Kim Longinotto is a documentary film-maker. Her last film, Divorce Iranian Style, was screened on Channel Four last August. It follows three ordinary Iranian women who attend the Family Law Courts in central Tehran. She is now editing Fighting Women, a film which tells of the GAEA; young women wrestlers in Japan, who leave their homes to train as professional fighters. It will be shown on BBC TV later this year. Mel Taylor talked to Kim about the art of documentary filmmaking.

After graduating from university, Kim planned to do a Ph.D. on 'the modern novel'. I asked her how she ended up making documentaries: "One summer I did a job 'storytelling' for Lambeth Council. It was really good fun - we went round all the parks in a van, with a mike, and told people stories." The idea was that they would come up afterwards, and ask which library they could get the book from. But they never did. "Everyone wanted the stories, but no-one wanted to read the book."

It was a recognition of this shift from books to film, that inspired Kim take up a course in Bristol, where she made her first film. She then studied documentary film-making at the National Film and Television School. "I always wanted to do documentary... I like the way you can discover something... you have to be very open... often things happen that you couldn't imagine would happen. In fiction I would feel very limited by the script."

Several of Kim's films are about women in Japan. The first, Eat the Kimono (1990), is a documentary about Havavagi Genshu, a Japanese feminist and avant-garde performer. She is (in)famous for her denunciation of Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal, and for her opposition to the hierarchical 'Iemoto theatre system' - in which status and power can only be gained by birthright or money. As a result, Genshu has been the subject of death-threats from right-wing groups. I asked Kim how, since she is based in London, she came to make this film.

"It starts from quite a small thing. I read an article in a newspaper about Genshu. She is part of a low class of people called the 'travelling players' - and was imprisoned for stabbing the head of a famous theatre school. I asked a friend of mine, Jano, who lives in Japan, to see if she could get in contact with her. It was difficult, as Genshu was hiding from the right-wing, and lots of Jano's friends told her 'she's mad, she'll stab you, she's a vicious women'. She had a bad reputation, but she and Jano got on immediately."

All of Kim's documentaries were made with a crew of three women. Given that the films are about women, I asked her if she thought that an all-women crew was important: "There are situations where it obviously couldn't have worked any other way - like the Iranian film [Divorce Iranian Style]. We couldn't have done it with a man in the crew - it would have been ridiculous. Often it's been essential, but other times, for example the film about the 'onnabe' [Shinjuku Boys (1995)] - who are women who live as men - I think they would have quite liked a man on the crew."