Asif Kapadia, film director

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2019

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

Asif Kapadia is an Academy Award-winning film director, renowned for his documentaries about the musician Amy Winehouse, the Brazilian motor racing star Ayrton Senna, and the Argentinian footballer, Diego Maradona. Born in 1972, Asif is the youngest of five children. His parents emigrated from Gujarat in the mid-1960s. His father’s ambition to seek his fortune took the family to the US for a short time in the late 70s, but by 1980 they had returned to London. Asif grew up in Hackney, and describes his all-boys secondary school as tough. His mother was ill while he was taking his GCSEs, and he vowed never to sit exams again. At 17, he worked as a runner on a film and so enjoyed feeling part of a crew that he decided he wanted to make a career in the industry. He studied film at the Newport Film School, going on to the Polytechnic of Central London where his graduation film, Indian Tales, was highly regarded. His 1997 Royal College of Art graduation film, The Sheep Thief, shot in Rajasthan in the Hindi language, won a prize at Cannes. He made two feature films, The Warrior which won two Baftas, and Far North, which was filmed close to the North Pole. His first documentary was Senna, which was widely acclaimed and won two Baftas. Asif used the same collage technique - drawing on camcorder snippets, TV news, and entertainment specials – on Amy, his film about Amy Winehouse. It won an Oscar, a Bafta and a Grammy Award and surpassed Senna to become the highest grossing documentary of all time in the UK. His latest documentary is about the footballer Diego Maradona: he calls it “the third part of a trilogy about child geniuses and fame”. Asif is married to Victoria Harwood with whom he has two sons. DISC ONE: Tears Dry On Their Own by Amy Winehouse DISC TWO: Good Times by Chic DISC THREE: Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein by Lata Mangeshka And Mukesh DISC FOUR: Rebel Without a Pause by Public Enemy DISC FIVE: No Good (Start The Dance) by The Prodigy DISC SIX: Man With A Harmonica by Orchestra Ennio Morricone DISC SEVEN: A Morte by Antônio Pinto DISC EIGHT: Just by Radiohead BOOK CHOICE: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley LUXURY ITEM: A polaroid camera with film from the seventies CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Man With A Harmonica by Orchestra Ennio Morricone Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.7	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.4	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take
0:13.1	with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:15.9	For right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:20.0	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:30.3	Music Radio Music
0:41.5	My cast away this week is the director Asif Kapadia.
0:44.7	As a filmmaker, he is as unpredictable as he is passionate.
0:48.3	He broke through with an Indian epic based on a Japanese folk tale,
0:52.0	followed that up with a dark love story set in the Arctic,
0:55.2	a trilogy of award-winning documentaries followed.
0:57.9	The first about the life and death of motor racing legend Erten Senna
1:01.7	saw him credited with reinventing the form.
1:04.2	His portrait of Amy Winehouse won him an Oscar and his take on the Argentinian football star,
1:09.2	Diego Maradona, was recently released to critical acclaim.
1:12.8	Despite the apparently disparate nature of his work, there is a common thread,
1:17.1	an ongoing fascination without sideers and the cultures around them.
1:20.8	It took root when he was growing up in London's multicultural Stoke, Newington.
1:25.2	He says, the work is an excuse to spend time in different cultures.
1:28.9	Each film is almost like a degree. I just feel like I want to learn.
1:32.6	It's a gift to have the ability to create a world where you can tell stories from around the world.
	...

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