Jerzy Skolimowski

“Here is one Czech guy, Jan Němec, who made Diamonds of the Night. I like that film very much.”

“Oh here is another friend of mine, unfortunately also dead, Andrzej Wajda. Ashes and Diamonds.”

“With a movie, with the visionary, Come and See. It's not a proper translation I think, the proper one is 'Look and Realize what you just have seen,' but the film is great.”

“Ivan's Childhood, a film by Andrei Tarkovsky, his very first film. And I remember the last shot of this film, the tracking shot towards the tree, and then the camera comes closer and closer and closer and fulfilled the screen completely black. One of the best endings of the film I haven't seen, or maybe the best one.”

“La strada is a, it's a very dear film to me.”

“Another Fellini. This is one of the dearest films for me. That was the enlightening, the opening of my eyes into the possibility of filmmaking. We met several times because when I was shooting one of my films in Cinecittà Studio, the main part was being played by Claudia Cardinale, and she was just after finishing the work on 8½, so she was very close friend of Federico. I was able to observe his mimics, his behavior, his joy. What a phenomenal filmmaker.”

“Or here it is, Miloš Forman and Loves of a Blonde. We know each other as very young people, we were in the same school. Miloš was the boss of my dormitory being the oldest one. He treated us fair but in a rough manner sometimes. I met him after we made our first films, he made Black Peter and I brought my first film, Identification Marks: None. As a joke, when he had seen me, he put the pose of a boxer and said, 'Are you going now to give it back to me?'”