Quote

I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.

Because I could take this as an opportunity to create something that I pretty much guarantee nobody else was going to create in film.

My first experience with film was through a still camera. I would sit, very much against my will, with my father in the game reserve, watching some elephant or rhino or whatever, through a 400 millimeter lens and wait, and waiting and waiting.

If I could live my life all over I'd do everything the same; the film in my camera would remain the same; there's no way lord, to leave this love behind.

I love the idea I can go off with a single camera and a few rolls of film unencumbered... I was not interested in the illusion of reality, I wanted to get close to what was happening.

I was able to shoot a movie like 'Tree of Life' because I had done 'Y Tu Mama Tambien.' The camera needed to capture that sense of freedom and joy and life you have when you're young.

I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it's the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television - nothing.

There are times when you're working with film people when you have to say, 'If the camera were on you, what you're doing would be perfect'.