With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories.
My main trick is to work with amazing people. It's a long and twisty journey, and you need people that really are amazing and have this rare gift of honesty and courage and really open up.
Some documentaries are made by people who are driven more by one particular story, or have different backgrounds or ambitions, but I'm always looking for projects that let me be the best filmmaker I can be, and to be stretched and grow further.
I think we have become oversaturated with tired fictional narratives.
I've always been a fiction filmmaker and I've been heading in the direction of fiction filmmaking, doing documentaries along the way.
I don't believe in objectivity. I observe the observer's paradox every moment I'm filming. Your presence is changing everything; there's no mistaking it. And you have a responsibility.
I can't help seeing 'Waste Land' as the third in a triptych with my earlier films 'Devil's Playground' and 'Blindsight,' and not least in the awe and gratitude I feel for the group of people who were courageous enough to share their stories with us -...
I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved.
I don't know if people realize how hard I work, because sometimes people ask me for my secret. The truth is that I don't have any secrets apart from the fact that I've been directing theater and film for twenty years and trying at every stage to make...
The world of extreme sports is also one of big business. Kids might think that snowboarding is the ultimate freedom, but this freedom is being marketed to them by commercial sponsors.
I love making fiction films as well as nonfiction ones, and hope to keep challenging myself to make better and better work.
I am so picky about what films I get myself into because it's such an explosion of energy and commitment once you get in there, you destroy your life until you deliver these films. I never want to be in the position of making films that won't be a gr...
I love great locations in movies, and I couldn't believe I'd never seen a landfill on screen before. It was the most haunting place.
I'm riveted by extreme sports like big-wave surfing, 'megaramp' skateboarding and half-pipe snowboarding. I'm fascinated partly because the sports are so exhilaratingly acrobatic. But I'm also captivated by the fear that a terrible accident might hap...
I find titles the hardest thing. I was worried that 'Waste Land' was too much of a downer. For me, 'The Crash Reel' confronts what the film is about: it's not just about the reality of a crash, it's about the extremity we all face, and what happens w...
I love my work, apart from when it's driving me crazy. But I get to be interested in stuff and think like a filmmaker as I'm buzzing about the world and then see an opportunity to make a film, and then make it happen.
Extreme sports tricks are becoming increasingly complex, the courses ever more challenging and crashes all too common.
There are still people who have an issue working with a woman director. Women can be viewed as 'difficult' even though they work in the same way as men.
I have always been interested in garbage: What it says about us. What in there embarrasses us, and what we can't bear to part with. Where it goes and how much of it there is. How it endures. What it might be like to work with it every day.
The world needs more women filmmakers, so we have to keep encouraging ourselves and one another, and eventually things must get easier for us.
