As a performer, I'm constantly fascinated with the idea of being able to know what anybody else's experience is, and how misleading all informatives, like appearance, can be.

I think that's true of all cinema, that's why cinema is the great humanistic art form. Whatever the film is, it doesn't matter what the film is about, or even whether it's a narrative or figurative film at all, it's an invitation to step into somebody else's shoes. Even if it's the filmmaker's shoes filming a landscape, you go into somebody else's shoes and you look out of their lens, you look out of their eyes and their imagination. That's what going to the pictures is all about.

There are many graphic artists who have interpreted The Ancient One as a Tibetan Buddhist Lama, we're kind of shifting that a bit. We're trying not to be fixed, we're trying not to be fixed to any one thing, any one gender, any one spiritual discipline, and any one race even; we're just trying to wing it beyond that. So it's a new gesture really, just another interpretation.

There's a thing I really mind hearing, when someone says: "That's not my kind of film, I don't want to go and see that..." I don't believe that, I don't believe that it's possible to write off a whole genre of filmmaking - "oh I don't like subtitled films", or "I don't like black and white films", or I don't like films made before or after, a certain date" - I don't believe that.

There's an alarm bell that goes off in my head if I can sense that I'm making a mistake.

I think that film festivals, we're very often given to understand, are about filmmakers and about films and about the industry of filmmaking. I don't believe that they are, I believe that film festivals are about film audiences, and about giving an audience the encouragement to feel really empowered and to stretch the elastic of their taste.

The people I'm working with tend to be people I know, who are my friends, and I like hanging out with them. There's nothing better than making a long-term project with your friends. It's just dreamy.