Quotation
Quote by Ousmane Sembène
I don't know why I film but I am inhabited by a whole people and I must bear witness to my epoch.
Explore the idea
Understanding this quote
The speaker admits uncertainty about why they make films, but feels filled with the presence of many people. “Bear witness” means recording what their time is like and preserving it through film. The quote presents filmmaking as a way to give this larger human experience a visible record, rather than as a purely personal act.
Source & trust
About this quotation
- Source
- Festival de Cannes
- Format
- Official Statement
Explore the idea
Topics
Join the community
Keep meaningful words close.
Save quotes, follow people and topics, join conversations, and publish words of your own.
““Gambling,” says Painter Graham Sutherland, “is awfully like painting. However much you know about painting there’s always the gamble as to whether that actual physical touch will do what you want it to.””
“Theater is the initial glamorizer of thought.”
“This, and whatsoever I myself observed, after attaining years of discretion, for thirty or forty years, I laid up in the strong box (of my memory), and that I have written.”
“Writing is a renaming of the world.”
“Movies used to show me a world that I would never be able to see.”
“A craftsman can only play flat music but as an artist can make you fly.”
“I just try to make the best film I can. There’s no real ambition, so to speak. I love movies.”
Read quote“In any civilised society, the cultural landscape is our emotional scaffolding.”
“Cuando la película tiene un mensaje, cuando tiene corazón o te hace sentir algo, te la llevas contigo y la amas mucho más que si solo fuera risas.”
“I hope I’m remembered as a musician who tried his best to share – to share emotions, to write the soundtrack of people’s inner lives.”
What the Stage Already Knew
A seventeen-year-old usher hears a different rhythm beneath every part of the old theater. His first solo falters, but the building teaches him that a performance can belong to many hands.
Read Story