On The One Hand, You're The Same

We’re Face To Face With Images All The Time In A Way That We Never Have Been Before... Young People Need To Understand That Not All Images Are There To Be Consumed Like Fast Food And Then Forgotten – We Need To Educate Them To Understand The Difference Between Moving Images That Engage Their Humanity And Their Intelligence, And Moving Images That Are Just Selling Them Something.

I Certainly Wasn't Able To Get It When I Was A Kid Growing Up On The Lower East Side; It Was Very Hard At That Time For Me To Balance What I Really Believed Was The Right Way To Live With The Violence I Saw All Around Me - I Saw Too Much Of It Among The People I Knew.

The Cinema Began With A Passionate, Physical Relationship Between Celluloid And The Artists And Craftsmen And Technicians Who Handled It, Manipulated It, And Came To Know It The Way A Lover Comes To Know Every Inch Of The Body Of The Beloved. No Matter Where The Cinema Goes, We Cannot Afford To Lose Sight Of Its Beginnings.

I Grew Up In The Lower East Side, An Italian American - More Sicilian, Actually.

I Was Saying As A Joke The Other Day That I Love Film Editing, I Know How To Cut A Picture, I Think I Know How To Shoot It, But I Don't Know How To Light It. And I Realize It's Because I Didn't Grow Up With Light. I Grew Up In Tenements.