How did you find the Mary Fielding Home for the Active Elderly and the participants that you chose to follow throughout the film?

In a way this film chose me. I read an article about this old peoples’ home in The Guardian and went to visit it. It was immediately apparent that this was no ordinary residential home – the way the staff and residents interacted made it feel more like a hotel out of an Agatha Christie novel and talking to the residents, I realised that many of them had led impressively accomplished professional lives and were still very much part of their own wider community. My surprise at what I found revealed more about my own preconceptions of old age than anything else so my motivations for making the film were twofold: firstly I found many of these residents fascinating as people, their ideas and approaches to themselves and the world were forcefully and passionately held, but I also felt that if I could be so surprised and educated by meeting them then so could other people. Here was an opportunity to explore a very different view of old age than is normally presented on TV or in the cinema. And then learned that someone called Hetty Bower was about to go on a Peace March at the age of 101, so asked to meet her. And it was my meeting with Hetty that really did it - I couldn't leave it alone after that.

She and I spoke - well she mostly - for about 3 hours, telling me about her life and her late-husband Reg - the absolute love of her life - and her politics and her passions and then at the end of it all she stood up, looked me dead in the eye and said, "You do know I want to die don't you?".  Well no one had ever said that to me before and it's kind of awkward especially when you've only just met them. The automatic reaction is to smile a lot, tell them they still seem so young / can't possibly mean it - anything to avoid taking them seriously.  But I knew in that moment that none of that was an option with Hetty; she did want to die, she still does. She's tired, she has had enough and I later discovered that Rose also felt the same way. But it was the inherent contradiction between this very real desire and their insatiable lust for life that I found so compelling and what drew me particularly to them.

Over the next few months I met lots of the other residents too, many of whom have lived impressively accomplished lives and were really interesting and articulate people but in story terms there was something in the connection between Hetty, Rose and Alison - who came to live at the Guild because of Hetty. And in the contrast between the three of them as characters; Hetty the campaigner, Rose the philosopher and Alison who is a wonderfully phlegmatic and direct personality as well as being incredibly witty and although a self-confessed "show-off" is actually entirely herself on camera.

 The General Manager and the committee who run the home took a very brave decision in agreeing to go ahead with the project – I had no money, no commission just a statement of intent and a desire to get to know the place and to earn the trust of the people there and see what emerged. My instincts told me that if I could be affected so strongly by my first impressions then an audience would be too and what is fantastic is that the audiences who have seen it so far seem to agree.

What was it that most inspired you whilst exploring the subject of your film and the lives of your characters/contributors?

Spending time at the Guild profoundly challenged my preconceptions of what it is to be 'old' - the very fact that I was surprised by the people I met there said at least as much about my own preconceptions as it did about the people themselves. I think what struck me most is the deep sense of confidence they have in who they are as individuals.  Maybe this is just me but somehow I'd always assumed that because society has changed so radically, particularly in the last 15 years since the arrival of the internet and digital technology, that the whole psychology of modern life must be incredibly alienating if not a bit weird to anyone in their eighties or more and that it isn't surprising if people of that age feel excluded or isolated these days.

But what the residents - and staff - at the Guild have allowed me to understand is that if you've been alive for 80, 90 or 100 years, your sense of who you are is so deep and so profound that you don’t really care if you say something stupid or mind what someone else might think of you, as long as you're yourself. You know we're all so obsessed with climbing ladders and steaming past the next milestone but if you don't want to climb ladders anymore, you don't have to convince anyone you can, you can just relax and be yourself.

That's what's been most valuable for me, to gain some insight into that quieter, more fundamental way of being in the world, which I think is what underpins their capacity to be so incredibly honest about the really big things in life - like death.

As the film does explore the thoughts and perceptions of central participants/characters there is inevitably a strong interview aspect of the film, but there was also some interesting, subtly experiential visual touches like the inquisitive roving close-up shots of them reading and utilising a magnifying glass – did you anticipate these things or was it a case of capturing what happened during your time with them at the Home for the Active Elderly?

It was always really important to me to not just introduce or present these people to the audience but to allow the audience to experience the world from their point of view, to really begin to feel what it might be like to be them at this age. And part of that psychological engagement was bringing the viewer closer to their sensory experience of the world, to the everyday, intensely subjective, perceptual details of their lives. Many of the residents have failing sight or are hard of hearing and the three central characters are all registered either blind or partially sighted and are very deaf - which is easy to forget when you see Hetty storming off down Whitehall through a crowd of people. So the magnifying lens type footage - and a lot of the sound treatment - is a way of just reminding us occasionally that not only is so much of their experience mediated by physical things like hearing aids and magnifying glasses but that that affects how they interact with and how they are in the world. I know this 'cos I'm partially-sighted myself so I have some sense of how shifted my own perspective is. I'm sure this is why I'm so instinctively attracted to certain kinds of framing and light play too, I'm always experimenting with lenses but it does have to be justified within the conceptual framework of the film. Interestingly though, I don't think it's the optical, quasi-POV stuff that is the most subjective material. For me it's the interview material which really draws you in, and especially the pauses. I think we dismiss or de-value the talking head far too readily. It became fashionable in the 90s and I think it's back again. But in this film we're getting to know people at a particular time in their life - how can you not look at someone's eyes when at 101 they try to define the afterlife or tell you how they feel about war? - it's only in their face that you see the real history behind what they say.

What has been the journey of the film since its completion in terms of festivals, markets and seeking an audience and are theatrical screenings an important part of your strategy?

The film premiered at Sheffield DocFest where it was really well received. Since then it's played at South by Southwest in Austin, the Pompidou Centre where it was in competition at Cinéma du Réel and the Bird's Eye View festival in London and is going to be screening at The Queen's in Belfast next month, the Showroom in Sheffield and in Belgrade. And we're also talking to buyers in Germany, France, the Netherlands and the US.

The theatrical screenings that I've been present at have been a real treat because the film always provokes a strong reaction from the audience. And on 2 occasions, Hetty (who's now 103) and Alison (89) have done a Q&A afterwards and have enthralled people because they are still so engaged and involved with what's going on in the world - politically, socially and philosophically.

But we won't be doing a theatrical push ourselves because we simply don't have the resources. l just want the film to find as big an audience as possible whether it's theatrical or TV.