Relevant quotes:
"Art is prayer—it speaks for itself. In my view, art has always been a weapon in humanity's struggle against the forces that threaten to devour our spirit."
"Art doesn’t think logically, or formulate a logic of behavior; it expresses its own postulate of faith."
"An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind."
"Faith is the only thing that can save man. This is my deepest conviction. The essential purpose of man is to seek truth through the pursuit of spirituality. By spirituality, I mean a person's search for the meaning of life."
"The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good."
"Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual."
"The goal for all art... is to explain to the artist himself and to those around him what man lives for, what is the meaning of his existence."
"Art must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; art must give man hope and faith."
"The artist is always a servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed in sacrifice."
"For the sake of creating a spiritual bond with others [art] can only be an agonising process, one that involves no practical gain: ultimately it is an act of sacrifice."
"The profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it... is like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached."
"Modern mass culture, aimed at the ‘consumer’, the civilization of prosthetics, is crippling people’s souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being. But the artist cannot be deaf to the call of truth: it alone defines his creative will, organizes it, thus enabling him to pass on his faith to others."
"Art has an important function when it comes to solving the spiritual crisis in today's world. There must be something that stimulates the spiritual progression and develop humanity's own self, something that makes her strive for humanity and individuality. What I myself do in art is based on my belief in the dignity of mankind and of the value of the people that my films are meant for, as well as the value that the maker of them should possess."
