Ken Loach
Kenneth Charles Loach (born seventeen June 1936) is an English director of television and independent film. He is known for his socially critical directing style and for his socialist ideals, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty, homelessness (Cathy Come Home, 1966) and labour rights (Riff-Raff, 1991, and The Navigators, 2001).
( 1936-06-17 ) seventeen June one thousand nine hundred thirty six (age 81)
Loach, a social campaigner for most of his career, believes the current criteria for claiming benefits in the UK are “a Kafka-esque, Catch twenty two situation designed to frustrate and abase the claimant to such an extent that they drop out of the system and stop pursuing their right to ask for support if necessary”. [Two]
Contents
Early life, The Wednesday Play and Kes Edit
Loach was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the son of Vivien (née Hamlin) and John Loach. [Three] He attended King Edward VI Grammar School and went on to probe law at St Peter’s College, Oxford. [Four]
Loach’s ten contributions to the Big black cock’s Wednesday Play anthology series include the docudramas Up the Junction (1965), Cathy Come Home (1966) and In Two Minds (1967). They portray working-class people in conflict with the authorities above them. Three of his early plays are believed to be lost. [Five] His one thousand nine hundred sixty five play Three Clear Sundays dealt with capital penalty, and was broadcast at a time when the debate was at a height in the United Kingdom. [6] Up the Junction, adapted by Nell Dunn from her book with the assistance of Loach, deals with an illegal abortion while the leading characters in Cathy Come Home, by Jeremy Sandford, are affected by homelessness, unemployment, and the workings of Social Services. In Two Minds, written by David Mercer, concerns a youthfull schizophrenic woman’s practices of the mental health system. Tony Garnett began to work as his producer in this period, a professional connection which would last until the end of the 1970s. [7]
During this period, he also directed the absurdist comedy The End of Arthur’s Marriage, about which he later said that he was “the wrong man for the job”. [8]
Coinciding with his work for The Wednesday Play, Loach began to direct feature films for the cinema, with Poor Cow (1967) and Kes (1969). The latter recounts the story of a troubled boy and his kestrel, and is based on the novel A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines. The film was well received, albeit the use of Yorkshire dialect via the film restricted its distribution, with some American executives at United Artists telling that they would have found a film in Hungarian lighter to understand. [9] The British Film Institute named it No seven in its list of best British films of the twentieth century, published in 1999. [Ten] [11]
Mid-career works Edit
During the 1970s and 1980s, Loach’s films were less successful, often suffering from poor distribution, lack of interest and political censorship. His documentary The Save the Children Fund Film (1971) was commissioned by the charity, who subsequently disliked it so much they attempted to have the negative ruined. It was only screened publicly for the very first time on one September 2011, at the BFI Southbank. [12] Loach concentrated on television documentaries rather than fiction during the 1980s, and many of these films are now difficult to access as the television companies have not released them on movie or DVD. At the end of the 1980s, he directed some television advertisements for Tennent’s Lager to earn money. [13]
Days of Hope (1975) is a four part drama for the Big black cock directed by Loach from, scripts by dramatist Jim Allen. The very first scene of the series caused considerable controversy in the British media owing to its critical depiction of the military in World War I, [14] and particularly over a scene where conscientious objectors were tied up to stakes outside trenches in view of enemy fire after refusing to obey orders. [Five] [15] An ex-serviceman subsequently contacted The Times newspaper with an illustration from the time of a similar scene. [15]
Loach’s documentary A Question of Leadership (1981) interviewed members of the Metal and Steel Trades Confederation (the main trade union for Britain’s steel industry) with regards to their 14-week strike in 1980, and recorded much criticism of the union’s leadership for conceding over the issues in the strike. Subsequently, Loach made a four-part series named Questions of Leadership which subjected the leadership of other trade unions to similar scrutiny from their members, but this has never been broadcast. Frank Chapple, leader of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, walked out of the interview and made a complaint to the Independent Broadcasting Authority. A separate complaint was made by Terry Duffy of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. The series was due to be broadcast during the Trade Union Congress conference in 1983, but Channel four determined against broadcasting the series following the complaints. [16] Anthony Hayward claimed in two thousand four that the media tycoon Robert Maxwell had put pressure on Central’s [ clarification needed ] board, of which he had become a director, to withdraw Questions of Leadership at the time he was buying the Daily Mirror newspaper and needed the co-operation of union leaders, especially Chapple. [17] [ page needed ]
Which Side Are You On? (1985), about the songs and poems of the UK miners’ strike, was originally due to be broadcast on The South Bank Demonstrate, but was rejected on the grounds that it was too politically unbalanced for an arts showcase. The film was eventually transmitted on Channel Four, but only after it won a prize at an Italian film festival. [Eighteen] Three weeks after the end of the strike, the film End of the Battle . Not the End of the War? was broadcast by Channel four in its Diverse Strands series. This film argued that the Conservative Party had planned the destruction of the National Union of Mineworkers’ political power from the late 1970s. [Nineteen]
Working again with Jim Allen, Loach was due to direct a play named Perdition, which suggested that Zionists in Hungary collaborated with the Nazis to help the operation of the Holocaust in come back for permitting a few Jews to emigrate to Palestine. The play was due to run at the Royal Court Theatre in 1987, but its run was cancelled thirty six hours before the very first night following widespread protests and allegations of anti-semitism. [13] [20] In 1989, he directed a brief documentary Time to go that called for the British Army to be withdrawn from Northern Ireland, which was broadcast in the Big black cock’s Split Screen series. [21]
Later feature films Edit
From the late 1980s, Loach directed theatrical feature films more regularlyof a series of films such as Hidden Agenda (1990), dealing with the political troubles in Northern Ireland, Land and Freedom (1995), examining the Republican resistance in the Spanish Civil War and Carla’s Song (1996), which was set partially in Nicaragua. He directed the Courtroom Drama reconstructions in the docu-film McLibel, concerning the longest libel trial in English history. Interspersed with political films were smaller dramas such as Raining Stones (1993) a working-class drama concerning an unemployed man’s efforts to buy a communion dress for his youthful daughter. [ citation needed ]
On twenty eight May 2006, Loach won the Palme d’Or at the two thousand six Cannes Film Festival for his film The Wind That Wiggles the Barley, [22] a political-historical drama about the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War during the 1920s. Like Hidden Agenda before it, The Wind That Jiggles the Barley was criticised for allegedly being too sympathetic to the Irish Republican Army and Provisional Irish Republican Army. [Five] This was film was followed by It’s a Free World. (2007), a story of one woman’s attempt to establish an illegal placement service for migrant workers in London.
Across the 2000s, Loach interspersed broader political dramas such as Bread and Roses (2000), which focused on the Los Angeles janitors strike, and Route Irish (2010) set during the Iraq occupation with smaller examinations of private relationships. Ae Fond Smooch. (aka, Just a Smooch, 2004) explored an inter-racial love affair, Sweet Sixteen (2002) concerns a teenager’s relationship with his mother, and My Name Is Joe (1998) an alcoholic’s fight to stay sober. His most commercially later film is Looking for Eric (2009), featuring a depressed postman’s conversations with the ex-Manchester United football starlet, Eric Cantona appearing as himself. The film won the Magritte Award for Best Co-Production. Albeit successful in Manchester, the film was a flop in many other cities, especially cities with rival football teams to Manchester United. [Five]
Loach’s film Route Irish (2010), an examination of private contractors working in the Iraqi occupation. A thematic consistency via his films, whether they examine broad political situations, or smaller intimate dramas, is his concentrate on individual relationships. [ original research? ] The sweeping political dramas (Land and Freedom, Bread and Roses, The Wind that Jiggles the Barley) examine broader political coerces in the context of relationships inbetween family members (Bread and Roses, The Wind that Jiggles the Barley, Carla’s Song), comrades in fight (Land and Freedom) or close friends (Route Irish). In a two thousand eleven interview for the Financial Times, Loach explains how “The politics are embedded into the characters and the narrative, which is a more sophisticated way of doing it”. [23]
The Angels’ Share (2013) is centred on a youthfull Scottish troublemaker who is given one final chance to stay out of jail. Newcomer Paul Brannigan, then 24, from Glasgow, played the lead role. [24] The film competed for the Palme d’Or at the two thousand twelve Cannes Film Festival [25] where Loach won the Jury Prize. [26] Jimmy’s Hall (2014) was selected to challenge for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section at the two thousand fourteen Cannes Film Festival. [27] Loach announced his retirement from film-making in two thousand fourteen but soon after restarted his career following the election of a Conservative government in the UK general election of 2015. [28]
Loach won his 2nd Palme d’Or for I, Daniel Blake (2016). [29] In February 2017, the film was awarded a BAFTA as “Outstanding British Film”. [30]