Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I try to avoid mirrors.
Oh, I don't like labels.
A TV series is a long commitment.
I'm not a great fan of very short films.
Cannes is the largest festival of world cinema.
Surprise is something that's very difficult to act.
I think cinema is taken a bit more seriously in France.
I wasn't from a political family. Nobody talked politics.
Ordinary people can be very articulate and very eloquent.
I've been going to Labour party meeting for over 50 years.
You always feel a degree of insecurity about getting through a film.
Anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and all forms of racism are horrible.
The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator.
People who are deaf or hard of hearing need all the support we can give them.
As a medium, film has great potential, but its use is dominated by big capital.
It's a great privilege to make a film, to have it shown, and for people to see it.
Because I've been around a long time I get a bit of leeway that other people don't.
Don't take advice. You have to make up your own mind what to do from the beginning.
Maybe if we tell the truth about the past, we can tell the truth about the present.
I think that cinema is medium of communication. It's as valid as novels or fine art.
Those in power always try to distort reality, to suit their needs and keep things safe.
Paul Laverty is a wonderful writer and we've worked together for a quarter of a century.
The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is.
The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged.
I think you find amongst ordinary people there are a lot of people that are really talented.
We have what we call 'fake left' politicians, like Ed Miliband and those who went before him.
The Labour election of 1945 was a tremendous victory for democratic ownership of the economy.
I was an understudy in a show called 'One Over The Eight' with Kenneth Williams and Sheila Hancock.
What the Labour movement is about is a broad mass of people actively engaged in a democratic process.
Politics lives in people, ideas live in people, they live in the concrete struggles that people have.
I think that's one of the things that sport teaches you. You are only as good as the team around you.
Shaping it is something I would expect to do together with a writer, because that's a director's job.
The E.U. is an economically right-wing organization that prioritizes the interests of big corporations.
Jimmy's Hall' is set in Ireland in the '30s and everything that went under the camera we had to generate.
The BBC is very aware of its role in shaping people's consciousness… it's manipulative and deeply political.
A film has got to demand to be made. Otherwise - if it's just, 'Shall we? Why not?' - you shouldn't make it.
I know there are people who can direct sitting down away from it all at a video monitor. But I can't do that.
All politicians will say they celebrate the NHS, but to a greater or lesser extent, they've all undermined it.
There's a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.
If you think back to the great French directors it's difficult to think of British film-makers who are comparable.
It seems to me the big weakness in most films is the writing. You can learn directing, but you can't learn writing.
The most enjoyable things are the old eighteenth-century terraces that are still standing, that domestic architecture.
It's more interesting to see new people on the screen when you go to the cinema. I don't want to see the same old faces.
We did a film called 'Kes,' which is about a lad with a talent that nobody can recognise, or that nobody chose to recognise.
I think the Norweigan model of municipalities owning cinemas and being programmed by people who know about films is a good one.
A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage.
If you have a society where a large section believe they are not part of the political discourse, that is a situation for trouble.
It would be exciting to take part in what we now call the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century, but with modern dentistry.
When I was young, you were told that if you had a skill, you would find a job for life and you could bring up a family on the wage.
I was stage-struck from an early age. I just loved the language. We lived quite near Stratford so I would cycle and watch the plays.