British Realist Filmmakers Ken Loach

Table of Contents 1) Who is Ken Loach 2) Mimetic Realism and Referential Realism 3) Filmmaking Methods of Ken Loach

Ken Loach Our concept of reality is subjective, anyhow, and any reporting of actual events tends to dispense different values and interpretations. Ken Loach

Ken Loach Born in 1937 Entered BBC in 1963 as a trainee director Earliest directorial contributions - Z-Cars (BBC with Sir Hugh Greene as Director- General and Sydney Newman as Head of Drama) Launch of the Wednesday Play (Loach made six dramas for this slot)

Ken Loach Up the Junction (1968) Groundbreaking for its elliptical style Inclusion of a controversial issue (abortion) Cathy Come Home (1968) A docudrama about homelessness as a social problem

Ken Loach Cathy and Reg fall on hard times when Reg injures at work. The family slides into poverty, debt and homelessness. Cathy and her children are separated from Reg and admitted to care home. Cathy causes a trouble with the authorities. They are kicked out from the home and eventually her children are forcibly taken away by social welfare officers.

Ken Loach HIS CREATION METHODS Based on Jeremy Sanford’s stories about homelessness partially published in newspapers and on the radio. The first draft was a three-page outline backed up with press clippings, transcripts, tapes and notes. (Semi-) improvised acting and dialogue Mixing real faces with voices with those of his carefully chose actors. Location shooting

Ken Loach Poor Cow (1967) First feature film Scripted by Nell Dunn (Up the Junction) and starring Carol White (Cathy Come Home) Shot entirely on location in naturalistic and documentary style (transitional work)

Ken Loach Kes (1969) The story of Billy Casper, a working-class lad from Barnsley, alienated from school and the prospect of working in the coal mine, who finds a sense of personal achievement in learning to train and fly a kestrel

Ken Loach Masterly study of a working-class childhood in Northern England School children are found in Barnsley Dialogues almost entirely improvised as filming progresses

Ken Loach Entirely shot on location in Burnsley by Chris Menges, with great delicacy and sensitivity A narrative film with a real sense of place and character

Ken Loach Compare how the high schools are represented and how the education systems are referred to in Peter Weir’s Dead Poet’s Society (1989) and Ken Loach’s Kes.

Ken Loach Family Life (1971) Study of schizophrenia and medical inefficiency Radical political dramas for TV in the 70s The Rank and File (1971) About the strike of Pilkington glass workers Days of Hope (1975) About the politicization of a family around the time of the Great Strike in 1926

Ken Laoch Loach in the 80s Questions of Leadership (never shown) Four part documentaries about trade union and trade unionism Fatherland (1986) About immigration in Europe

Ken Loach I think I'd lost my way a bit - and lost touch with the kind of raw energy of the things we'd done in the mid-sixties and with Kes. The films I was making weren‘t incisive enough. I wasn’t getting the right projects and I wasn‘t getting the right ideas. And so that’s why I tried documentaries not long after the big political change occurred in Britain. Ken Loach

Ken Loach 1990s - A renaissance in his career Hidden Agenda (1990) A political thriller set in N. Ireland and about the British army’s shoot-to- kill policy Riff-Raff (1991) A comic drama on workers in a building site

Ken Loach Raining Stones (1993) About an unemployed Catholic who desperately tries to find money for his daughter’s Christening Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) About the difficult relationship between a working-class British woman and an Uruguayan refugee Land and Freedom (1995) About Spanish Civil War

Ken Loach Carla’s Song (1996) A love story between a Glaswegian bus driver and a Nicaraguan refugee. My Name Is Joe (1998) Drama about a reformed alcoholic trying to run a failing football team

Ken Loach Navigators (2001) Response to the privatization of British Rail Sweet Sixteen (2002) About a Glaswegian single mother boy whose mother is in prison.

Ken Loach Sweet Sixteen - a teenage boy resorts to drug dealing to gain money to escape the poverty of housing estate and start a new life with his drug addict mother. Shot around the council estates of Greenok in economically depressed Glasgow, the film re- flects the uncompromising and grim reality

Ken Loach The role of Liam is played by a non- professional Glaswegian youth, Martin Compston in naturalistic manners. Scripted by Glaswegian, Paul Laverty, who has a deep inside knowledge about Glasgow and its social problems. Keen ears to the local language. The hardships of people at the bottom Sense of location and reality of characters

Mimetic realism and referential realism Mimesis = copying the appearance of situations, events, people or objects. Referential = referring to actual situations, events, people or objects, which are outside a film.

Mimetic realism and referential realism In mimetic realism a film copies people, objects and events which exist or are likely to exist in reality, and presents to the spectator its verisimilitude or replica. In referential realism a film points the spectator's attention to people, objects and events which exist in reality.

Mimetic realism and referential realism Impact on the spectator / the spectator’s response: mimetic realism – marvel and wonder referential realism – left with practical effects, conscious raising for the issues referred in the film

Mimetic realism and referential realism ‘… the most effective drama on contemporary social and living conditions ever shown on BBC.’ Alan Rosenthal, The New Documentary in Action Cathy Come Home had more impact than any other drama of the decade Issue of homelessness debated in the parliament and Shelter was established. What referential realism is more likely to achieve

Filmmaking Methods of Ken Loach Avoiding generic narratives and formal virtuosity in favour of a plain visual style ‘Quiet shots’ – normal camera angles or compositions, normal 35-50mm lens, natural lighting, subdued colour Without storyboards

Filmmaking Methods of Ken Loach Open-endedness - no simple resolution Un-idealized characterization Naturalistic acting Filming in continuity and in real locations