Top 50 Asif Kapadia Quotes

We were studying at Newport Film School, and I found that the only way for me to make films – because you need people and you need equipment – was that I had to be a student.

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.

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

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.

‘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.

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.

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?

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.

The worst thing ever for me is go see a movie, and the next day I go, ‘What did I do last night? I have no memory of this $300 million movie I watched because I felt nothing.’

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 don’t really rely on watching video monitors. They put you at a certain distance from your actors, and it makes me feel less a part of what’s really happening in the scene.

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

I never realised ‘The Return’ would take so long to make – it was a very tough ‘political experience,’ and the post production in L.A. seemed to go on forever.

The thing people don’t get about Indian films is that the songs are the story.

To be teammates in Formula One actually means you are first rivals, not really mates.

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.

I studied graphic design originally. I used to like drawing, and I was quite into technical drawing. I was always interested in the visual medium, but I thought I was going to be an architect or something like that, but it’s quite a lonely job.

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.

Directing can be very lonely and quite intimidating.

Weirdly enough, I live in London – was born there and have lived there all my life – but I hadn’t made a film in London for a long time. I hadn’t found the right subject. I liked going away, to some far flung place.

For me, ‘Amy’ is a very dark film about love.

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.

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.

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.

I like to make films where I learn along the way, like the audience.

A lot of the time when I’m working, I’m abroad.

I lived in Camden, Primrose Hill and Kentish Town for 10 years.

As far as I’m concerned, I make movies.

The Tour de France would make a great movie. Drugs, corruption, political chicanery, guys risking their lives – everything you need for a great sports drama.

‘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.’

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

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

‘Amy’ is somewhere in the middle of authorized and unauthorized.

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

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.

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

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

The subjects have to come with questions for me. I don’t make films where I’m a massive fan.

We were working on ‘Senna’ for a long time before we were fully financed, so we didn’t actually have an editor for a while.

While still a young student at film school, I was lucky enough to get a golden ticket to a Martin Scorsese master class at BAFTA in Piccadilly: fancy, but technically still ‘the flicks’.

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’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.

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.

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

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.

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

You don’t have to be someone who likes walking a tightrope across the Twin Towers to watch ‘Man On Wire.’

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.

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.

I often make films about subjects I don’t really know much about. Maybe it’s laziness, but I don’t go in there having done a tonne of research; the research happens while I’m making the film.