Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Asif Kapadia

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Real life is far more complicated than fiction.

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.

Directing can be very lonely and quite intimidating.

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

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 lot of the time when I'm working, I'm abroad.

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.

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.

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.

'Amy' is somewhere in the middle of authorized and unauthorized.

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

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

When I was given the opportunity to direct 'Senna,' I decided the film had to work for audiences who disliked sport or had never seen a Formula One race in their lives. It had to thrill and emotionally engage people who had never heard of Ayrton Senna.

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?

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.

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.

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.'

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

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

'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 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.

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.

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

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.

The Monaco Grand Prix is in May right around the time of Cannes.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.