“The difference between ‘essayistic films’ and my films is that I’m not at the centre of everything. I’m like an empty centre where things gather round me and speak to one another, but it’s not an individual centred subjectivity. Most of the time, I shoot situations that are not dramatic; they are ordinary life. But how do you receive ordinary life? That makes all the difference.”
—Trinh T. Minh-ha

"…at the moment the shutter closes in order to reopen again in a fraction of a second—to proclaim a new state, a new border, or a new museum—the people whose lives are forever going to be changed by the act are rebelling and do not let the shutter sanction such acts as faits accomplis."
—Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

“When speaking with a European, one speaks with a conflict, with someone who is diying to live, who erases and redraws themselves. Every European carries another within them. The one from which they flee, their shadow self, the one who lives in contempt, of whom we are ashamed.”
—María Zambrano