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" I knew from an early age that people didn't see the different sides of me. I formulated a kind of bi-cultural identity quite early, and I was always very comfortable with it, but I knew people didn't quite see that. "

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" DVDs have their place, but the cinema is a tangible, emotional experience that I would hate my children not to have. "

Gurinder Chadha

Hate

Would

Place

" Constantly, I've been asked to make a sequel to 'Beckham.' However, I thought a West End show was the proper way to go. Once we made the show, I wanted to make sure that I embraced the West End genre rather than just put the film on stage. "

Gurinder Chadha

Way

Thought

" One of the best things about the award season is that when a British film succeeds at the Oscars and BAFTAs, such as 'Slumdog Millionaire' in 2009 and 'The King's Speech' this year, the British public get right behind it with an immense sense of national pride. "

" My films do have a big following among young girls, and I want to instill confidence in them, a sense of self-appreciation - to make them feel they can be spirited and say what they feel. "

" I tell stories about people audiences might think they have nothing in common with, then they emotionally connect with them and find they're not different at all. "

" For British cinema to survive, you really need a British film culture, and it's got to start down there, with young kids watching films in the cinema - so they can be transported to a different world. "

" The more I make films, the more I feel less inclined to talk about them and just let people watch them. I feel that the pictures are telling the story, and I can't really add anything except just talking about the technicalities of what happened on the day. "

" If you want to be a director, work with writers and find different ways of telling stories with film, then do a course. This way you can consolidate what you've learnt and use the course to go further. "

" Writing film scripts is the hardest thing in the world. A script has to go to five or six drafts, and you need the feedback of other people and to keep coming back with a fresh eye, honing it down. "

" I use humour a lot because humour is a great equaliser. Everyone laughs at the same things if you set them up properly, and that makes everybody equal. At the end of the day, I see my job as being there to entertain as well as inform and provoke. "

" I saw 'Billy Elliot' again, and what I loved about it was the way it had become a social document, a reminder of what happened with the mining communities in the '80s. And I thought, 'Everyone keeps wanting me to make a sequel to 'Beckham,' but maybe a musical remake is the answer, embracing all this theatricality.' "

Gurinder Chadha

Everyone

Again

" Once I started writing the screenplay of 'Bride & Prejudice,' I was convinced Jane Austen was a Punjabi in her previous birth. "

" On the outside, America looks like this great melting pot, but on the inside, there's this segregation in American cinema. Why does a Latino film have to be for Latinos? Why is a black film just for black people? Why? "

" I know it sounds really weedy, but we are all children who seek approval from our parents. "

" One of the head guys at Disney categorically said to me, 'We don't want to make children's films any more. We want to make films that are going to appeal to all quadrants.' Hence you have films like 'Shrek' and all the Pixar stuff, which is designed to suit everybody. "

" Britain has nurtured me and made me able to make movies that have travelled round the world. "

" The only time I used to feel like an outsider was when I first went to India. "

Gurinder Chadha

First

India

" I was a journalist when I made 'I'm British But...' I'd seen how important the media was in terms of defining Indians - after the riots in the '80s, I was like, 'Oh my God!' "

" I love 'I'm British But...' It's such a sweet, innocent, open-hearted film, and it has the sort of openness that I still aspire to with everything I do. It wears its heart, head, everything on its sleeve. "

" I remember a picture on the front page of the 'Sun' during the Brixton riots: a rasta guy with a petrol bomb, and a headline saying something like: 'The Future of Britain.' And I thought: 'Wow! Look at the power of that image,' and I wanted to get behind the camera to make these people three-dimensional. "

" 'Up the Junction' really made me understand the power of cinema to create a vivid sense of a community. When I went on to make 'Bhaji on the Beach,' it was this sense I tried to recreate. "

Gurinder Chadha

Power

" One of the things I want to do with 'Desi Rascals' is go a bit deeper into the characters and their family lives and have a bit more heart and a bit more inter-generational story-telling, so it's not all about young people. "

" You'd be surprised how hard it is getting the human emotional arc in a script to work. Ultimately a director stands and falls by their ability to do that. "

" I can't stand films where parents are portrayed as old and doddery, and ignore their kids. "

" If I'm in a gathering of filmmakers, I'm first and foremost a British Indian; if I'm in a gathering of British Indians, I'm a woman director. There are so many sides to who I am that I change all the time. "

" As I grew up, I always refused to cook Indian food very vehemently, and to this day, I don't cook chapatis at home. I'd always say, 'Why do I have to do it? Why don't the men do it?' "

" I went to L.A., and I was on two different studio movies at Fox and Sony, but they were never made in the end. When the second one wasn't happening, I ended up doing an episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' for the BBC, and went on a roots trip from England to Kenya, India, and pre-partition India in Pakistan, where my family originally came from. "

" Australians have a fantastic sense of humour and incredible taste. I was there for 'Bend It Like Beckham,' and I had a great time. Aussies loved it, and I think 'Bride & Prejudice' is going to do well, too, because it's all about having a good time. "

" All my films are about kind of being seen to be one thing when you're actually something else, and the power of the female spirit to make things work your way on your terms. Which is what I do. "

" It's not simply that British films do well at the box office and generate revenue, it's that they provide a window to the world of what Britain and its culture is about. "