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.
Beeban Kidron
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.
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.
Cinema is arguably the 20th century's most influential art form.
Unfortunately, teatime in London is when people in Los Angeles arrive in their offices and pick up the phone.
The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.
The previous generation paved the way for my generation to gallop unheeded into jobs previously reserved for men.
I love text, I love email, I love Skype; I think it's amazing.
Parents cannot be in the same physical space as their children at all times.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't see such a huge difference between online and 'in real life'. I think it has now become one and the same.
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.
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.
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 are increasingly offered a diet in which sensation, not story, is king.
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.
Our politicians don't say anything anymore: they just refute and assert.
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.
The Greenham women left home for peace: 'Not in our name!' they cried. And in doing so, they spoke for millions.
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!
The film that changed my life is a 1951 film by Vittorio De Sica, 'Miracle in Milan.' It's a remarkable comment on slums, poverty and aspiration.
I like the accidental nature of being in the real world.
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.
During my 'difficult teens,' I read about worlds that were mysterious.
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?
I want to talk about privacy, the quality of the information you receive, whether it's neutral or commercial or pointed, bringing consciousness to the lack of neutrality in the algorithms.
From the moment I went to Hollywood for the first time, I was accused by various people of selling out. So I feel I've done my sell-out films already. I've sold everything! I've sold every piece of soul I ever had!
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.
I think it is a great gift to make people laugh, and it shouldn't be underestimated.
Making a big commercial movie is hard when you think about how many of them flop.
I hate it when everybody thinks I'm a... what's the word, a marauding mother! It's bigger than that.
If Twitter is worth seven billion next month, I'm happy for them to be worth six billion and spend a billion making it safer for people, for example.
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.
When politicians say, 'Oh, parents should supervise their kids' Internet use,' it drives me crazy.
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.'
I think I've been very, very lucky in my life, and I do believe in public service.
Life is really hard for some people.
Make films whenever and however you can - don't take no for an answer.
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.
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.
My children know not to shout before Mummy has warmed herself into something human with her coffee.
If we don't record our own history on the Net, it will disappear.
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.
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.'
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.
