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" '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
Me
Power
Up
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" 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. "
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" 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?' "
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" 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. "
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" Southall Broadway, in west London, has been a constant part of my life from the day I arrived in England as a baby from Kenya in 1962. My parents rented a room in one of the terraces off the Broadway, and I've seen it change from an ordinary English high street to what is now 'Little India.' with a confident Asian community. "
Gurinder Chadha
Community
Day
Change
" I've been wanting for a long time to create a show which allowed me to show the British Asian community in a truly three-dimensional way, exploring the relationships between generations and what it means to be British and Asian as values become fluid. "
Gurinder Chadha
Time
Values
Me
" 'Up the Junction' went on to inform my love of British social realism. It was the first film I saw of this ilk, a very stark, visceral reflection of England, an England I didn't necessarily feel a part of but that I knew was out there. You could almost smell the bread and butter and cabbage. "
Gurinder Chadha
Bread
Feel
Film
" Indian films never show cows. When you go to India, the most noticeable thing is the cows. Everywhere you look, there's cows walking around! Just by introducing the idea of animals - livestock walking around - suddenly makes it more real. "
Gurinder Chadha
Real
Animals
India
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Need
Cinema
Start
" There are very few people who are Asian who have the kind of global reach that I have, not just with Asians but with non-Asians. I've worked hard for what my name represents, my brand, not just in Britain but around the world. "
Gurinder Chadha
Brand
People
Reach
" Once I started writing the screenplay of 'Bride & Prejudice,' I was convinced Jane Austen was a Punjabi in her previous birth. "
Gurinder Chadha
Writing
Birth
Bride
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
End
Roots
Movies
" The fact that it's hard to create an original British musical doesn't mean you shouldn't try. "
Gurinder Chadha
Create
Hard
Mean
" I am not afraid to be a pioneer. When a door is ajar, you need to open it fully. And once you are in that room, you need to see what other doors there might be and where they might lead. "
Gurinder Chadha
Doors
You
Need
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Children
Said
Want
" I know it sounds really weedy, but we are all children who seek approval from our parents. "
Gurinder Chadha
Children
Seek
Parents
" Bollywood is a cinema of vibrant contradictions, which works when it seems it shouldn't. "
Gurinder Chadha
Bollywood
Contradictions
Seems
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Box
Office
Window
" The only time I used to feel like an outsider was when I first went to India. "
Gurinder Chadha
First
India
Like
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Writing
World
People
" 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!' "
Gurinder Chadha
Important
Seen
Media
" When you're told that as a filmmaker of colour, the stories you want to tell aren't commercial enough, then you start thinking, 'I'm going to tell them anyway.' "
Gurinder Chadha
You
Enough
Start
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Day
Feel
People
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Change
Woman
I Am
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Award
Best
Speech
" I was a good Indian girl, but naughty in that I would often sneak out of the back door and into the garden and go off with my friends when I should have been at home cooking or cleaning. "
Gurinder Chadha
Good
Cooking
Door
" I'm absolutely delighted because I'm part of the process that has made Asians very much part of the mainstream fabric of Britain, whereas, when I first started, we were completely on the margin. "
Gurinder Chadha
Started
First
Because
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Falls
Hard
Human
" Third-generation Indians love maintaining their cultural traditions, but they can also go down the pub, shop till they drop, do whatever anyone else does. "
Gurinder Chadha
Traditions
Pub
Love
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Nothing
Find
Think
" 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? "
Gurinder Chadha
American
Great
People