Niki Caro Quotes

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Niki Caro

Profession : Director

Birth : September 20, 1966

We know, from our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our friends, that our strength comes - female strength - comes in all kinds of forms.

Niki Caro

Look what I know about directing; is it goes beyond gender. You might see some qualities that are inherently female in the great male directors.

Niki Caro

I think about things like the ability to communicate a vision, strength to create an environment where the actors fell very safe and where they can maybe they can work without e protecting themselves they can really stretch. These qualities are neither male nor female.

Niki Caro

I come from a place that is very politically sophisticated and progressive. New Zealand was the first place to give women the right to vote.

Niki Caro

I really value the skill and sensitivity of my collaborators, and I am really interested in - perhaps more so than if I was a male director - the hair, makeup and the textures of the fabric and the wallpaper.

Niki Caro

If you look at my body of work, which is not very big, really, it took an evolutionary leap with 'The Zookeeper's Wife'.

Niki Caro

When I made 'Whale Rider' - of course, I'm not Maori and have no business, as a white girl, telling people how to be in this movie - I started by learning the language, as best I could.

Niki Caro

I'm very conscious of what I consider to be the first audience of any movie that I make. It's those people whose reactions I'm most attentive to. They're the ones who will tell me whether I've done my job or not.

Niki Caro

With every film I've made, 'Whale Rider' included, I've had a vision that was far bigger than the budget allowed.

Niki Caro

I was always stealing 40-gallon drums off the road at night, bringing them back to the workshop and cutting them up with a gas axe because I loved to weld. I would make creatures out of these old metal drums.

Niki Caro

I have a commitment to real worlds on screen. I like working in real communities. I like telling real stories.

Niki Caro

I try to cast actors willing to believe in the world of the movie, who can make an emotional investment in the world we are creating.

Niki Caro

I'm not at my house storyboarding, and telling them they need to move from A to B, 'Move here and then there.' Never, ever! I used to storyboard when I was much less experienced.

Niki Caro

I don't see myself as a crusading feminist filmmaker. Not at all. I have the luxury of coming from New Zealand and I've had moments in my life where being female is considered to be a tremendous advantage - emotionally, career-wise.

Niki Caro

The New Zealand culture and nature is such that we find it very difficult to celebrate creative achievement. In order to get New Zealanders' respect you have to dominate the world like Peter Jackson has done. He is absolutely revered.

Niki Caro

I never had a mentor. God, it would have been nice, but I just didn't. I look up to Jane Campion. And my most favorite director Lynne Ramsay.

Niki Caro

Personally, I have nothing to prove. But I'm tremendously curious about human nature. Female life is so incredibly underexplored in cinema, so these stories feel very exotic.

Niki Caro

I think a lot of action films, and I'm just saying this as a moviegoer, the default setting on action films seems to be how could it be cooler?

Niki Caro

We don't tend to break into song when we go to war.

Niki Caro

Whale Rider' was a very authentic and specific movie about the indigenous culture from where I come. Amazingly, by the fact it was so authentic and so specific, it became really powerfully universal.

Niki Caro