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?
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.
Everything a teenager does, says or looks at, however transitory, contributes to an aggregated virtual self that might one day have consequences for its real-life counterpart. How many of us would keep all our relationships and reputations intact if every transgression, mistake or youthful folly was held in public view?
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.
Girls from poor families of the 'untouchable,' or lower, caste are 'married' to Yellamma as young as four. No longer allowed to marry a mortal, they are expected to bestow their entire lives to the service of the goddess.
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!
Whether in cave paintings or the latest uses of the Internet, human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.
I once gave a talk at a girls' school and, once I'd finished, 29 out of the 30 girls wanted to be film directors. I think that's where we need to get girls interested in making films. We need to give them the idea that they can, that it's one of the things on their horizon.
The previous generation paved the way for my generation to gallop unheeded into jobs previously reserved for men.
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.
A white woman with a camera in the Devadasi belt of Karnataka is not inconspicuous... it took time for these women to believe that I was not an official, carrying the threat of fine and imprisonment.
For me, trying to articulate the world to help people see it in a way they haven't seen it before is hugely important. Sometimes, you have to take something that is completely inexplicable and say, 'Look, here is the beating heart of something you must understand.'
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.
Arguably, it was the introduction of international non-proliferation treaties in the late '80s that finally led to the missiles being removed from Greenham Common.
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.
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.
Our politicians don't say anything anymore: they just refute and assert.
When politicians say, 'Oh, parents should supervise their kids' Internet use,' it drives me crazy.
I hope that every film I make has something to offer in the area of making people feel either vindicated or different in terms of who they are.
