Raoul Peck Quotes

Grid View List View
Quote of the Day Picture Quotes Top 100 Inspirational Quotes Top 100 Love Quotes Top 100 Happiness Quotes
Billy Graham H. L. Mencken Voltaire Pope John Paul Ii Bob Marley Muhammad Ali Francis Of Assisi Joe Biden Elon Musk Michael Jordan
Parenting Intelligence Work Wedding Moving On Motivational Truth Dad Birthday I Love You
  • Filmmaker
  • born 1953
  • 81 quotes

Raoul Peck, a filmmaker (born 1953), is quoted 81 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Important, Thinking, Two and Absurdity.

Quotes with a ready-made image come first, then the rest in order of how often they are read and shared. Open any quote to copy it, share it, or turn it into a picture quote.

I just hope that my films will survive me.

There are only one or two geniuses every century.

The system gives you two minutes to phrase a whole history.

That's the absurdity of Twitter. You can react without thinking now.

I have always tried to put content in my work. It is a consistent challenge.

Making a film is just layers and layers of work of edits and trial and error.

International aid as a means of development is a major failure, and not just in Haiti.

You need to react. That's the absurdity of Twitter. You can react without thinking now.

Your tweet is as important as if you would have written a Ph.D. [dissertation] on the subject.

If there is something that determines my motivation in the work I do, it's the sense of injustice.

That's what as an artist you always try to do. To try to be a sharper mind than the average person.

We are artists. We are all subjective people; we have a point of view. It doesn't mean we are right.

You face the reality, whether it's hopeful or hopeless. What's your alternative? To lie down and die?

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

Haiti is not a world aside, a world apart. Culture and imaginations have always been part of our rebirth.

Today, I don't even think that people like [James Baldwin] are possible. He would not have that much room.

[James] Baldwin is needed even more today because he helps you focus to the essential, to what is important.

Just try to be yourself and resist complacency and ignorance. All you can do is work, work; work and be disciplined.

[James] Baldwin explained that you have your own history, and that you cannot be responsible, for example, for slavery.

If you asked me today if there's a piece that I would do differently - there's nothing. Regret happens with all my films.

I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.

I refuse to make films where the audience comes for consumption. I make films where you know you are also part of the process.

[James] Baldwin "was one of greatest intellectuals of his time. He was an important voice, period, not an important black voice."

When I have people trust me with their money, I am obligated to give them a great film. I am not obligated to give them a profit.

We forget that everything has a meaning, everything has an impact on you. It's what we call soft power today. Nothing is innocent.

Sometimes people ask me, 'Are you an optimist or a pessimist?' It doesn't matter. Whether I have a future or not is for me to decide.

There are no free rides nor short cuts in this world. 'The Voice' and 'The Bachelorette' are very poor examples to model your life with.

I studied economics. I studied industrial engineering. It wasn't until later, when I was around 26, that I really decided to go to film school.

Film is carrying a lot of ideology. It's carrying an image. It's forging an image not only of the rest of the world, but also of yourself, you know.

We ignore our own history. We ignore all these values and valuable people who really changed everything, who sacrificed their own lives for a better America.

My story with film is kind of different because I started with photography because my father was a photo buff. He had all sort of cameras, and I grew up with that.

I never wanted to be current in the sense that I follow the news, I follow the historical moment of the day. It was always, for me, to go back to the fundamentals.

Right now, the machine keeps us totally busy. If you don't react against it, you'll end up letting yourself go and become the perfect consumer. That's what they want.

As long as you are in that white privilege bubble, you don't need to see the world differently. You don't need to see the world through the eyes of minorities or women.

When I started this profession, I wanted to make films that entertain but that have content. When I went to film school, they made me believe that the two could not mix.

I think this whole discussion about what is politically correct - sometimes you have to name the name. You can't hide it. Politeness is good if it's not hiding the truth.

James Baldwin is probably, for me and for many other people, one of the most extraordinary authors in this country, black or white. And he is somebody who changed my life.

I can't tell a story just by deciding to tell a story, do it in a didactic way. I need to have my own emotion, to feel, 'Wow, there is something I can discover, I can create.'

The role James Baldwin played in my life is incommensurable as stated above. He helped, along with a few others, to shape the man that I am today. My debt to him is invaluable.

Face your reality. You, black or white, are not innocent anymore. Either you have the courage to face it or you will go down together with the whole idea of the American Dream.

I have to make sure, when you start seeing a film, you are going to see it until the end. I have to, of course, entertain you a little bit. The real question is how far do I go?

A black character is much more than just a black character; he's a character, period. So show the world as it is. Even with all your artistic license, you make a political choice.

[James] Baldwin said the real question is not when there will be the first Negro president in this country. The important question is what country he's going to be the president of.

That's part of being a real citizen: always questioning your leadership, not only about what it is doing in your own country, but what it is doing elsewhere. Because it is connected.

Why would anything change that has not been changed since the existence of cinema? [James] Baldwin somehow wakes you up to reality. It takes you out of the dream - or out of the nightmare.

Over the years, he disappeared - like a lot of our leaders disappear. [James Baldwin] was not assassinated, but somehow he went through those assassinations as if it was himself. I think that broke him as well.

We need to learn how to organize, not just to let our anger explode. We need to have organization for the long run, not for one issue, not for one murder, but for everything coming to us in the next 20, 30 years.

The only direction I can give to an actor, a good actor who knows his skills, is, 'Here are those words. They're yours. Make them yours. Don't tell the text but be the text.' That means you have to be the emotion of the text.

[James] Baldwin was a celebrity. A TV show like Kenneth Clark could put him aside of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. He was, at least, one of the three most important spokesmen of the movement and of the black community.

I don't think I ever watched a movie without being totally immersed in the story. But at the same time, I had to keep some distance from it. I had to question what the narrative was trying to tell me or was injecting in my brain.

Raoul Peck is quoted on

Share This Page