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Working On The Themes I Was Interested In, Through The Context Of A Particular Family, Was A Very Economical Way Of Dealing With A Lot Of The Issues I Was Concerned With.

-Atom Egoyan

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Working On The Themes

Atom Egoyan

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Working On The Themes I Was Interested In, Through The Context Of A Particular Family, Was A Very Economical Way Of Dealing With A Lot Of The Issues I Was Concerned With.

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It Was Very Important That It Be Done In Such A Way That It Be Executed With Complete Conviction. If I Had Done It Both Ways, If I Was Trying To Cover Myself In Case It Didn't Work, Then It Would Have Been To No Purpose.

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Try To Produce Your Own Films, Avoid Directing For Hire.

Though I Am Still Very Vulnerable To Audiences—and It Happens All The Time - Where For Some Reason The Energy Doesn’t Connect And, Since The Film Is Very Personal, Obviously I Am Made To Feel Very Vulnerable By That.

The Fathers Greatest Folly Is That He Believes He Can Be A Much More Simple Person Than He Is; He Is Not Really Able To Deal With His Own Complexity As A Human Being.

I Love When People Are Resilient And When They Form Ways Of Dealing With Grief Or Dealing With Some Traumatic Episode, And Sometimes Those Are The Wrong Choices.

I Think The Situation In Toronto Is Such That There Are Funding Organizations Which Make It Easy For A Film To Raise More Money Than It Needs And Very Often That Works Against A Film.

When I Was Planning Family Viewing, The Ontario Film Development Corporation Came Into Existence.

I'm Obsessed With This Idea Of Storytellers And People Who Have A Narrative, And Sometimes Sustain A Relationship Because They're Telling A Narrative And Someone Is Listening To That. Often The Nature Of The Relationship Is Determined By How Well They Tell The Story, Or Someone Else's Ability To Suspend Disbelief, Or Infuse Into Their Narrative Something Which They May Not Even Be Aware Of.

I Think In The '80s, When I Started Making Films, We Were All Suspicious Of These Technologies. We Were All Convinced They Would Filter Out Any Emotion And Sense Of Intimacy, And The Films I Made During That Period Reflected That. In Fact, What Has Happened Is The Opposite. I Think We're Saturated With A Degree Of Intimacy We Would Never Have Expected, And We're Trying To Sort Through This Idea Of Complete Access To Each Other's Lives On An Ongoing Basis. Our Emotions Aren't Filtered Out At All. They're Actually Accelerated.

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We're Still Staring At Tv Screens, Right? They're Still Monitors. But The Way Information Is Delivered Is Different. So It Creates An Interesting Way Of Looking Back At Early Films, Because They're Actually Relevant In Terms Of The Devices People Are Using. But The Consideration, The Debate, Around Those Technologies Was Very Different From What's Being Presented Now.

The Directing Process Is Often A Continuation Of The Writing. This Is Just A Different Skill-set.

I Think Entire Social Groups Are Formed Through Technologies That Could Never Exist In The Real World, And Relationships That Are A Function Of These Technologies' Ability To Accelerate Feeling And Emotional Contact.

The Biggest Problem With The Independent Film Sector In Toronto Is That They Find Themselves Having To Make That Budget Show On Screen.

It Is About This Very Abstract Sense Of Displacement That He Feels The Moment He Turns Off The Television.

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Decisions You Make

I Mean, If You Are Directing Actors To Do One Thing And Then Directing Them To Do Something Else Entirely Because The One Thing You Wanted Them To Do May Not Work, Then You Are Just Shattering Their Confidence In The Project.

Sometimes You Think You Want To Know Something, But It's Actually More Exciting And More Resonant When You Have To Try [and Figure It Out].

I Think If You Look At The Themes That Are Presented In The Film, Some Are Inherently Social, And I Think That Any Film Which Deals With The Family Is Dealing With The Smallest Social Unit In Our Society - And In A Sense It Is A Question Of Scope.

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I Make My Living Doing Freelance Directing For North American Television Shot In Toronto, Series Like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone, And So Forth.

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I’m Armenian, And April 24th Was Another Commemoration Of The Genocide Of Armenia People By Turkey. The Perpetrator Never Admitted The Crime. I Was Raised With That, This Question: How Do You Actually Find The Truth Of Such A Traumatic Event? I'm Obsessed With That Issue.

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Working On The Themes I Was Interested In, Through The Context Of A Particular Family, Was A Very Economical Way Of Dealing With A Lot Of The Issues I Was Concerned With.

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Falling In Love

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