I think people think of auteurs as being a dictator shouting over everyone about his vision. That's not the way I think of auteurs or the way I work.
What the Labour movement is about is a broad mass of people actively engaged in a democratic process.
You've only got to look at a film to see that it has to be collaborative - the images, the performances and all the art direction and the costume, everything shrieks collaboration.
It's a great privilege to make a film, to have it shown, and for people to see it.
It's what people have always done. They have always told stories, put on plays. It's characters and narrative and thought and context and resolution so you reflect the way the world is in some way. It comes out of experience. I think it's OK to do that.
We made 'The Wind That Shakes the Barley' about the war of independence and the civil war, which were the pivotal moments of Irish history, really. 'Jimmy's Hall' would seem to be a smaller story 10 years later.
All politicians will say they celebrate the NHS, but to a greater or lesser extent, they've all undermined it.
When I was young, you were told that if you had a skill, you would find a job for life and you could bring up a family on the wage.
As a medium, film has great potential, but its use is dominated by big capital.
The job of the director is to make certain that the film has one voice and a sense of a single vision, even though it's produced by a large number of people making contributions - to turn all those contributions from individual voices into one coherent one.
If you're a politician, you can see there might be times when, to secure the greater good, you have to take a backwards step. That is a matter of tactics.
There has been no more principled opposition to racism than Jeremy Corbyn: he was getting arrested for protesting against Apartheid when the rest of them were doing deals and calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
You always feel a degree of insecurity about getting through a film.
My mum was a peacemaker, and in personal things I tend to do that, because I can't deal with personal conflict. I find that horrible.
Well, I think by and large, certainly in terms of cinema, American culture dominates our cinema, mainly in the films that are shown in the multiplexes but also in the way that it has a magnetic effect on British films.
It seems to me the big weakness in most films is the writing. You can learn directing, but you can't learn writing.
Because I've been around a long time I get a bit of leeway that other people don't.
Film can do lots of things: It can produce alternative ideas, ask questions, just record the reality of what's happening, it can analyze what's happening. Of course, most commercial films are controlled by big corporations who have an interest in not doing those films.
I was stage-struck from an early age. I just loved the language. We lived quite near Stratford so I would cycle and watch the plays.
Churchill the right-winger has been elevated to a status where you can't criticise him. People from the time remember him as an imperialist, a hard-right politician, very instrumental in the oppression of Ireland and the attempt to defeat the general strike.
