Zitat des Tages von Mira Nair:
The film itself should interact with the audience. In the case of 'Queen of Katwe', people are laughing, sobbing and dancing. I am taking them on a ride... It is not like I am asking them for handouts.
I am still attracted to stories about people who are considered to be on the outside of society. I still seek inspiration from those stories.
My close friends call me the bulldozer who never says no. I have never not made a film.
Christmas lights may be the loneliest thing for me, especially if you mix them up with reindeers and sleighs. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel I do not belong.
It's only at this age that I can say the word 'art' without flinching.
I know what it's like to be in one place and dream of another. I also know what it's like to feel that nostalgia is a fairly useless thing because it is stasis.
As the director of a film, as the story teller, you have to keep your voice alive.
Never treat anything you do as a stepping stone. Do it fully, and follow it completely.
I listen to Ustad Vilayat Khan's 'Raga Khamaj' and 'Raga Jaijaiwanti' virtually every morning, a lot of Abdullah Ibrahim, Michael Kiwanuka, Savages, and contemporary Ugandan pop.
I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.
I am actually a resident of three worlds - of America, of India, and of Africa. I live in Uganda most of the year. It's extraordinary to have that worldview that is an expansive one rather than just looking at the world from where you sit.
I want to question what the outside is and who defines it. I often find those that are considered to be on the outside extremely inspiring.
Marriage of attraction is a gamble anyway, so you might as well marry into a family that is similar to your own, and make that much less of an adjustment. But the 'love marriage', as it is called, is equally common in India now. But it would be interesting to do a comparison of what would work better. Marriage is hard work, and it is a gamble.
Truth is more peculiar than fiction. Life is really a startling place.
I think there's a level of ignorance, when, in the callowness of youth, you imagine that you are inventing the world for the first time. You imagine that your parents don't know what it feels like to fall in love.
You've got to understand that in Bollywood, every actor is an instrument, and yet a human being. They come to the set with a set agenda, believing, 'This is who I am, this is what I want, and no, I am not going to become that character you want me to.'
I love the idea that it doesn't take one person only to achieve your potential. It takes a village, it takes a community, a street, a teacher, a mother.
I look for the humanity in people, however big the politics or oppressive the situation may be, whether it's subsumed within a human being or between two human beings. I want to help us hold a mirror to ourselves.
I always like to reveal the fact that the emperor has no clothes. And children are best at that. They teach us how to see the world in that sense. They are without artifice; they see it for what it is. I am drawn to that ruthless honesty.
I think I am kind of put on this Earth to speak of being between worlds in my films.
I am at home in many cultures. I live actively in three continents and I've done that for most of my life, so I just make films as I see the world, and that happens to speak to people. I do things that I want to do.
They say now in America that final cut doesn't mean anything. As Harvey Weinstein said to some film-maker, 'You can have final cut. I'll open your film in Arkansas.'
'Salaam Bombay' didn't put a halo on the poor. Instead, it said that they will teach us how to live.
The film-school mantra is that if you don't tell your own stories, nobody will.
I am an independent film-maker first and foremost. I have always cut my own cloth.
I grew up thinking anything was possible simply because of seeing women in power - like, you know, running the country. Which is a thought that continues to give Americans indigestion... Direction is about having a vision, but the practice of being a director is a con game - a confidence game.
I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room.
A lot of us feel that we are against the war; we are against profiling and are against what is happening. We are tired of war in every manifestation. American people do not all believe in what the government has been doing.
India somehow constantly rivets and inspires me, and I feel very relieved to have come from this country which has a very 'lifeist' approach to living fully, no matter what one has or doesn't have.
I grew up in a very small town which is remote even by Indian standards. I always dreamed of the world.
I grew up in a small town in India, but through books I knew the world.
Never take no for answer, and try to make films that turn you on.
To make films, you have to have something to say. To have something to say, you have to be a student of life. And to be a student of life, you have to be feeding yourself with what life, politics, society, and your family fuels you with.
It is shocking that the screen does not reflect the way the world is and the diversity in the world... What the world really looks like should be on screen, and it isn't.
Life is short, so I'm knowing exactly where I'm putting my time. I don't want to do things that I don't have to do.
I dream of living off the land completely - in vain, because the monkeys eat everything.
