Martin Scorsese
"Movies touch our hearts, awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places. They open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our lifetime. We need to keep them alive."
Alexander Payne
"One of cinema’s greatest uses or values lies not just in its ability to capture reality, but to capture or suggest dream. Other narrative arts could be related to dream as well, but only the cinema is able to do it with actual images corresponding mysteriously to reality and without a single spoken word—the language of dream."
Ang Lee
"I am a film lover before I am a filmmaker. It’s the reason I make movies. To preserve them, and watch them at their best condition is, very important to me."
Barry Jenkins
"I saw WANDA on the big screen, projected on film at Telluride. I was just blown away by it. It was upsetting that I’d never heard of her. It was the chance encounter with this restoration of the film print at Telluride that made me wonder how many other filmmakers there were, women, Black, Asian, and so many different people who had made cinema that unfortunately had been pushed to the margins."
Christopher Nolan
"We need film projectors and film prints - forever. If you want the choice, it's very important to support film now. Filmmakers are going out of their way to shoot film and talk about it. We want to see a world where there's a choice; it's important to preserve it for future generations."
Clint Eastwood
"So many films need to be restored, returned to life, and that’s why The Film Foundation is so important. Marty started something lasting, he created a consciousness of restoration and constant preservation."
Francis Ford Coppola
"If we lose one film, that’s one less title on that list of films ever made. So the work of preserving film under the leadership of Martin Scorsese and the foundation, and some of the great institutions that the foundation works with is very essential work."
George Lucas
"Preserving films, in terms of the legacy of the future, is probably the most important thing we can do. We spend a great deal of time, energy, money, trying to preserve antiquities, trying to preserve other art forms, and I think it’s equally important that we spend some of our resources to preserve films."
Guillermo del Toro
"Film, like painting or sculpture, should be preserved in its material form - both as an artifact and an artistic landmark - to be viewed and experienced in the way it was originally conceived by its creators. Film is heritage, is living culture and testimonial snapshot of a time and a place at the very heart of mankind."
Joanna Hogg
"Like no other art, cinema preserves the rhythms and the light and the gestures of previous times. Ways of seeing that become impossible to imagine otherwise. Without access to these films of the past we would be much poorer."
Kathryn Bigelow
“What drew me to film predominantly was its ability to be this incredible social tool, that you could reach masses of people on so many different levels. I think when films are the most successful is when they’re provocative and challenge your thinking.”
Lynne Ramsay
Many of the films already preserved by The Film Foundation have been an inspiration for a life long love of filmmaking for so many filmmakers. I often visit these past (and not too distant past) works to inform my own and give me a better understanding of the present, through fiction, documentary, and animation. I am constantly amazed at how modern and innovative many of these defining films were as filmmaking evolved as an art form. Not just the better known 'classics'. The films and filmmakers whose work was buried by censor, neglect or prejudice.
Paul Thomas Anderson
"There’s nothing like that thing that happens when a movie curtain opens up. The first few moments, no matter what the film is, that thrill."
Peter Jackson
"When I was nine years old I saw the classic 1933 film, KING KONG. I was completely blown away by it. It took me to another world and I decided then and there that I wanted to be a filmmaker."
Robert Redford
"Independent films have emerged as not only a unique art form, but as a significant means of chronicling our times. Preservation will ensure that this art form both endures and becomes an ongoing resource."
Sofia Coppola
"Seeing great films from around the world as I was growing up made me dream and taught me how to tell my own stories. I treasure our cinema history and hope we can all do what we can to preserve it for future generations."
Spike Lee
STEVEN SPIELBERG
"Protecting film, this profound analog art form, is a race against the clock, and The Film Foundation has been winning this race since 1990, when Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and I started to realize that the films that we loved were physically disappearing before our very eyes. From the aspiring artists that we were as children to the filmmakers that we are today, we are an organization that’s fully committed to the preservation of works that not only inspired us back then to make movies, but that continue to motivate us."
Wes Anderson
"For me, what film preservation really means is not just a chance to get to see a movie that we might not have otherwise had the opportunity to see, a movie that might literally have disappeared, but it’s just as much the chance to see it right. That’s why I so strongly believe in and support The Film Foundation."
Woody Allen
"Anything we can do to preserve and allow future generations to have access to the great and even the not-so-great but very interesting films that have been made is something I think we should all get behind."
