Beeban Kidron quotes:

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  • Unfortunately, teatime in London is when people in Los Angeles arrive in their offices and pick up the phone.

  • For most women, Greenham was a place of principle, growth and song. Often joyful, sometimes terrifying, and almost always cold. As it got harder, with constant evictions and mounting violence from a frustrated and humiliated police force, the women got more determined. It was a community with a shared purpose - to live in peace.

  • Whether in cave paintings or the latest uses of the Internet, human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.

  • We now have powerful technology, which allows us a voice across boundaries, which was unimaginable at the time of the Greenham Protest, a protest that pre-dates the Internet and the mobile phone.

  • There is nothing wrong with Facebook in itself, except that it is not a very good tool to express the quality of your relationships.

  • At 99 and after a long stay in a nursing home, the death of legendary photographer Eve Arnold was hardly a surprise - though she may have been just a little annoyed to quit a few months short of 100.

  • I often go out on the street with my camera and ask questions.

  • Everything a teenager does, says or looks at, however transitory, contributes to an aggregated virtual self that might one day have consequences for its real-life counterpart. How many of us would keep all our relationships and reputations intact if every transgression, mistake or youthful folly was held in public view?

  • The devices that our kids use are shipped from the factory with every possible audio, visual or vibration alert switched on. Each new app, website, tweet and message adds another layer of intrusion - each intrusion is cynically designed to get a response, and each response creates an appetite for another intrusion.

  • The previous generation paved the way for my generation to gallop unheeded into jobs previously reserved for men.

  • The thing that upsets me is the ubiquitous use of reward technology, which uses our evolutionary biology against us.

  • I've always been interested in exploring difficult subjects for the mainstream.

  • The film that changed my life is a 1951 film by Vittorio De Sica, 'Miracle in Milan.' It's a remarkable comment on slums, poverty and aspiration.

  • I had a sort of classic moment when a friend of mine rang up and said she'd just been to a funeral, and in the middle of the eulogy, this kid had taken out the phone and had a whole proper text conversation - while everyone was weeping!

  • I love being in real life, and in particular, I like being with young people.

  • People have a right to have their lives witnessed; if we coexist with the systems that abuse people, then we have a duty to understand.

  • Parents cannot be in the same physical space as their children at all times.

  • On telly, there's been a move towards entertainment - with some very high-powered, fast-moving dramas. Then we have the Internet, where we get our information but it's all in bite-size pieces. I think the documentary, as a form, actually speaks to what's missing.

  • I love text, I love email, I love Skype; I think it's amazing.

  • I've liked being Jewish in America - there's a secular version of Jewishness there that's more about bagels and jokes than going to synagogues.

  • Cinema is arguably the 20th century's most influential art form.

  • This idea of the digital native in the bedroom taking down a fascist regime and building a billion-dollar company is a very attractive image, but actually, if you look at the research, young people are on the lowest rung of digital opportunity.

  • I've lost count of the plane tickets I've had in my pocket for people's weddings and other celebrations which I've had to tear up because I was making a film. How many things like that can you miss and still be in people's lives?

  • I am still cautiously hopeful about the potential of the Internet. But it seems that the greatest revolution in communication has been hijacked by commercial values.

  • The devadasis have a multilayered story, a story in which poverty, deprivation and injustice against women is central - but what has happened to them is absolutely an outcome of imperialism and the impact of British rule in India.

  • I want to talk about privacy, the quality of the information you receive, whether it's neutral or commercial or pointed, bringing consciousness to the lack of neutrality in the algorithms.

  • Life is really hard for some people.

  • I like the accidental nature of being in the real world.

  • I think the documentary is something that people are hungry for, that it embodies careful thought, nuance.

  • Everything serious in the world is well approached by humour. It's a powerful and often quite subversive tool. I suppose there is an argument that could be made against me for being frivolous, but I do think a laugh is a very generous thing to give.

  • Girls from poor families of the 'untouchable,' or lower, caste are 'married' to Yellamma as young as four. No longer allowed to marry a mortal, they are expected to bestow their entire lives to the service of the goddess.

  • I come from the school who thought the Internet could be the great democratising force, that getting rid of the gatekeepers was a positive move.

  • If Twitter is worth seven billion next month, I'm happy for them to be worth six billion and spend a billion making it safer for people, for example.

  • The thing I have come to find astonishing is that people from all political sides routinely say that the Internet has to be the model of free speech and freedom.

  • Our children, manipulated to become exemplary consumers, increasingly admit they do not feel 'in control' of their own Internet use.

  • When politicians say, 'Oh, parents should supervise their kids' Internet use,' it drives me crazy.

  • What is the point of teaching how to analyse a poem or a piece of Shakespeare but not to analyse the Internet?

  • I've discovered my Jewishness late in life. And I've really enjoyed exploring that world.

  • The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.

  • Human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.

  • I hope that every film I make has something to offer in the area of making people feel either vindicated or different in terms of who they are.

  • Our politicians don't say anything anymore: they just refute and assert.

  • We have allowed a situation to develop in which it is legal for a multibillion dollar industry to own, wholly and in perpetuity, the intimate and personal details of children.

  • In 1982, fellow film student Amanda Richardson and I went to Greenham Common for the day - to see what was going on and to shoot some video. The day turned into a weekend, the weekend into seven months, and the dozens of hours of footage turned into a film - 'Carry Greenham Home.'

  • In the U.S., it would be so much better if the studios made many more smaller films for niche markets rather than a few tent pole films that swamp cinemas and Hoover up all the funding.

  • I've walked down the street with Madonna, and I've walked down the street with Colin Firth, and it was a little bit more... with Madonna they were a little rougher, but they were all there for Colin. It was amazing. Women adore him. They swoon.

  • A white woman with a camera in the Devadasi belt of Karnataka is not inconspicuous... it took time for these women to believe that I was not an official, carrying the threat of fine and imprisonment.

  • For me, trying to articulate the world to help people see it in a way they haven't seen it before is hugely important. Sometimes, you have to take something that is completely inexplicable and say, 'Look, here is the beating heart of something you must understand.'

  • Arguably, it was the introduction of international non-proliferation treaties in the late '80s that finally led to the missiles being removed from Greenham Common.

  • I once gave a talk at a girls' school and, once I'd finished, 29 out of the 30 girls wanted to be film directors. I think that's where we need to get girls interested in making films. We need to give them the idea that they can, that it's one of the things on their horizon.

  • I think it is a great gift to make people laugh, and it shouldn't be underestimated.

  • Not many young women of my age have been lucky enough to have had a wonderful mentor in their life.

  • I think I've been very, very lucky in my life, and I do believe in public service.

  • The irony is palpable - technical access has never been greater, cultural access never weaker.

  • We are increasingly offered a diet [by Hollywood] in which sensation, not story, is king.

  • Make films whenever and however you can - don't take no for an answer.

  • I think that stories, and the telling of stories, are the foundations of human communication and understanding. If children all over the country are watching films, asking questions and telling their stories, then the world will eventually be a better place.

  • Making a big commercial movie is hard when you think about how many of them flop.

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