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" 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
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" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" '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
" 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
Go
Way
Thought
" The fact that it's hard to create an original British musical doesn't mean you shouldn't try. "
Gurinder Chadha
Create
Hard
Mean
" 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 really thought I couldn't be a mum. We had tried several times with IVF,, and it hadn't worked and we'd given up in a way. We both thought, 'You know what, that's that. It's not going to happen - let's move on.' "
Gurinder Chadha
Move On
Going
Know
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Great
End Of The Day
Job
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Love
Film
Head
" 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
" The only time I used to feel like an outsider was when I first went to India. "
Gurinder Chadha
First
India
Like
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Feel
Want
Young
" My pregnancy was great, but the last three weeks were manic because my blood pressure was going up and up. "
Gurinder Chadha
Great
Up
Blood
" 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
" 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
" If you tell me I can't do something, that's the worst thing to tell me. And that's what I tell girls, and what Beckham's about: you can do it, you can do it better, and you can do it in the way you want. "
Gurinder Chadha
Better
Me
You Can Do It
" '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
" 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
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Director
You
Work
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Work
Kind
Power
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Early
People
Me
" 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. "
Gurinder Chadha
Look
Power
Saying
" Our films have the ability to tell global audiences who we are, and this is something the government should feel compelled to protect. My film, 'Bend it Like Beckham,' for example, would not have been made without the backing and support of the U.K. Film Council. "
Gurinder Chadha
Support
Feel
Film
" 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
" Bollywood is a cinema of vibrant contradictions, which works when it seems it shouldn't. "
Gurinder Chadha
Bollywood
Contradictions
Seems
" 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