I'm drawn to making movies about contemporary life. The reason I choose institutions is because they provide a limit, a boundary.

I think my movies aren't sentimental. I think my movies are funny and sad and realistic. Not realistic in the sense that they're documentaries, but realistic in the sense that they're not idealistic, they're not optimistic, not pessimistic, and not propagandistic. They're an analysis of a situation. I call it as I see it, so to speak.

I think I have an obligation, to the people who have consented to be in the film, to make a film that is fair to their experience. The editing of my films is a long and selective process. I do feel that when I cut a sequence, I have an obligation to the people who are in it, to cut it so that it fairly represents what I felt was going on at the time, in the original event. I don't try and cut it to meet the standards of a producer or a network or a television show.

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

I think I've learned a lot about how to make movies, and particularly about how to edit movies by thinking about how similar problems are resolved in other forms. The issues in all forms are the same in an abstract sense, aren't they? Characterization, abstraction, metaphor, passage of time... Whether it's a movie, a novel, a play, or a poem, those issues exist. And each person resolves them differently.

It's rare in a documentary film that you have a repetitive act. So when you do, you can shoot it in different ways so that you have more choices when you're sitting down to edit that sequence six months later.

There's the internal rhythm within a sequence, and then there's the rhythm between the sequences, and that's extremely important in constructing the narrative. For example, you don't put two big dramatic scenes right next to each other. But you can use the rhythm of the transition shots; they can often serve a double purpose.