I think all documentaries leave out areas of people's lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

Jim, I'm not aware of any formal requests from the Senate Judiciary Committee for these kinds of documents.

I think what we ought to be focusing on is that we are on path for the release of 75,000 pages of documents in connection with John Roberts' work in the White House, as in the counselor's office and as his time working as an assistant in the office of the attorney general.

There are, for example, exemptions in FOIA in which the government can withhold certain kinds of information, and the courts have recognized that there is certain documentation that do deserve protection, that certain privileges do apply and do deserve protection.

There's a really great documentary called 'Many Rivers,' which documents the totality of slavery from its inception, and then it gives you a little history on how America came to prominence. It's crazy - the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explorer, with the Spaniards.

I've always loved to paint - I was studying to do an art degree when I was approached to become a model - and I've being doing some design work as well. I also love just having a quiet time, sitting in my little library at home in Brooklyn and reading or watching documentaries or listening to music.

It's hard to make a living doing documentaries. Frankly, if it takes you five years to do a film, and that's the only film you're doing, you're in trouble.

Many people have this memory of traditional TV documentary-making that aims to portray pure reality, and I just don't see that as the only option.

Documentaries can embrace contradictions in a way that journalism can't.

The message films that try to be message films always fail. Likewise with documentaries. The documentaries that work best are the ones that eschew a simple message for an odd angle. I found that one of the most spectacular films about the Middle East was 'Waltz With Bashir,' or 'The Gatekeepers,' or '5 Broken Cameras.'

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps.

To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within 'Roots' is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents.

The reason there's so many gay people now is because it's a chemical warfare operation, and I have the government documents where they said they're going to encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don't have children.

There's a lot of documentaries out in the world; it sometimes seems as if there's no topic left!

I'm a happy person! I guess I'm not as much of a pessimist as most documentary filmmakers.

I never say I make documentaries. I say I make television.

Because in this business, as you know, you don't get that many bites at the apple, so I make documentaries for HBO and that's what I do.

As a documentary filmmaker, I couldn't afford to give my children the lifestyle I had in San Francisco growing up.

Providing free access to research papers on websites like Sci-Hub breaks so-called copyright law that was made to taboo free distribution of information on the Internet. That includes music, movies, documentaries, books, and research articles. Not everyone agrees that copyright law should exist in the first place.

I think - I do think that we have to have a secure border. We need to make sure that people are, in fact, documented. But that doesn't mean that we threaten people's lives.

On my father's side, I'm descended from immigrants, one of whom was a Syrian refugee from the Armenian genocide, and my mother was an immigrant from Germany whose visa had expired and, for a year and change, was undocumented here in the U.S.

I love documentaries and TED talks.

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

Archaeology can be overlooked as a discipline, I think, but it's incredibly important to have this other way of approaching the past - not just through historical documents, but through actual physical remains - objects, buildings and the layout of our towns.

I think all documentaries leave out areas of people's lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

It is well documented that I am a lifelong football fan. My love of the British game started with the 1966 World Cup.

As the world of independent feature filmmaking became increasingly commercialized by the mid-1990s, there was also a parallel, much more positive development: a resurgence in documentary filmmaking, thanks in part to the advent of the cheaper, lighter digital format that helped to offset the daunting costs of pursuing political aims through film.

What I find most satisfying about photography is the way in which it allows me to document 'reality' while at the same time creating my own version thereof; in other words, the reality I present is a reality based upon what I choose to include in the frame and what I choose to leave out.

I actually think that 'States of Union' will be a lifelong endeavor for me. It won't take up all my energy as it has in recent years, but I imagine that I will always continue to add to the body of work - the project of documentation will never be entirely complete.

In the Federal Government, electronic records are as indispensable as their paper counterparts for documenting citizens' rights, the actions for which officials are accountable, and the nation's history.

This awareness instills a fierce desire to protect that heritage and - in doing so - to educate Americans in the meaning and importance of our pivotal documents.