"It’s not your typical Western movie, although it might be mistaken as one. There’s virtually no dialogue in it, which I love. You know, I’m obviously a big Robert Altman fan; I got to make a movie with him [The Company]. I love his work, and I actually hadn’t seen this film until I worked with him and had a look at it. I think the performances are very surprising and wonderful. I personally love a film that doesn’t have much dialogue in it and the story’s basically told through glances and sounds, and I just think it’s unique."

"One of my favorite reads from those fundamental years of art school, I first discovered this book when trying to come to terms with western Enlightenment culture’s broad impact on ideation in artistic practice. So much of Enlightenment thinking is poisoned by prior notions of race that one must ask: Is it ever possible to separate some of our greatest understandings derived from the Enlightenment era from its problematic history? In Race and the Enlightenment, Eze examines foundational writings on race by major Enlightenment figures and lays bare the toxic notions of their time in their own words."

"This was Robert Redford‘s follow up to Ordinary People. It’s just about a small South-Western town that is being taken over by moneyed interests. There’s this beautiful scene in the beginning where this obnoxious pig comes and wakes everybody up in the village out of bed, and everybody is like “Ergh, get away from me you pig.” But actually the pig is a force of great good; he’s just rousing everybody for the morning. There’s a certain poetry and stillness to the picture, and a magic that seems to emanate from the land and it casts a delicate spell."

"I saw this with my parents as a very young child in the seventies, on television, and I never forgot it. I went back to it over the years on VHS and DVD, but this Criterion edition is quite a rediscovery. It’s an unusual VistaVision beach western with unstable and elusive racial narrative elements. It’s also the product of star power and a studio willing to go along, with reportedly messy results, but I see nothing wrong with this film. I like it a lot. Brando is wonderful in it, both as a director and as a star."

"I tend not to read anyone unless they’ve been buried, but this is a book that reminds us of the most important value: ‘You are not a consumer, you are a creative person.’ As someone who was bought up in Africa with no advertising at all, I find it striking how relaxed my attitude is compared to lots of people brought up in the western world. How to be Free is a joyful call to arms to care less about materialism: ‘Learn how to whistle, throw your watch away, forget career, spend a summer reading books.'"