessions, auditions, shooting, editing, music compositions, the film festival circuit, interviews even. And by the time you've finished the process you're so sick and tired by something that was once very precious to you that you're done with it.

The quality and success of Disney was actually bad for us animators because everyone on the planet thought that animation was only for kids and only in a certain domain. The big film festivals never thought much about animated films.

Our film [Hide and seek ]was created as part of the Asian American Film Lab's 11th 72 Hour Film Shootout filmmaking competition, where filmmaking teams have just 72 hours to conceive, write, shoot, edit and submit a film based on a common theme. The winners were announced during the 38th Asian American International Film Festival in New York last July. The theme for 2015 was 'Two Faces' and was part of a larger more general theme of 'Beauty'.

TORONTO -- When Cameron Crowe was flying to the Toronto film festival recently, he walked down the aisle of the plane and studied his fellow passengers sitting in front of their personal TV sets. They were just having the greatest time, there was so much joy in their eyes, .. And I looked to see what they were watching. And it was all out-and-out comedies. So many people watching The Longest Yard. And I just got the feeling that, 'You know what? People just like to let it all go, and have a laugh'.

I got nominated for my second film as best young director in the Aikido Film Festival in Japan.

Now I'm doing a film festival for kids and writing a script about a kidnapped journalist in Afghanistan.

I did a short film called 'Disco' and won an award for Best Supporting Actor at an indie film festival, and that was nice. Hopefully there's lots more to come.

I don't really expect much from my life. So when I heard my films are premiering in film festival circuits I was glad of course but I thought it was lucky accident.