Quotes from Beeban Kidron

Each January, nearly half a million people visit the small town of Saundatti for ajatre or festival, to be blessed by Yellamma, the Hindu goddess of fertility.

I've walked down the street with Madonna, and I've walked down the street with Colin Firth, and it was a little bit more... with Madonna they were a little rougher, but they were all there for Colin. It was amazing. Women adore him. They swoon.

At 99 and after a long stay in a nursing home, the death of legendary photographer Eve Arnold was hardly a surprise - though she may have been just a little annoyed to quit a few months short of 100.

I'm in the communications business.

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.

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?

When I was 13, I had a weekend job at the Photographers Gallery Bookshop in London.

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.'

When politicians say, 'Oh, parents should supervise their kids' Internet use,' it drives me crazy.

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.

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.

We need to be much more robust consumers.

I had a sort of classic moment when a friend of mine rang up and said she'd just been to a funeral, and in the middle of the eulogy, this kid had taken out the phone and had a whole proper text conversation - while everyone was weeping!

What is the point of teaching how to analyse a poem or a piece of Shakespeare but not to analyse the Internet?

I've discovered my Jewishness late in life. And I've really enjoyed exploring that world.

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.

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.

For most women, Greenham was a place of principle, growth and song. Often joyful, sometimes terrifying, and almost always cold. As it got harder, with constant evictions and mounting violence from a frustrated and humiliated police force, the women got more determined. It was a community with a shared purpose - to live in peace.

I think I've been very, very lucky in my life, and I do believe in public service.

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.

Making a big commercial movie is hard when you think about how many of them flop.

I come from the school who thought the Internet could be the great democratising force, that getting rid of the gatekeepers was a positive move.

People have a right to have their lives witnessed; if we coexist with the systems that abuse people, then we have a duty to understand.

Vittorio De Sica famously made 'Bicycle Thieves'; that's the film of his everybody knows.