British Realist Filmmakers

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British Realist Filmmakers

• Ken Loach

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Table of Contents

• 1) Who is Ken Loach
• 2) Mimetic Realism and Referential Realism
• 3) Film Making Methods of Ken Loach

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Ken Loach

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

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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)

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Ken Loach at BBC

• Up the Junction (1968)
• Groundbreaking docudrama for its
• elliptical style.
• Incl. controversial issue (abortion)
• Cathy Come Home (1968)
• A docudrama about being homeless as a social
  problem

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Ken Loach at BBC

• 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 a care home.
  Cathy causes a trouble with the authorities.
  They are kicked out from the care home and
  eventually her children are forcibly taken away
  by social welfare officers.

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Ken Loach at BBC

• CREATION METHODS of Cathy Come Home
• Based on Jeremy Sanfords stories about
  homelessness partially published in newspapers
  and broadcasted 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 people with carefully chosen actors.
• Location shooting

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Feature Films of 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)

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Feature films of Ken Loach

• Kes (1969)
• Story of Billy Casper, a working class lad from
  Barnsley, alienated from school and with no
  prospect but working as a miner, finds a sense of
  personal achievement in teaching himself how to
  train and fly a kestrel.

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Feature films of Ken Loach

• Masterly study of working-class childhood in
  Northern England
• School children were found in Barnsley
• Dialogues almost entirely improvised as filming
  progressed

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Feature films of Ken Loach

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

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Feature films of Ken Loach

• Compare how high schools are represented and how
  the education systems are referred to in Peter
  Weirs Dead Poets Society (1989) and Ken Loachs
  Kes. Clip

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Feature films of 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

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Ken Loach in the 80s

• Loach in the 80s - a difficult decade with little
  work and miscalculated projects
• Questions of Leadership (never shown)
• Four part documentaries about trade union and
  trade unionism
• Fatherland (1986)
• About immigration in Europe

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Ken Loach

• I think Id lost my way a bit and lost
  touch with the kind of raw energy of the things
  wed done in the mid-sixties and with Kes. The
  films I was making werent incisive enough. I
  wasnt getting the right projects and I wasnt
  getting the right projects and I wasnt getting
  the right ideas. And so thats why I tried
  documentaries not long after the big political
  change occurred in Britain.
• Ken Loach

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Ken Loach in the 90s and after

• 1990s - A renaissance in his career
• Hidden Agenda (1990)
• A political thriller set in N. Ireland and
  about the British armys shoot-to-kill policy
• Riff-Raff (1991)
• A comic drama on workers in a building site,
  who are employed without proper insurance and
  employment protection.

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Ken Loach in the 90s and after

• Raining Stones (1993)
• About an unemployed Catholic who desperately
  tries to find money for his daughters
  Christening
• Ladybird, Ladybird (1994)
• About the difficult relationship between a
  working-class British woman and an Uruguayan
  refugee
• Land and Freedom (1995)
• Struggles inside the Republican fighters in
  Spanish Civil War

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Ken Loach in the 90s and after

• Carlas 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

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Ken Loach in the 90s and after

• Navigators (2001)
• Response to the privatization of the British
  Rail
• Sweet Sixteen (2002)
• About a Glaswegian single mother boy whose
  dream is to live with his mother in their own
  home when she comes out of prison.

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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 reflects
  the uncompromising and grim reality

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Ken Loach in the 90s and after

• 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 of the
  society
• Sense of location and reality of characters

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Mimetic realism and referential realism

• Mimesis copying the appearance of situations,
  events, people or objects.
• Referential make the viewer aware of the social
  issue, situation, events or people that really
  exist outside a film and it refers to as a
  referent.
• Referent a being that a sign refers to.

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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.

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Mimetic realism and referential realism

• Impact on the viewer / the viewers response
• Mimetic realism marvel and wonder
• Referential realism leave practical effects on
  viewers and raise their consciousness for the
  issues referred in the film

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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.
• Referential realism can change the reality which
  it refers to.

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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 colours
• Without detailed scripts or storyboards

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Filmmaking Methods of Ken Loach

• The thing about working with Ken is that you
  learn very, very quickly that he wants a very
  sensitive quiet camera that isnt going to impose
  a style on the actors or the script. It should
  quietly observe. Chris Menges

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Filmmaking Methods of Ken Loach

• Storyboard I find that very sterile. In a
  storyboard, you are stuck with what you draw. I
  would never do that. I think its very sterile
  and it works against the actors and against
  improvisation. Ken Loach

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Filmmaking Methods of Ken Loach

• Open-endedness - no simple resolution
• Un-idealized characterization
• Naturalistic acting (no make-up, no wardrobe, no
  cast trailer)
• Filming in continuity and in real locations

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Filmmaking Methods of Ken Loach

• Rather than selecting main characters because we
  might like or admire, the films described as
  realistic choose characters that are often
  difficult to like. Ken Loach on Ladybird,
  Ladybird
• The trouble with your films is that people
  might believe them. Look, we want actors to look
  like actors, we want it to be clear. Tony
  Garnett (BBC Manager)

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Filmmaking Methods of Ken Loach

• For the first scene of Bread and Roses which is
  set in the Mexican boarder, American crew
  objected to go to the actual boarder and
  suggested to shoot in a location which looks like
  the boarder
• Fake it? Why take any thing when we have the
  real thing? Ken Loach
• Ken wanted to shoot in continuity order, even if
  it meant moving in and out of locations 1st
  Assistant Director for Bread and Roses