Quotes

For me, distance montage opens up the mysteries of the movement of the universe. I can feel how everything is made and put together; I can sense its rhythmic movement.

[on Notre siècle (1983)] "It's about what I'm striving for, what we're all striving for - every person, humanity...the wishes and desires of the people to ascend, to transcend..."

[on Les saisons (1975)] "I was thinking of everything. It's not specifically the seasons of the year or of people: it's everything."

[about Sergei Eisenstein] "Eisenstein's montage was linear, like a chain. Distance montage creates a magnetic field around the film... Sometimes I don't call my method "montage". I'm involved in a process of creating unity. In a sense I've eliminated montage: by creating the film through montage, I have destroyed montage. In the totality, in the wholeness of one of my films, there is no montage, no collision, so as a result montage has been destroyed. In Eisenstein every element means something. For me the individual fragments don't mean anything anymore. Only the whole film has the meaning."

[about Mikhail Vartanov] "My dear friend Vartanov...if you like (the screenplay) Desert, together we can make another masterpiece."