Hirokazu Koreeda Quotes

• In order to avoid sentimentality and to be able to write the screenplay with the kind of humor and irony necessary to keep the story moving, I needed to distance myself as much as I could from the characters, to try to get to a point where I could view them objectively.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Distance, Moving, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  10 Copy quote

• As far as documentaries go, I believe unreservedly that they serve an important function in our culture. I'd love to be able to make both documentaries and feature films simultaneously, but so far that hasn't happened.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Believe, Important, Culture

  Source: therumpus.net

  9 Copy quote

• I don't believe in making movies to cater to a foreign audience. You never know what the reaction is going to be anyhow. At the time I made Maborosi, the Japanese movies getting any foreign attention were all period dramas and seemed to be about some representative element of Japanese life, and my movie was contemporary movie about one specific woman trying to understand her husband's suicide.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Suicide, Husband, Drama

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• If a movie is nominated for, say, an Academy award, that movie will instantly become popular in Japan. There's always been a bit of a complex the Japanese have about being taken seriously in the West.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Taken, Awards, Japan

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut, Renoir, Fellini. Because I've always been naturally a more introspective person, I was more interested in becoming a screenwriter than a director.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Morning, Memories, Class

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• The contemporary Japanese directors who are well-known in the West - say, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takeshi Kitano, Naomi Kawase - are mostly unknown to Japanese, particularly of the younger generation.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Directors, Generations, West

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

• The biggest considerations I had were practical: how do you move such a large number of actors around a small space? So, for example, if I have to have the mother bring a pot of tea from the kitchen to the living room and serve it to the others, how do I, on a practical level, get everyone into the frame? Any decisions I made about the camera angles or movement came out of necessity, versus any sort of stylistic choice.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Mother, Moving, Numbers

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

• I did want to become a novelist, but the program at Waseda was pretty intense in terms of language requirements - two hours of English and four hours of Chinese. I thought, what do I need this for? So I stopped going to class.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Two, Class, Chinese

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• But then foreign critics right away made sweeping comparisons to haiku, noh theater, and directors like Ozu, as if the movie were somehow representative of Japan - which was, well, not what I was after. Similarly, with After Life, I deliberately set out to make a movie that was unlike what I imagined the foreign conception of Japan to be, and I figured non-Japanese wouldn't find it interesting at all.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Japan, Interesting, Noh

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• One of the more problematic aspects of the current state of cinema in Japan is that the movies playing in the theaters are by and large made not by film studios but by broadcasting companies. They're either extensions of popular television dramas or adaptations of manga or anime. Younger Japanese are simply not being exposed to good films. That situation needs to change.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Drama, Anime, Japan

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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