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events extra
rays of hope
Surrounded by many fine collab- orators, director Ken Loach has, for more than 40 years, been responsible for some of this country’s most powerful and contro- versial film and television. From Up The Junction and Cathy Come Home, through Kes, The Rank And File, Days of Hope, Riff Raff, Raining Stones, Hidden Agenda, Land And Freedom, My Name Is Joe, The Navigators and Sweet Sixteen, Loach, now 65, has remained a uniquely independent voice.
Introducing the Academy’s third David Lean Lecture, deliv- ered this year by Loach, deputy chairman Simon Relph told a packed audience: “Over so many years he’s told us com- pelling stories about the lives of ordinary people, compassionate, entertaining stories, profoundly moving, both on a personal and a political level. Stories full of humour which so often move you to tears. Rarely do film directors go on producing consistently fine work over such a long period.” The following are edited extracts:
The only point in looking to the past is to try and understand the
was trying to think why that was, what were the elements of that experience that were so important?
And I came to the conclusion that one crucial point in what happened at the BBC during that period was that the writer was held in high respect. With the series that I was lucky enough to work on, starting with Z Cars, the writer was the king. That’s to David Rose’s credit and those who worked on the programme. The writing on Z Cars was absolutely innovative and brilliant - that was down to Troy Kennedy Martin, John McGrath, John Hopkins, Alan Plater and other writers like that.
The lesson I learnt from was that you respect the writer, and this again happened with the Wednesday Play. The almost-first rule of that whole undertaking was to respect the individual vision of the writer. There were people like Roger Smith, Ken Trodd and Tony Garnett, under the aegis of Jimmy McTaggart and Sydney Newman, who made it their task to find, to nurture, to cherish writers and to enable them to be as good as they could possibly be. They were able to do that because there was a space in the network, in the pro- gramming, for the writers to write and have their work shown.
So what are the circumstances in which writers work best? If we have any comments to make about television and broadcast- ing today, it is to do with that sin-
gle vision being denied a voice. Sorry, mixed metaphor there, but single writers are being denied the chance to express their per- spective, their ideas. That’s what makes them special.
What is needed, and what should be provided, is, first of all, space on the networks and in the programming. Production teams should be committed to allowing the writer’s work to be heard and valued. Thirdly, and probably most important of all, there should be no overbearing bureaucracy to bear down on them with criti- cism, with visits to the cutting room, with endless viewings, and with demands about casting.
If television is to be regenerat- ed that is absolutely vital. I think of the writers who emerged in those days – people like David Mercer, Dennis Potter, James O’Connor, Charles Wood, Jim Allen, Neville Smith and Nell Dunn – a lot of writers who were allowed space to say what they had to say and I think we were all enriched by it.
We have a duty, I think, as people in broadcasting, as peo- ple in the film business, or what- ever, to say the creative work starts with the writer. So how can we create the right circum- stances which will enable writers to really write? I was very lucky at that time because we worked with a group, often a group of some of the people I’ve men- tioned, and we had to put out a programme a week.
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present or have something to say about it. I was immensely fortunate in the early Sixties to join the BBC, which is where I got a lot of the ideas that I’ve worked on since and dug away at. Also it’s where I first met a lot of the writers that I’ve worked with. That period was immensely important to me and I
PHOTO: SYLVAINE POITAU