58 Quotes by Raoul Peck

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.

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.

When you stand up in the morning, you look in the mirror and say, 'I'm black.' No. You wake up and you see yourself as a human being in the world, but you raise discussion and raise aggression, the anger that you confront every day of your life, whether you want to or not.

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

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

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?

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.

People don't realize how black people, minorities, women as well, all their lives, they have had to make the effort to understand everybody else. All my life, I've known American culture very well. I probably know American literature more than the average American.

I started to read James Baldwin very early on in my life. At a time, as a young adult in the Sixties, when there were not that many authors in whom I could recognize myself, he was an important guide and mentor to me, as he was to many others. He helped me understand who I was and decipher the world around me.