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Worlds of Lost Possibilities

Life is a winking light in the darkness.

I try to dig deep into the well of my subconscious. At a certain moment in that process, the lid is opened and very different ideas and visions are liberated. With those I can start making a film. But maybe it’s better that you don’t open that lid completely, because if you release your subconscious it becomes really hard to live a social or family life.

The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it—I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics, is hopeless.

I am a pessimist. But when I’m making a film, I don’t want to transfer my pessimism onto children. I keep it at bay. I don’t believe that adults should impose their vision of the world on children, children are very much capable of forming their own visions. There’s no need to force our own visions onto them.

To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves… Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that’s exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us.

—quotes from Hayao Miyazaki, various sources

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