|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BiographyBorn in Nuneaton, England. His father was a factory electrician, Loach 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 started out 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. Loach, though, made his greatest impact in the medium through docu-dramas, notably the socially influential Cathy Come Home (1966). In the late 1960s he started directing films, and made Kes, the story of a troubled boy and his kestrel, based on the novel A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines. It remains perhaps his best known film in Britain Image:Cathycomehome.JPG Carol White as the title character in the 1966 BBC television play Cathy Come Home, one of Loach's most famous works.
However, the 1990s saw Loach return to form, with the production of a series of critically acclaimed and popular films. During this period he was also three times awarded prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. He directed the Courtroom Drama reconstructions in the Docu-film McLibel, about the longest trial in English history. In December 2003, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Birmingham. In November 2004, he was elected to the national council of the Respect coalition. Oxford University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in June 2005.[1] In May 2006, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship at the BAFTA TV Awards.
Loach lives with his family in Bath, England where he is a supporter and shareholder in Bath City F.C. Film styleLoach'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 appear 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. [2]. 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 in a scene, only some of the actors will know what is going to happen - the others will often be able to express genuine surprise shock or sadness because they really are hit with the events of the scene. Two examples: in Kes the boy actor, discovering the dead bird at the end, believed that the director had actually killed the bird 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 him as part payment. There are many other examples. Ken Loach is a strong opponent of censorship within films and he was outraged at the certificate given to Sweet Sixteen (it was given an 18). Loach himself said,
FilmographyTelevision
Cinema
|
Sites |
Searched sites for "Ken Loach" |
|
Results 1 - 1 of about 1 |
About Thumbshots thumbnails | | |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
