Asif Kapadia Quotes

My wife Victoria Harwood was art director on 'Far North,' and she had designed my student film, 'The Sheep Thief.'

I used to live in Pillgwenlly, and there was this old Italian pizzeria that used to be there with a really amazing character who ran it.

I worked with Michelle Yeoh on my last film, 'Far North,' and her partner is Jean Todt; at the time, he ran Ferrari. So I went as a VIP to the British grand prix.

I don't have these crazy deadlines. I don't have this, 'Oh it's got to be out tomorrow.' I don't like working like that.

Martin Scorsese was being given an honorary doctorate, and one of the tutors asked if there was a student film he particularly liked. He mentioned our film. There was a dinner after the final show just for the tutors, but I was smuggled in to meet Scorsese over dessert.

On 'Senna,' it got to the point where there was so much footage that our first editor had the wild suggestion that we only use the archive.

I made several short films with very little dialogue. I'm still not a fan of talking heads. My stories are told with images as much as possible.

'Do the Right Thing' has been a big influence on me. I saw it when it first came out in 1989. I was about 18, and it blew me away on many levels - I had never seen anything like it before.

We want to make movies for the big screen. We want people to go to the theater and feel like they're watching a movie.

If I'm going to do something, I'm going to spend however long it takes to get it right.

I just loved films. I knew I wanted to work on film, not video.

'Senna' took five years, 'Amy' took three years. You try and say, 'Look, there's no deadline.' That's important. Just saying, 'We've got to make the film. And once the film's ready, it will be out there.'

I wanted to make a film that wouldn't just appeal to Formula One fans. That's what the great sports documentaries do - 'Hoop Dreams,' 'When We Were Kings' - they're human dramas first, sport second, if at all.

We spent four days filming in a helicopter. I had never seen London from that viewpoint - you get a sense of how big it is and how easy it is to get lost. There was one day when we couldn't find Brick Lane: we spent 25 minutes looking and then realised it was directly below us.

I worked in TV for a short time and couldn't stand the fact that we'd always be filming someone talking, just giving information.

Real life is far more complicated than fiction.

After Newport, I worked in television for a while, and then I went to The Royal College Of Art and did a master's degree. I really did study quite a lot!

I never know going in if I've even got a movie to make. Once you start making a film, you hope there's going to be enough material! My job as a director is always to push for more.

It's always great to be able to go to a premiere with the actors there.

Hopefully, when people see 'Senna', they will understand why this inspirational story needed to be told, why it had to be made as a movie for the big screen, and why it is a film for everyone.

As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty.

I'm a sport fan. So, I have always watched everything, and I used to watch racing. Formula One was always on. The genius about it is that it's on at lunchtime on a Sunday.

I'd always intended to make 'Far North' straight after 'The Warrior.' We had the rights to the short story, the script was in development, and I knew where I wanted to shoot it. It just took a long time getting the script together and raising the finance.

In a film called 'Senna,' the clue is in the title, and we have a Brazilian badge on our sleeve as we were making it. We were making it from Senna's point of view, with Senna narrating it.

A big part of my filmmaking is that I can go somewhere new and, visually, be excited by it.

My background is from India, and I always get asked, 'When are you going to do an Indian film, a musical or Bollywood film?'

I want to make my own films from my own scripts based on stories I want to tell, but they take time to put together.

Hopefully with digital projection, a film will always look the way the filmmaker intended.

I was a sports fan long before I had any interest in film-making.

I wanted to study film at an art school - I loved the idea of being surrounded by designers and artists. We were encouraged to be experimental.

I'm an ordinary Hackney boy, and I can talk to people.

As a kid, I thought movies were boring. My parents would hire VHS recorders for the weekend and watch Bollywood movies. I'd get bored and go out to Stoke Newington common to play football.

The big thing for me is to make films that you feel, whether you feel happy, whether you feel sad, whether you feel sick; it's to make the audience feel so that the next day they remember what they saw.

As much as I love creating entertaining visuals, I love toying with the pace of a movie and trying to perfect that. It's imperative to the impact: faster cuts, cuts at the right moments that meld with the tenor of a scene. Creating and maintaining that feeling.

Boxing is made for film - there is corruption, violence, tragedy and the chance that the underdog can catch the champion with one lucky punch.

My team and I used the actual footage to create a three-act story of the life of Ayrton Senna. There are no talking heads and no voiceover. Senna narrates his own epic, dramatic, thrilling journey.

My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I'm happy to tackle that in cinema.

My interest in filmmaking was always very much the visuals and images.

There are no drivers like Formula One drivers. They are engineers, in a way. They are driving manual cars one-handed at 200 miles per hour around streets in Monaco. These cars use the ultimate in technology.

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.

People have always been recording what's going on around them in one form or another.

I love telling stories with images. But I think there's more to just saying a movie is great visually.

Why make a movie about Ayrton Senna? Someone who drove around in circles at 200mph in a car that looked like a giant cigarette packet? Why would anyone who isn't already a fan of Formula 1 care?

My family didn't film anything. But then you look deeper and realize, maybe there are photographs, there are things. It's also context: You give something a context, and suddenly it becomes really deep or meaningful footage.

My background is Indian, so I believe in a spiritual idea that there is another level, another layer or layers, if you will, above us. I believe that there are elements that allow things to be drawn together, a sort of energy.

There's this great TV show we have called 'Later ... with Jools Holland', a live-music show on Friday nights. Anyone and everyone's been on it.

I made three short films of my own which I wrote, produced, directed ... you did everything in those days. My favourite one was something I shot on VHS ... a little documentary.