"I’d have to include Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, a Jacques Tati movie, which I remember watching at my school when I was 17, and it was such a revelation for me as a movie, as a sort of a comedy tone and attitude which I’d never seen. Almost purely visual, for a start; no words. And like most people, in terms of comedy movies, I’d been brought up on British and American comedy movies, which tend to be fast moving, and they tend to be very verbal, with the exception of the Pink Panthers, actually. Of course, I could veer off into that in terms of the Peter Sellers… But it just had a fabulous comic tone and comic attitude which I’d never seen before, which is basically where you just sit back and watch people behaving in a slightly exaggerated way. And, again, if comedy is exaggerated truth, there it was again. It was the pace of it, the slow pace of it. That’s what was such an eye-opener for me, and taught me one thing, really, which is that comedy is not about pace. It’s about rhythm. Rhythm is what’s important, and the rhythm can be surprisingly slow and still funny. And even if you know the joke’s coming, even if you can hear the joke trundling just the other side of the horizon, and you know it’s going to come over the horizon, you can enjoy it as much as if it’s a surprise. And that was the insight that I feel I got from that."

"This is a compilation of Zakir playing different concerts, and it blew my mind when I was 16. Its one of the albums I've listened to 1000 times. It's bizarre that that would be something I'd listen to so many times, because it's so sparse - there's only the tabla and occasionally one other instrument, but never more than two at any one time. I once got to see him play with John McLaughlin, they really opened up my whole understanding of rhythm. I felt like my brain was getting bigger, it felt like I was learning about music. It's probably the most sophisticated rhythm I've heard from any country at any time, but it's not show-offy and designed to impress you technically. It has so much soul, it's such passionate music. Some people can't stand listening to it, but it's one of those albums that I could be in a terrible state but still happy to hear it. It relaxes me. That album really opened me up to listening to Ali Farka Touré, Indian classical musicians and so much more."

"This film has a certain kind of dynamic and rhythm that’s unique to Paolo Sorrentino as a director. It’s constantly a sensation, and there are some images in the film that I will never forget—for example, the facial expression of a nun when she’s climbing up the stairs. It’s really, really beautiful. It’s image porn when it comes to Rome, a city that I don’t like to be in that much but that I like to look at in films."

"Kiarostami has spooky power. The wind, the dust, passersby, stray sounds, even your attention—they all slow down and fall into his rhythm. He seems able to control everything inside and outside the frame, and it’s all poetry. Taste of Cherry was my introduction to him. It’s a very sad and beautiful film about life via death. I’ll think about the coda for a long time. I’m also a big fan of The Wind Will Carry Us, Where Is the Friend’s Home?, and Close-up."

"I read Beloved when it came out in 1987, and it was one of the most difficult books I've ever encountered. The rhythm of the writing, the cadence — it was like learning a new language where you're just banging your head against a wall. Then, after several chapters, a door opens and you're in. To me, the book is all emotion, a big morass of feeling. It's remarkable. What this woman goes through, what she believes she has to do is so horrific — you can't help but think, "How does she survive?"

"This is one idea, repeated, done in a simple palette of colour. So many records that I like are like that. I love putting it on in the background. It's like a tumbleweed in slow motion. It's stoic and sad. The rhythm of it is so beautiful. I loved the film when I was younger, too. It reminds me of weekend afternoons when I was a kid watching Westerns on TV, things like High Noon and The Searchers. [laughs] Remember that feeling? And that plangent Spanish guitar… this album feels intimate and epic all at the same time. 
"

"When I was in my early twenties, I worked as an usher at London’s National Film Theatre. They showed L’avventura with an earphone commentary instead of subtitles, but because I was working I couldn’t listen to the translation. Of course, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t understand a word of Italian—it blew me away regardless. The power of the compositions, the rhythm of the editing, the tone that is established from the opening frames. I decided for a while that if I was going to make films, they should all feel like Antonioni’s. I soon realized I wasn’t up to that challenge."