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" I did not want to depict Al Gashey as evil. I wanted him to come across as someone who did what he did for reasons that were compelling. Whether or not we agree with him is a different matter. "

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" When you see how people in the developing world react and how they use a camera, you realise how narcissistic we are and how the filming of ourselves and thinking that we're interesting enough to care about is odd. "

Kevin Macdonald

Camera

People

Care

" In some ways, making documentaries is like being a journalist. You interview people and then use the bits you want to use as opposed to the bits they want you to use. "

" People think that the Italians invented neorealism, but actually, Humphrey Jennings did. He was revolutionary in using non-professional actors in his films, and he got extraordinary performances out of them. "

" In war films, even more than in other kinds of documentary, we've come to think that shaky, poor-quality footage is somehow more authentic than something classically 'well shot.' "

Kevin Macdonald

Documentary

Think

" If you go to pretty much everywhere in the developing world, you will find Bob Marley murals, and you'll find people playing his music. "

" You can get good performances in quite sizable roles from people who have never been in front of a camera, people who maybe have never been in front of a movie theater. "

" The relationship between director and subject can become very intense. It's a bit like therapy, with lots of transferences going on. It's easy to feel guilty. "

" If there's a principle really worth sticking up for, I'll go the whole way. "

Kevin Macdonald

Worth

Principle

" I'm not particularly ethnically Scottish; I have one grandfather who is Scottish, although he's called Macdonald, and you don't get a lot more Scottish than that. The Scottish part of my family are from Skye, and I've always been very aware of that - always been very attracted to Scottish subject matter, I guess. "

" I'm a cynical person who's normally attracted to the dark side of things. "

" The amazing thing about Bob Marley is that there is no moving footage of him at all for the first ten or eleven years of his career. From 1962 to 1973, there's nothing, not a single frame. "

" John Lennon made wonderful music, which people listen to as music. Nobody around the world is living their life according to the precepts of John Lennon. "

" I used the same designer and costume designer on 'The Eagle' and 'The Last King of Scotland.' "

" For me, what works well about 'Life in a Day' is that it's emotionally affecting without being manipulative. It really does make you think about the connectivity of the world, the similarities and differences. It shows the experiences we all go through: birth, childhood, falling in love, having kids, getting ill, dying. "

" When I was growing up on Loch Lomondside, one of the first albums I ever bought was Marley's 'Uprising.' I guess that would have been 1980 - just before he died. "

Kevin Macdonald

First

Growing Up

" As a filmmaker, I'm interminably curious and nosy, but certain times you meet people and think, 'I don't want to push you too hard because I can see this is painful for you.' "

" It's so nice to be totally artistically free. "

" I find it really difficult when you make a movie where it is set in Russia and everyone speaks in English. It drives me crazy. "

" Young people read their news online; they expect to get their news for free. "

" We're all fascinated by the way other people live their lives, how they cope with hardship and triumph, what they put in their home movies and family albums. "

" It feels like we're all so familiar now with the traditional three-act structure that, actually, stories that are more complex, more naughty, that allow for disagreement and discussion, are more interesting to us. "

" Sometimes people give away more by not saying something. "

Kevin Macdonald

Away

Sometimes

" The first documentary I saw that tried to show the actual experience of being a soldier in combat was 'The Anderson Platoon,' by French director Pierre Schoendoerffer, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 1967. "

" The only obligation you have as a film-maker is to tell your version of the truth and to use your film to illuminate reality. Whatever that means. "

" With 'Black Sea,' I long had an idea that I wanted to do a film about people stuck on the bottom of the ocean. I thought that was a terrifying scenario. "

" There's something about the lack of certainty with a documentary, which is exhausting if you do three in a row. It's nerve-wracking. "

" Coming from documentaries, my biggest challenge was to understand actors' psychologies. American actors take it all very seriously; British actors don't enter into all this methody way of doing things. "

" The thing with newspapers is that they are a filter. We're relying on the editors of that paper to be a filter and to tell you that this is worth reading about, this is quality, and this is quite reliable. "

" I love submarine movies. "

" I was fascinated by making a submarine movie, inspired by the Kursk disaster. This idea of being trapped down at the bottom of the sea seemed so terrifying. I was very interested in making a sub film which wasn't a military film. You think, Well, why are they there, then, if they're not in the military? Oh, well, they must be looking for treasure. "