We think that there is this terrible idea that the kids are digital natives… and they know what they’re doing, but all the evidence says that they’re hanging around going, ‘Where are you, I’m here, can I post my picture?’ They’re not actually writing wikis; they’re not actually listening to great poets live.
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.
We need to work out who is paying for film; in the U.K., it is increasingly difficult to get production funds – and pre-sales demand more and more shot/cut material.
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.
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.
There’s something about actors – not stars, but actors – if they have the character, and someone is pushing and shoving them to be the best they can be, they enjoy that.
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.
The Internet has crept up on us, and we need to know what it is and start looking at it. We have to decide which bits we want, which bits we don’t, and how we’re going to use them – and how we’re going to put pressure on the people who deliver these goods to deliver what we really want.
The idea of the Internet as sort of open and democratic and free and with no hierarchy, the libertarian beginnings as it were, with peer-to-peer networks… I’d sort of like for everyone to just admit that we’re beyond that now.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.’
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?