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Ken Loach

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Ken Loach
Born Kenneth Loach
17 June 1936 (1936-06-17) (age 73)
Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England
Years active 1962 - present

Kenneth "Ken" Loach (born 17 June 1936) is an English film and television director. He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness (Cathy Come Home) and labour rights (Riff-Raff).

Contents

Biography

Early life and career

Loach was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the son of Vivien (née Hamlin) and John Loach.[1] He attended King Edward VI Grammar School and following two years in the RAF read law at St Peter's College, Oxford. There he performed in the now well established comedy group, the Oxford Revue. He initially worked as an actor in repertory theatre, but in the early 1960s moved into television direction and was credited in this role on early episodes of Z-Cars in 1962.

In 1966, Loach made the influential docu-drama Cathy Come Home portraying working class people affected by homelessness and unemployment, and presenting a powerful and influential critique of the workings of the Social Services. Soon afterwards with Poor Cow (1967) he started directing films for the cinema, and in 1969 made Kes, the story of a troubled boy and his kestrel, based on the novel A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines. It probably remains his best known film in Britain.

During the 1970s and '80s, Loach's films were less successful, often suffering from poor distribution, lack of interest and political censorship. His film The Save the Children Fund Film (1971) was commissioned by the charity, who subsequently disliked it so much they attempted to have the negative destroyed. It has never been shown in public.

Loach was later commissioned by Channel 4 to make A Question of Leadership, a documentary series on the response of the British trade union movement to the challenge posed by the policies of the Thatcher government. However, the programme was not broadcast by Channel 4, a decision Loach claimed was politically motivated. Another film, "Which Side Are You On?" (1984) relating to the UK miners' strike, was commissioned by The South Bank Show, but also withdrawn before transmission.

However, the 1990s saw the production of a series of critically acclaimed and popular films. During this period he was also awarded prizes at the Cannes Film Festival on three occasions. He directed the Courtroom Drama reconstructions in the Docu-film McLibel, concerning the longest libel trial in English history which became a promotional disaster for the fast food chain.

On 28 May 2006, Loach won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a movie about the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War during the 1920s. Loach lives with his family in Bath, England where he is a supporter of and shareholder in Bath City F.C.

Film style

Loach's film work is characterised by a particular view of realism; he strives in every area of filmmaking to emphasise genuine interplay between actors, to the point where some scenes in his films are unscripted. Rather than employing method actors, he prefers unknown talent who have had some of the actual life experience of the characters they portray - so much so that many professional actors aspiring to work with Loach will often pretend to be actual construction labourers or other working class types called for in his script.

For Bread and Roses, he chose two leading actors who had experience of union organizing and life as an immigrant. The lead actress in the film, Pilar Padilla, actually had to learn English in order to play the part.

He tries to make sure that actors express as genuinely as possible the feelings of their characters by filming the story in order and, crucially, not giving the actors the script until a few minutes before the filming. Frequently only some of the actors will know what is going to happen in a scene - the others will often, therefore, be able to express genuine surprise or sadness because they really are affected by the events of the scene. In Kes the boy actor, discovering the dead bird at the end, believed that the director had actually killed the bird that he had become quite close to during the filming (in fact he had used a dead bird found elsewhere). In Raining Stones one of the actresses visited at her house by a loan shark had no idea that he was going to force her to take off her wedding ring and give it to him as part payment.

Ken Loach is a strong opponent of censorship within cinema and was outraged at the 18 certificate given to Sweet Sixteen. Loach himself said,

“ I think it was a very silly decision, such a patronising attitude as well. People are rarely hurt by swear words, yet you see scenes of violence depicted in films often with a 12 certificate. Some of these films have violence for the sake of it, try and push the certification boundaries. I think in my films that the violence is necessary to portray realism, it’s important to the narrative. And yes, it does put a smokescreen on society because it uses violence as a source of entertainment rather than its actual meaning. ”

Political activities

A member of the Labour Party from the early 1960s, he left in the mid-1990s.[2] In November 2004, he was elected to the national council of the Respect Coalition[2] and has also stood for election to the European Parliament on a Respect mandate. He is a supporter of the Socialist Resistance organisation.

In 2007, Loach was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism and the South West Asian, North African Bay Area Queers (SWANABAQ) and calling on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honour calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film festival and not cosponsoring events with the Israeli consulate."[3][4] Loach also joined "54 international figures in the literary and cultural fields" in signing a letter that stated, in part, "celebrating 'Israel at 60' is tantamount to dancing on Palestinian graves to the haunting tune of lingering dispossession and multi-faceted injustice". The letter was published in the International Herald Tribune on 8 May 2008.".[5]

Responding to a report, which he described as "a red herring", on the growth of Antisemitism since the beginning of the crisis in Gaza, he has said: "If there has been a rise I am not surprised. In fact, it is perfectly understandable because Israel feeds feelings of anti-Semitism." He added "no-one can condone violence".[6]

In May 2009, organizers of the Edinburgh International Film Festival returned a grant from the Israeli Embassy after speaking with Ken Loach. The director proposed a boycott of the festival if the £300 grant, which was intended to enable Tali Shalom Ezer, a graduate of Tel Aviv University, to travel to Scotland for a screening of her film Surrogate, was accepted. In response, former Channel 4 chief executive Sir Jeremy Isaacs said: "Ken Loach has always been critical of censorship of his own work, albeit it was many years in the past. The idea that he should lend himself to the denial of a film-maker's right to show her work is absolutely appalling." Describing Loach's intervention as an act of censorship, he said: "They must not allow someone who has no real position, no rock to stand on, to interfere with their programming." Later, a spokesman for the EIFF said that although it had returned £300 to the Israeli Embassy, the festival itself would fund Ms. Shalom-Ezer's travel to Edinburgh out of its own budget.[7][8][9] In an open letter to Tali Shalom Ezer, Ken Loach wrote "To be crystal clear: as a film maker you will receive a warm welcome in Edinburgh. You are not censored or rejected."[10] To his critics, he added later: "The boycott, as anyone who takes the trouble to investigate knows, is aimed at the Israeli state."[11] Loach said he had a "respectful and reasoned" conversation with event organizers, saying they should not be accepting funds from Israel.[11]

In June 2009, Loach attempted the same tactic with the Melbourne International Film Festival, where the Israeli Embassy in Canberra is a sponsor the visit of Tatia Rosenthal, the director of $9.99, a stop-motion animation based on the short stories of award-winning Israeli author Etgar Keret but the festival declined.[12] The festival's chief executive, Richard Moore, refused to comply and compared Loach's tactics to blackmail. Australian lawmaker Michael Danby sharply criticized Loach's tactics, stating that "Israelis and Australians have always had a lot in common, including contempt for the irritating British penchant for claiming cultural superiority. Melbourne is a very different place to Londonistan."[13]

Loach has also expressed strong support for Chechen independence from Russia.[14]

Honours

Loach turned down an OBE in 1977. In a Radio Times interview, published in March 2001, he said: "It's all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest."[15]

In December 2003, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Birmingham. Oxford University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in June 2005. He is also an honorary fellow of his alma mater, St Peter's College, Oxford.[16] In May 2006, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship at the BAFTA TV Awards.

Filmography

Television

  • Z Cars (series, 1962)
  • Diary of a Young Man (1964)
  • 3 Clear Sundays (1965)
  • Up the Junction (1965)
  • The End of Arthur's Marriage (1965)
  • Coming Out Party (1965)
  • Cathy Come Home (1966) (as Kenneth Loach)
  • In Two Minds (1967)
  • The Golden Vision (1968)
  • The Big Flame (1969)
  • The Rank and the File (1971) - part of the Play for Today series.
  • After a Lifetime (1971)
  • A Misfortune (1973)
  • Days of Hope (mini-series, 1975)
  • The Price of Coal (1977)
  • Auditions (1980)
  • A Question of Leadership (1981)
  • The Red and the Blue: Impressions of Two Political Conferences - Autumn 1982 (1983)
  • Questions of Leadership (1983)
  • The View From the Woodpile (1989)

Cinema

References

  1. ^ Ken Loach Biography (1936-)
  2. ^ a b Amy Raphael "The great crusader", New Statesman, 20 September 2007
  3. ^ Matthew S. Bajko "Political Notebook: Queer activists reel over Israel, Frameline ties", Bay Area Reporter, 17 May 2007.
  4. ^ "San Francisco Queers Say No Pride in Apartheid", The Electronic Intifada, 29 May 2007.
  5. ^ "60 Years of Palestinian Dispossession . . . No Reason to Celebrate 'Israel at 60'!", Mr Zine (Monthly Review Press) website, 17 May 2008.
  6. ^ "EU-wide rise in anti-Semitism described as 'understandable'", EU Politics News, 4 March 2009
  7. ^ Edinburgh film festival bows to pressure from Ken Loach over Israeli boycott [1], The Times], 20 may 2009
  8. ^ Loach pressure sways Edinburgh festival[2] Digital Spy, 20 May 2009.
  9. ^ Edinburgh film festival refuses Israeli grant due to pressure by Ken Loach[3] Haaretz, 20 May 2009.
  10. ^ Ahmad, Muhammad. Ken Loach responds to critics, pulsemedia.org, May 26, 2009.
  11. ^ a b Ahmad, Muhammad. 'Enough is Enough', say Ken Loach and Ilan Pappe, pulsemedia.org, June 18, 2009.
  12. ^ Hawker, Philippa. Israeli funding angers filmmaker The Age. July 18, 2009.
  13. ^ British director withdraws festival film, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), July 19, 2009.
  14. ^ Ken Loach and others "Letter: Chechnya needs a fair political settlement", The Guardian, 23 February 2009.
  15. ^ "Director Loach slams TV news", BBC News, 13 March 2001.
  16. ^ Biography on Ken Loach's website.

External links

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v • d • e
The work of Ken Loach
1960s
Cathy Come Home (1966) · Poor Cow (1967) · Kes (1969)
1970s
1980s
The Gamekeeper (1980) · Looks and Smiles (1981) · Which Side Are You On? (1984) · Fatherland (1986)
1990s
Hidden Agenda (1990) · Riff-Raff (1991) · Raining Stones (1993) · Ladybird Ladybird (1994) · Land and Freedom (1995) · A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership (1995) · Carla's Song (1996) · The Flickening Flame (1997) · McLibel (first version, 1997) · My Name Is Joe (1998)
2000s
Bread and Roses (2000) · The Navigators (2001) · Sweet Sixteen (2002) · Ae Fond Kiss... (2004) · Tickets (2005) · McLibel (second version, 2005) · The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) · It's a Free World... (2007) · Looking for Eric (2009)
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