Loach, Ken

   b. 1936, Nuneaton

   Film-maker

   Ken Loach is a left-wing film-maker who specializes in working-class realism and forms of resistance. In directing television drama (see drama on television), he pioneered the use of documentary film techniques and created a major social stir with Cathy Come Home (1966), the famous dramadocumentary on homelessness. His controversial series on socialism, Days of Hope (1975), stimulated an influential theoretical debate on realism in Screen. Increasingly censored by the television establishment, Loach returned to low-budget film features and Hidden Agenda (1990), alleging ‘shoot to kill’ activities by the British Army in Ireland, was acclaimed at the Cannes Festival. More recent films such as Riff-Raff and Land and Freedom, though critically highly regarded, are regrettably screened more frequently in Europe than Britain.

   See also: Screen and screen theory

   Further reading

    McKnight, G. (ed.) (1995) Agents of Challenge and Defiance: The Films of Ken Loach, London: Flicks Books.

   BOB MILLINGTON