Mike Leigh: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5410197415090549238&postID=6046922960727281363

And it all informs what happens. So it begins to do what it seems to me the job is. Which is, putting it at its crudest, to reproduce the real world with some kind of semblance of reality.
And not only that, but in looking at it and deciding how to shoot it and what it is I'm trying to say, I actually understand that world. I actually have taken the time and the patience and gone through the pain of the research to know what it is that we're dealing with. I suspect that it boils to no more than that in the end. If you look at any of the great films from around the world -- whether you look at Bunuel's "Los Olvidados," showing those kids on the streets, or at one of Ozu's family dramas. . . There's no question whether these guys know what they're filming. They know the world, they know the culture, they know who the people are. This other style you're talking about is people making films in a culturally and professionally, infantile, naive and ultimately presumptious way.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tLW3PWiAnhIC&dq=mike+leigh+style&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=Vgs9SsqqGIOUjAeyjbkN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=14
quote - my films aspire to the condition of documentary. If you are a newsreel cameraman and you go and shoot a real event you know that the world exists whether in film or not.
this could suggest that Mike is saying that the hollywood films hide away from real life