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Quote by Haile Gerima

“You have to be willing to put everything you've got towards the project. That to me is very important. And it may not be part of the fad, being the clichéd kind of film that's going to be successful.”

Quote by Haile Gerima

Author

Haile Gerima, born on March 4, 1946, is an accomplished Ethiopian filmmaker whose works are renowned for their profound social criticism and unique interpretation of African culture. more

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“There are filmmakers like me in different parts of the world that have a story they want to tell, and it's a story that comes out of a certain historical reality within their own life. Then you get committed all the way and however long it takes, stay very committed.”

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“I don't support direct democracy because I want a life, and that means I want to select people who work for me who do that sort of work for me.”

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“I'm organizing documentary films, and whenever scriptwriting gets too tedious I go to my editing room and start to edit the documentary, even if I don't have the full funding yet. So you have to keep yourself busy, you have to like the subject matter.”

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Author:Haile Gerima

“There's no other way but struggling, forging ahead to do the film.”

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“To me the industry has always said that the lovers and haters and principal characters will always be white in Hollywood, and black people will always be appendages of those kinds of dramas, or they will be comedic outlets. It will never change.”

People Kind Said Character Black White Industry Lovers Drama Hollywood Black People Principal Outlets Never Change Comedic

Author:Haile Gerima

“I am not interested only in telling a story, but I want to tell it my way. I don't want my accent, my temperament, my narrative style to be compromised to fit into a mold of the Hollywood type.”

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“I think not many young people are willing to pay the price of telling their own story.”

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“A lot of young black people in America, and even in Africa and Brazil, would say that they are telling their story, but most of the films are like application forms with the formulaic ideas of Hollywood.”

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“For any movement to emerge, it has to be innovatively independent from the mainstream cinema, and I don't see that much.”

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“Most young people make films to be accepted, to be discovered, when in fact that was the last idea with the group I went to film school with. To be discovered was not our intention. Our intention was to tell our story our way, and make our own mistakes and learn from film to film.”

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Author:Haile Gerima