Director

I think it's time British filmmakers stopped allowing themselves to be colonized so ruthlessly by U.S. ideas and stopped looking so slavishly to the U.S. market. It demeans filmmaking when they do that.

History is for all of us to discuss. All history is our common heritage to discuss and analyze. The founding of the state of Israel, for example, based on ethnic cleansing is there for us all to discuss.

There are different cinema traditions in France, Spain and other European countries. There's a much stronger intellectual tradition: cinema is seen in a more serious way.

It's time to put back on the agenda the importance of public ownership and public good, the value of working together collaboratively, not in competition.

People who are deaf or hard of hearing need all the support we can give them.

Film can do lots of things: It can produce alternative ideas, ask questions, just record the reality of what's happening, it can analyze what's happening. Of course, most commercial films are controlled by big corporations who have an interest in not doing those films.

Gordon Brown is and always will be committed to the interests of big business, so there's no way I want to be involved in the Labour Party again.

Don't take advice. You have to make up your own mind what to do from the beginning.

The E.U. is an economically right-wing organization that prioritizes the interests of big corporations.

I think that cinema is medium of communication. It's as valid as novels or fine art.

I don't think films about working class people are sad at all; I think they're funny and lively and invigorating and warm and generous and full of good things.

Churchill the right-winger has been elevated to a status where you can't criticise him. People from the time remember him as an imperialist, a hard-right politician, very instrumental in the oppression of Ireland and the attempt to defeat the general strike.

I hate programmes where some TV personality looks you in the eye and tells you what to think - the Andrew Marr version of history. I hate the authorial voice telling you what to think.

Oh, I don't like labels.

Ordinary people can be very articulate and very eloquent.

I think you find amongst ordinary people there are a lot of people that are really talented.

When you get older you do one film at a time.

There's no great desire to own lots of stuff - and I don't. You can only live in one house and drive one car.

If you think back to the great French directors it's difficult to think of British film-makers who are comparable.

I made one contribution to a film about the 11th of September: there were 11 directors and everyone had a different take on that. Some I thought were valid and some less so, but there was a substantial point that knitted all the films together - a comment on the bombing of the World Trade Center - so there was something to get your teeth into.