Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucciis an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky and The Dreamers. In recognition of his work, he was presented with the inaugural Honorary Palme d'Or Award at the opening ceremony of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Since 1979 he has been married to screenwriter Clare Peploe...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth16 March 1941
CityParma, Italy
CountryItaly
What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.
I remember being young in the 1960s... we had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.
This is something that I dream about: to live films, to arrive at the point at which one can live for films, can think cinematographically, eat cinematographically, sleep cinematographically, as a poet, a painter, lives, eats, sleeps painting.
For American filmmakers, the Oscars is like a mystic thing. For me, it was being in a mirror of my dreams when I was dreaming of Hollywood when I was an adolescent.
New York has always embraced me.
Having no children had been a kind of choice up to the moment when, from a choice, it became a sadness.
A name? Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, God, I've been called by a million names all my life. I don't want a name. I'm better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.
If you mention any ideological thing about shooting Last Tango in Paris, I was thinking I was doing a political film.
To explore technology for me is something that I have to do. Otherwise, I feel completely left in the back... abandoned.
There's no more film; now everything's digital. I welcome this. It's fantastic for me to have a new chance.
I'm no longer interested in making political films. There's something old-fashioned about them. Young people now don't care for politics. It isn't present in life as it used to be. And increasingly I like films which reflect present-day reality.
I like that 3D is based on the fact that you look with two eyes, so two cameras imitate that.
I haven't made a movie for a while, but I've watched a lot. It's my major waste of time. I like to work, but also to be waiting for work.
I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.