Good evening and welcome to this evening's big tent. Live events, discussion.
My name is Wes Williams and I'm the director of Torch, the Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities,
jointly presenting this evening's event with St Peter's College.
Big Tent Live Events is Torture's live online event series and forms a key part of the humanities cultural programme itself.
One of the founding stones for the future, Stephen A. Schwartzmann Centre for the Humanities.
That's coming soon. Here in Oxford, as regular viewers will know, the HDP has curated a series of cultural debates,
discussions and performances online since the very first lockdown.
We hope that you are all keeping a safe and well as you can be during these difficult times.
This evening session is, as I say, jointly presented by the HDP and St Peter's College, Oxford.
And so I'm pleased to welcome first to our screen the master of St. Peter's, Professor Judith.
You can. In her academic life, Professor Buchanan is also an early modernist.
As am I, in fact, although I'm in French. Judith is more in English, specifically a Shakespearean and a scholar of silent film.
She works frequently and productively with a range of creative partners across arts and heritage sectors, both nationally and internationally.
Judith will be the interlocutor with our guest speaker in this evening's discussion.
Welcome, Judith, and welcome to to our guest speaker this evening, Ken Loach.
Ken, who I hope is there we are Ken is not only a Saint Peter's College alumnus.
He studied law here a good few years ago, but also a multi award winning film maker, writer and director for television.
His films testify to a deep concern for social justice. His pioneering work extends all the way from cars.
And Cathy, come home. Come home in the late 60s through to Sorry We Missed You released just over a year ago.
A trenchant critique of the so-called gig economy and its effect on the precarious lives of people across Britain.
Tonight, Ken will be discussing his approach to film making with Judith.
And together they will focus on two of the films, in particular, The Wind That Shakes the Barley from 2006 and I, Daniel Blake 2016.
I will now disappear from the screen. Sit back, watch and listen.
Before joining you again for questions towards the end of the hour, please do post any questions you might have in the chat on YouTube.
As the discussion progresses. But then without further a day delay, over to you.
Judith. And he was before we kick off.
Perhaps I can start with a word from some is college.
It's it's the college of which I'm deeply proud to be mastering subjects.
That's your old college as well. Can we say it as advertised to be a conversation about two or three of Ken Loach's films?
It was a fairly modest but a detailed conversation that we had envisaged, a conversation that might.
Well, we thought appeal to those with an interest in filmmaking and can lecture significant and distinctive filmmaking in particular.
It was intended as a follow up conversation to several others that has had with lots of students and some future students over the years,
all of which have been extremely well-received by students.
So in issuing the invitation, therefore, we had not foreseen controversy.
We have got it. And I understand why that's part of this.
There have been many calls, both from within and from without for this event to be cancelled.
Neither St. Peter's College nor Torch nor the university believes that no
platforming is the way to pursue the goals of a free and open academic community.
We oppose the delimitation of intellectual or cultural engagement within the law.
The university's role in this respect could be a discussion for another day.
But it is not the advertised discussion of today.
And we are committed absolutely to allowing for questions, but having the discussion that has been advertised first.
And I would say, by way of a quick aside, in ways that will, I fear, be mysterious to some but intelligible to others,
that we have begun an important conversation within some pages across this last weekend,
and we are committed to take a many of those important questions forward and for learning lots from them institutionally as we do so,
as always in my engagements with students. I know I will.
So as we launch into the discussion, we have advertised, we have been advertised as having let me and now my own would.
Welcome to those of you watching on YouTube and can thank you for being with us.
We are going to start by talking about the wind that shakes the Barley, a film that was released in two thousand and six.
I'm sure that many people will have seen it, but not everybody will have done. Can you just give us a sort of outline idea of of the film's story?
Yes, Judith, sometimes it's. It's always a huge pleasure to debate some pieces, even though it's a virtual presence today.
And thank you for your invitation and thank you for your strength and determination that this should.
Friendly chat should continue doing the shakes, the barley, we made it.
Twenty five, I think. Twenty six. And it's a film that's for Levity.
The writer and I wanted to make for some time.
It's it's about the story of the war of independence that Ireland fought in 2019, 2020 and then the subsequent civil war.
The war of independence is to us was the end of a long colonial struggle.
And that interpretation of history caused some some discussion in the opening scene.
You began to see is the raids by British forces to an Irish family, an Irish farm homestead.
And there's a there's the lads in the neighbourhood have been playing Hurley and they've been engaged in the game now,
was against British rules who weren't allowed to meet more than two or three people together.
So this broke the rules. So they went back to the to the farmhouse.
They were just saying goodbye to each other and the towns.
The Black and Tans arrived. The British forces arrived. And we'll see what they do.
And this is set in 1920. Yes. And perhaps you could play the clip for us now.
Amara, so we can get a fingerprint that the frame rate might be a bit jumpy, Damien.
When you ask, we can. I wish all the best.
Thanks. Thanks very much. Mine just now. Grace, I believe you.
I know. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
Not got it right. I am tired of you [INAUDIBLE].
You Mick [INAUDIBLE] been told by defence of the realm not to understand.
Oh public meetings are done and that includes yet cock little.
Gulistan Chenega. I want names, addresses, I want occupation name on OSullivan found out, Conor Sullivan, Lynn Geary, Ironmonger.
Chris really got Chris right. Don't look at me, boy.
Is there a crossroads left family?
Well, look, I perec, don't you?
I'm Hala. Sort of on watch that shot.
He doesn't want because he wants your name in English. I'll tell it.
Shut the [INAUDIBLE] up. Kelly, it's Craig.
Mannam me sort of on force. They call me boy.
You see me laughing. I love it. They say that a lot of you strip off.
No, shut up. I said, oh, my God.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Got three right now. Good job up there.
Yeah, but you're. But then I got to drop out. Come on. Sergeant Gabriel Mountains.
Take your show. You take your clothes off. I say I mean, looking straight out there.
All right. Go get somebody for nothing.
Shut up. As soon as. Just shut.
17 years of age. Michael. Got your leg handy.
Such labs dybbuk it ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
Why, he's the doing who glenn it and shook the Golden Valley.
It was hard to feel for words to frame to break the tie.
He found no. Fought harder still to bear the shame of foreign chains around.
Ken will be back with us in a moment. It's a traumatic case, it's it's brutal, it's edgy, it's energetic, unnerving,
and the rhythms matter and the rhythms for you often matter within a scene.
And they also, no matter a cross a scene. But there's also something about the ensemble.
Feel that she's quite remarkable. Miss Killian Murphy in the middle of it.
How do you meet allow your actors to find.
That's space together without the fact of the camera somehow inhibiting that kind of level of sense of urgency.
And being in the moment? Well, it's in the preparations, in the casting.
The soldier, for example, were ex soldier from Britain, Tom Charnock.
They captured this sergeant, sadly, died just recently, but they're all like soldiers.
They came and they stayed separately. They didn't meet the Irish lads until the scene.
They came in some of the some of the lads knew the script, Damian.
And the ones who had who were expected to speak knew the script.
Some of them were prepared. So they then the administration will look.
Did just just obey obey orders. Whatever happened, just just fitted.
So we do one that you take. So that builds up for the Irish.
Young men and the family wanted the village, they had to feel like they were people living on the land, they were part of that landscape.
They were they they weren't visitors. So when the two of them were actors, they're all from County Cork.
So they all have the same dialect, the same accent.
These words in the same way, language in the same way they did when they were cast as some somewhere just ordinary lads,
apprentice's or farmworker's, when they tell the best characters.
We just had to work the land and keep Kate.
Then Kelly, a very experienced actor. The ironmonger was lovely, man.
An actor. So four or five of them were actors.
The the day the mother, the older woman is an ordinary woman, but an amazing presence, a wonderful woman.
And the the the younger woman is a well, very young woman is an actress.
And the middle aged woman is was a teacher.
But finally, with a careful, very careful selection, meeting, chatting, trying things out.
And then the prep was probably 10 days or so work together, learning to play a flying column,
which is how the army fought the war with them in a guerrilla tactics in the countryside.
And they they learnt how to be guerrilla fighters. And they got to know each other.
So a lot of a lot of jokes appeared. You know, the the the the banter, the crack.
So that was developing. But they didn't know who was going to get killed. Said that shock.
So I think the key to summer is the key is to let something real as real as you can happen in front of the camera
so that there is an air of surprise and energy and what's going to happen and shock because you once you know,
if you'd rehearsed that, you've killed the shock. And it depends on shock and it depends on outrage and the sense that this is just more right.
And of course, they killed it. They kill.
And when we were preparing the film, there were so many stories in the folklore of people around who knew about this.
And we will be taking the field. That's where that's where the bridge killed sounds. And that's why they chose so-and-so and he got away.
And evoking that that folkloric memory was one of the most exciting things that the film
and the sense of the sense of justice and what they were doing as well was so important.
And so, yes. And it's the event that turns Damien Killian's killing character into the of the find called.
But it's, as they say, is gonna say it's in the soil for film making.
It's in the preparation, the film, the the the sequences shoot.
We're very quick to Israel's you know, we done it, but it it's it's in the present.
It's in the preparation, in the expectation process with the actors is very particular in that because you are not giving Unkles,
you're not telling them necessarily what's going to happen in the scene when the cameras are rolling.
So in order to be able to catch something that feels unlearnt, unscripted, unprepared,
it hasn't been over institutionalised ahead of time or tried out this way.
That way you are actually looking for something that is raw and real and unschooled and that repeatedly we see you getting that.
But it's not it's a process that is it requires a certain kind of back to trust, doesn't it?
That's, you know,
in order for them to feel comfortable being put into a situation with cameras rolling without quite knowing what might ensue within the scene.
Yes. No, not every scene is like that, of course. I mean, there's some scenes, a quite long dialogue scenes.
And then then obviously people know that they have that, too. If you have a long and before that, they need it so that they're comfortable with that.
But we still try and break it up a bit or say something in a bit different to the dialogue.
But it's an also the the colour of rehearsing we do is is is a mixture of.
Well, it's mainly improvisation. They're rehearsing so that they're very comfortable with doing it and having things
thrown at them so that it's it's a if you've begun that on day one of the shooting,
it wouldn't work. There's got to be that facility there.
And for the soldiers, you know, they the sergeant had the outline, but the others we said, look,
you've been in the Army, you've been in these situations, some of them men served in the north of Ireland.
So it was again, it was like their own history. And that was the reference.
I was used, you know, said what did you. Did you ever do anything like this?
How did it work? Can we talked about that in advance and in a moment needed to be able to make good on the role that you have set up as possible.
You don't say action and you didn't say cut. You're not wanting that moment to somehow separate from something else.
Tell us about. Yes. No, that the killer words really.
I mean, the moments that never Ondina jobs. And it's it's not erm.
It's not creative. No.
You talk about you get people prepared, you give them a little clue, just a little word or maybe you don't need say anything often.
Silence is the best form of direction. And I'd just say, I'll just say, okay, off we go, I'll turn over to the camera,
just signal to them quietly in the sound and then say, okay, Tom, in this case, the sergeant.
And then he's got the initiative to start the same.
Names are so important on we've seen a 17 year old in this scene be killed for refusing to say his name in English.
And so you've got the men with their arms in the air being shouted at to say their names.
And then later that that kind of band of brothers and community get caught on different sides and they end up in firefights against each other.
And even within the firefight, because they have some shared history together,
they are calling each other's names in order to appeal to them to stop shooting or whatever.
The kind of intimacy of the use of name express is quite hard on this film.
I, I think. Yes. Yes. I hadn't thought of it like that, but not I think you're right.
I think that comes instinctively from phone, from the people playing it.
I mean, it's important that the full script is very, very precise and and did the trick,
if it's a trick or the the problem really is to marry what is a very precise script and suddenly pull works with on very, very closely.
And we I mean, we we work together from the on the project. But Paul does the writing and 95 percent of what is seen, this is Paul's words.
And the the the issue for the director is to bring those words to life and allow the allow the whole presence to brief.
And for the people in the film to feel that they have done it, it's theirs, they own it and they can do what they like.
But actually, it's like I can say, it's like digging a trench for a street for water to run down the hill.
The water doesn't know it's been guided, but it is.
And and if it works, it's like that that it's you you set the scene up in such a way that that will happen.
Paul's words will just emerge.
And obviously, in the same you've just seen, I mean, that the soldiers are throwing stuff in to respond, but that's fine.
But in most of it and even then, the sergeant's words are mainly Paul's words.
And and Michael O'Sullivan, they call Damian Kelly Murphy and the others.
They're Paul's words. Even in the midst of that they have. I they I mean that the presence of an army of occupation there has many,
has many in a way that every voice different, but every war has has things in common.
And the presence of a a brutal army of occupation is evokes many, many comparisons.
So you took my Paul Laverty, the writer. We're not quite ready to move on to the next film yet, but in a moment, we'll be doing.
We're going to move on to Daniel Blake 2061. We do. Which also.
Right. And actually put his regular collaborator with you.
And George Fenton is a regular collaborated with you, the companies. And you actually have a kind of cool team that you quite often work with.
How does that then enrich or speed up the process of how you speak with each other about the the evolving
and collaborative process of filmmaking that actually you have a kind of intimacy of understanding,
a process with. It goes back at the heart of filmmaking again,
because the the the cop the paradox of filmmaking is that it is the result of a contribution that many skilled people camera,
sound design, continuity, editing, music, many and others, many skilled crafts.
But yet yet it must. I think it has to have one voice.
And that's in a way where the whole French idea of the auteur.
Right, which I don't subscribe to that I say where it comes from, because most commercial films are pretty old,
commercial films are very highly skilled people just doing their thing.
But there's not the sense of of that unique a single vision. So to find a team where everyone of their own volition.
Enjoys that particular aesthetic, that kind of framing, that use of light, that sense of natural sound,
the sense of rhythm in the editing, that that is like your I not like your being twisted to look at this.
Look at that. But a kind of unfolding of something, as if you were an observer, a kind of performance in which.
It doesn't have to be. It didn't have to be overstated, things didn't have to be underlined.
Music that doesn't underline the melodrama.
But just as a supplementary on somebody saying, putting another perspective, all those things did the design.
The design is the one cross disappears completely. If it's good, it's not design just there.
And yet it's immensely subtle. The choice of colours, the choice of background.
So it it's it's it enhances the people in front of it.
You shouldn't notice it, but it's. It should work. So finding that that commonality of a group of people.
Where we learn from each other is actually central.
Because then you have one vision and that's what's really exciting in the process.
Something about kind of reminds me of your cinematography as well.
And there's something kind of very self-effacing about it that is.
It is. It's doing all sorts of interesting things. But it is quite keen not to draw attention to itself in order to the story,
tell its own path without a sense of the process of its creation getting in the way of that.
How do you spread that careful balance between actually it being what you mean,
carefully composed and yet not over drawing attention to itself as the mechanism of the telling approach?
It is still there. Several things. First of all, the guiding principle is that the camera is an observer.
The camera's a loving person in the corner of the room, the call of the field from a distance,
whether it is whether it's appropriate, it's another person.
And so they the choice of position. Depends on a number of things, depends on where's the light.
That's the first question. So you don't want to shoot with the light behind you because that flattens people's faces.
And it also is not a sympathetic and you want to the audience to engage with the character.
So you have to light them in a way that is draws you towards them.
It's a it's about recognising common humanity is the idea beneath the dignity of solidarity with the characters in a way.
So it's a cover position. It's the the light said that they lit it naturally.
But the camera position finds that right angle with a natural light is coming one way
and you find the position in relation to the people that lights them in that humane,
empathetic way. Then it's the lens is very important. The lenses we spot reflect the range of the human eye.
So. I leave the position. They have something else to say.
Is that the I mean, sometimes you see films with the cameras on the floor.
Well, might come on the floor. There was going to be lying on the floor looking at this one look from the book or from the ceiling.
Why the come on the ceiling? Who's on the ceiling looking down? You know, there's an internal logic to it.
That people are, I hope and aware of. But there is a sense of humanity in the way we're looking at is.
And then the lenses correspond to the range of the human eye.
So that's it. So if you're in a room and I mean you can see a certain width.
So that's your the widest you'll use. And you if you look hard, you can you can actually see can take on someone's face or what.
And that's the that's the, the lens we use. But you're never that close to people that you in this space.
Because that just seems disrespectful. And. And again, not something you would do is to do with those things.
So you're actually keen not to dehumanise the perspective.
The point of view shot is feasibly a human one. Yes, yes.
And absolutely. And it's reflected in the editing where you cut when you.
I would move and you don't know who's gonna say you're in a room, you're done.
Who's going to speak next week? We'll have a sound cue something or look or something that prompts you to look at that person.
So the scene, which again, is like the human eye thing we've just seen as the fast and frenetic edit,
and yet we're not really thinking about that as a I mean, obviously, the more immediate business, I mean, the more obvious its construction is.
And yet what is so taken up by the urgency and the drama of the action as well
should be in such films that that one is not really clocking the editing,
but in relation to that, the fanaticism and the and the the awful, awful energy of that scene.
And I think there are a lot of ensemble scenes which have a kind of urgency on them in terms of action,
but also in terms of what the editing feeling like.
But there are also some really key to hander scenes, a one on one scene where it's a quiet and an important conversation between two two peoples.
I'm thinking of the Damian Sheehan aid quiet moment when they were on a short walk and he said,
I can't feel anything anymore or something of that sort.
Is this the sense of kind of nerve endings being deadened by the struggle that he as an individual finds himself reluctantly,
but with conviction caught up in all the intensity of the intimacy of the two brothers outside the church?
When did I know I can't do that? You or the very final moment.
Those two brothers encounter just before spoiler alert.
Adamian is killed in which there is so much history and sense of what might have been the romance that the future,
the children, the grandchildren that might have happened for one,
that the professional aspirations of being a doctor will be sacrificed and the kind of the loss of the of the individual aspiration has gone.
But how you shoot those scenes is extraordinarily poignant and very different from how you shoot those those those energetic ensemble's scenes.
And it plays to what you're just saying about trying to humanise, trying not to get in the way.
Yes. Yes. I mean, the writing is beautiful in there.
I mean, he's a wonderful writer, Paul. He's been my great good fortune to to work with them for nearly 30 years now.
Well, I balkanise really here because of Daredevil Act and them.
But I mean, we shoot very simply when we shoot really quickly.
I mean, the whole film I think was six and a half weeks, which in filters is pretty quick.
But. And you say that the key thing is, is what's happening between the people.
So then you we don't do it over and over again. You know, I never tell people how to say things.
It's it's how it's them in that scene.
It isn't them playing someone else. It's them. And of course, they when when the older brother says to Damian.
You'll be executed at dawn, it's the first time Damien hears it. It's the first time Killian heard it's.
First, he says, I didn't give him that, Betha saying. Because he thought he come.
The intention was, you just come to ask him to talk to you, to ask him to tell people to lay down their arms.
He said the civil war. I went there to brother service in the civil war. One, if I feel the trade decides what I'm fighting for.
On the on the Republicans, what they call the Republican side.
And the protracted side, one under the word brothers did tear families apart.
But finally finding that that that moment. But it meant also it meant for the older brother.
He had to carry that. I said to you, he doesn't know what you're going to say.
So he had to carry that burden with it. Playing the scene, knowing that he got the sense that in a way is part of the part of the wait.
I didn't have to say anything you about that, because that's that's the way it is.
Yeah. People must have said this too before. And I don't want it to be an end diversion and let it be.
But as you will be aware, in Elizabethan theatre,
actors were given their roles and that there was Shakespeare and his contemporaries at the playing company,
which was very expensive thing to be given a role because the goal of using a piece of paper effectively.
So he certainly wouldn't write out the entire play for any one actor.
So they got what they were going to say and then a few cue words that they needed to be ready to hear and respond to so that that that process
of being surprised by the action of the of the players one goes into a first short rehearsal is is recognisable across Elizabethan theatre.
But let us not go that. Interesting, though, there would be places a lot in was film and that there's the farmhouse that we start
at that we've just see where they the the raid happens or the brutality happens.
And and it's part of the process for for Damien,
the central character of of of thinking how he's going to respond to this kind of challenge on his community.
And at first he thinks he's going to leave it and eventually he decides he's going to not leave it and participate in a collective struggle.
And it starts there. And the film also ends at the same farmhouse.
But the farmhouse that we had first met and in fact, just shortly before that scene, they've just been playing, hurling, as you said,
and it's a kind of place of togetherness and camaraderie and singing and a actually kind of cross-class
as well as you got an eye monger and a trainee doctor there and they're all playing hunting together.
And it's competitive, manly pursuits that is going to be horribly translated into a very different kind of competitive, manly pursuit.
So then it's going to end up back at that site. In the meantime, has been banned.
And it has Genay that all of Fitz-Gerald to me. We saw in the scene there at knelt in front of it in ruins.
My life is now in ruins and the farmhouse behind her is in ruins.
And it's it's. And the camera pulls back, I think, a little bit as as the character who's just delivered the letter delivering milk.
Well, news that her life has just been shocked. And it is a beautifully compiled thought.
And that is a continued kind of punch that it packs and that I could imagine a different filmmaker would milk that shot.
And you are very light touch on it and off.
Even though we feel farmhouse, farmhouse,
this is kind of bookending the sense of where the film has been and of a potential for togetherness and utter
desecration of what togetherness could possibly mean by end and how disciplined you have to be in order not to go.
I've got a good one in frame now. How long will I give it to an audience for?
Well, this a judgement, really. I mean, it's the same judgement throughout the film.
And this just has to be consistent. I think it's to do with treating an audience as adults.
I mean, I hate sentimentality and I hate the you and the violins swooping in and trying to milk the tears.
And it's just bad faith with the audience. I think, you know, it's the.
It's not it's not tragic because the violins come in is tragic because of what we've seen, the potential that those people have and also the end.
I mean, their characters, particularly, Damien. I mean, this is a character with is you said committed to life.
Is this going to be adopted later? Emma O'Malley is a great Republican in the in the battle for the independents.
And he gave that up so so that the real quality that would have made him a great doctor for saving lives is the quality that kills an.
Because he can't give a. You know, he cannot he cannot uphold its principles.
You know, and it's the same thing that leads him in the end to execute a young lad.
He's grown up with because the lads betrayed them. And it's that firmness of purpose that that would have made him a wonderful doctor.
And I guess a wonderful partner in life and at the same time destroys it.
And the human cost of that. Clear. And then I'd feel anything anymore in his final letter.
I think, yes, Teddy is nearly dead inside already or something.
He says that actually it's been a crisis in which I say, let's just use this as a bounce into Daniel Blake,
because the Daniel plan, which sounds all about agency and asserting something,
it's like leaving and about being individually present and the significance of
being the individual as opposed to the winner take them on it feels like it. Is that a big yes, indeed.
Probably most people will unite on Blake, but perhaps you could. Just briefly, a set up for us what the film is about.
Yes, it's a story that Daniel Blake is a man in his early 60s.
He should be due to retire as a carpenter. But he's he can't work because he's had a heart attack and his doctors have told him he must not
work the work capability assessment introduced under this government or since 2010 or before that.
But this is a punitive act action because it still is a civil.
People are hard to interview people.
People claim to be sick and override their doctors, their consultants and say, no, we don't get what the medical profession say.
We say you're fit for work. If they don't look for work, then that benefits get chopped.
Daniel strikes a friendship with a young woman, Katie, who's from London, but she can't get housing there.
So she's sent north to the north east where rents are cheaper and she's given a house there and she
find she's there with two kids and no family support and they become friends and support each other.
Katie, again, has a benefits cut because she would like to be appointed to the job centre because she didn't know how to get there.
Nevertheless, they cut her benefits to get food. She goes to a food bank.
She's been starving her. She's been eating minimal subsid the kids get food and in the end, in desperation, she gets her food.
And Daniel takes it there cause you any is she takes it, he takes her there and she she she goes to get a bag of food.
She hasn't eaten probably for half a week. That that's important to know.
I mean, we know that in the film, but you weren't just from a clip and we pick it up the thing where they just going into the food bank.
And what struck us. And I hope you maybe folks will keep an eye for this is the absolute humanity and care of the other volunteers.
And these are real volunteers in the food bank.
Who in the scene and the other people in the food bank, apart from Cagen and Dan, people who use food banks?
OK. Let's watch the scene. Thank you. Oh, I see.
How do you feel when he comes out today? Thank you very much. Thank you.
Such as food for yourself and the two children, Katie. Thank you.
Two children have a drink of choice and a biscuit. Would you like to go see Agnes?
Agnes. You do just the biscuit face. Jackie.
Yeah. Would you be able to have Katie with her shopping today? Thank you, Kate.
Thank you. So we've got one adult and two children there.
Let me start with the vegetable. All right.
I'll give you one side on my show. Jeff. Blown in any way we could do for you?
No, I'm fine. I'm sure. All right. He just moved some stuff from here.
You know. Yeah. No, no, I just come up from London.
Right. Nice accent. How do you understand the joke? I'm right over here.
We need another, but never got one. But was something like this.
I just keep going with stuff and then you tell me what I do on it.
I think you said that you would have some time to write things, maybe don't even try and shame the shirt.
Right. Right. You will be all by. And a the time it.
People go to the food court and I'm back. That's right.
And tins and your. Return anything else you want.
There you go. Thank you. This person also had some professional pasta, so.
And there's a pop star here. I get your Half-Step. A patriot.
All right. What you want you to consider.
Right. Right. Right. Okay.
All right. Sorry. Right. You want a drink?
A drink. All. Fosamax.
And here I am, and this is a film that has touched very many people, but it's also got a lot of people's noses,
but that rather than leeching time from questions, we won't go into a one on one conversation about it.
Now, can I will bow out at this.
I mean, having thanking you for talking as to a little bit of the detail about process
that some of these harrowing and thought-Provoking and significant films.
Thank you. And now over to West to manage questions. Thank you, miss.
Okay. Thank you. Jesus. Judith, you don't need to buy it altogether if you're welcome.
Transitive as it were. Take a backseat for now. I've got a whole bunch of interesting questions that are come through.
And in fact, I'll take the last one first because it relates directly to Daniel Blake.
And it's a comment from Campton Race to an Alarm.
Peter said, Good evening, Ken. Thank you so much for your time. He says, I confess to going to see Daniel Blake with some trepidation.
I'm a part time tribunal judge who hears MSA and PSP appeals.
My fear was that when it came to the appeal hearing, the hero would be faced with a row of pompous, uncaring, bow tied idiots.
Whereas that is not my experience at all. And there's a bracket for those who don't know.
Disability appeals are decided by a panel of two or three, including the judge.
So here's the question, Ken.
It was such a relief to find out that the majority of characters who represented the state in this film showed real humanity.
I loved the film and the opening passage in particular. My question is, what research did you do?
No doubt extensive. Did you attend the tribunal? And if so, what was your experience?
We we do a lot of research, mainly for levity, did most of this legwork.
But I went with it quite a lot. We met I mean, we were in the Jobcentres, really.
So everybody work. We talked to a lot of people who had worked in Jobcentres and still did work in Jobcentres through the mail.
We found through the union, the Peerce PCOS.
And we listened to their stories and we listened, obviously, to people who had been to using Jobcentres.
And they they they they told us everything. The we weren't at the coaches wouldn't have gone to a tribunal.
And that's in that storyline. I mean, he just got the information to the sanctions or not.
And the same for Katie said that the tribunal didn't really arise. But I'm interested to hear the comments.
I suppose what it raises is the larger question, drawing on something that you said in your discussion with Judith about common
humanity and also solidarity with the characters and the degree to which,
if you like, there are goodies and bodies, to put it very straightforwardly in your film.
And it doesn't seem to me that there are and it doesn't seem that the question here that that somewhere that's not the kind of filmmaker that you are.
Could you say a bit more about that? No, absolutely not. I mean, the people in Jobcentres are they're not to blame.
They're there. So many of them said we were there as long as we could stand it because we need the money.
We were desperate. It was our job done left.
One man who had worked for the union never got promoted. That he obviously has seniority should have given him.
But it's you know, you don't go for the monkeys. When is the organ grinders that they caught in the subway?
And I mean, it's Duncan Smith, you know, and his the gang, the whole clique of them who put in these draconian measures that that trap people.
And, you know, the key thing is that when appeals were made were made and most of them were successful
because the government calculated if they put in a whole boat load of sanctions,
a lot of people wouldn't have the energy. They wouldn't have the determination, they wouldn't have the knowhow how to how to appeal.
And they relied on that. And that's the cynicism of it that makes you so angry.
And then they knew they were using hunger as a weapon, are using hunger as a weapon because they need the food banks expanded.
What do they expand? Most of the people say I said it's a problem with sanctions to take money away from people who have nothing.
You are telling them you can go hungry. And if that doesn't make us angrier, then what should?
So there's two questions from some May one, a technical one and one is sort of one that flows directly from what you've just said.
It's Mirah stressing that Britain has changed for the better or for worse since the time of Cathy come home.
The words you've been doing this for a long time. And how has if you do think Britain has changed in one or other direction.
Has that affected the way in which you approach your own work?
Yeah, and I've made a mistake in the last question. And of course, the course he does go to church tribunals.
His appeal finally comes through. Yeah. And he's waiting for waiting to go into the tribunal when he goes to the loo.
And then he has a hard second. Does so I was wrong about my memories. I know that somebody can forget even their own story.
Like you remind me of the newquist. So the new question is effectively, you've been doing this for a long time.
Oh, yes. All the way back to Cathy. Come home. Has Britain got better or worse over that time?
Well, and the secondary question is, does that change affect your own work as a film maker?
Do you change with the times, if you like? Well, that's a complicated answer.
But the the essence is that in the when we didn't Cathy come home and cast a laugh in the 60s,
we were still in the aftermath of the post-war settlement. We still had the welfare states.
The National Health Service was not riddled with private companies and subcontractors.
There was still a programme of council housing, the the Social Security system that benefits Social Security.
Did was there to protect people? Yes, there was a housing issues.
We tried to shame Kathy, but no one foresaw Margaret Thatcher.
And the decade that followed her decade in which the welfare state began to be torn apart.
And of course, that tearing apart continued under Tony Blair and his continued in spades ever since.
So that's that's the that's the big change. It's a change of culture.
It's a change of consciousness. I mean, when during the 60s and before, you know, when I was growing up, there was a wage.
The war had been won. There was a sense of collective consciousness of how well we supported each other,
that that consciousness disappeared, prompted by the economic changes of the eighties.
And that's the shift. That's the big shift. And yes, poverty is has got worse and the desperation has got worse.
Of course, the medical advances, of course, there are, you know, being would big love washing machines where we didn't go,
they may have a television where we didn't and things like that. And yes, of course, one can say get better.
But the sense of community, the sense of mutual interdependence, of mutual solidarity, of as an economic system, which at least can look towards.
Justice and social justice not gone. It's the individual and that's the big change in terms of film making.
Well, maybe, maybe it's. It's the stories you tell.
Change, really, that's what happens. And the response to them changes.
But they the process don't change. It's still the process of.
An observer who tries to see what is really in people's minds and hearts.
Thank you. I've got another question just on this line and then we'll move to sort of more
formal set of questions because there's is two kinds of questions coming through, if you like.
Steve says much of your work has been sharply current. Two of my favourite, Sustiva, the historical pieces, Bali and Land and Freedom.
So what prompted you to make these films at these particular times?
And the historical ones are other big events.
The Indic that that were changed politics, the Spanish Civil War, for example.
That was the first war against fascism from which Britain stood aside.
Only three years before the start of the Second World War. But she's got in, took over the government in in Spain.
The British Foreign Office, we understand, gave me a helping hand.
So it puts into into some context our attitudes, the state's attitude to fascism, but also it about the splits on the left.
The split between Stalinists and Social Democrats who are, by and large, for accepting the status quo.
Just give me the fascist and for the revolutionaries who wanted a new society altogether.
And that conflict is is central to the labour movement and its history.
The Irish Civil War, again, is was to say, look,
this the Irish war is not about the British intervening in Ireland to stop the Irish killing themselves.
This was a colonial struggle for independence from an occupying power which had been there for centuries.
So rewriting that and and we will call it in time to say this.
I mean, we go to the most appalling abuse for that. We were called in the Times colonist, a worst propagandist than Leni Riefenstahl.
Now, Leni Riefenstahl was Hitler's propagandist. And Michael Heffer in the Telegraph wrote, I do not want to see I didn't didn't see the film.
I didn't want to see the film because I didn't need to read Mein Kampf to know what allows Hitler was.
Now, this is The Right-Wing Press.
When you challenge their view of history and the abuse and the the intemperate language that is used when you challenge people's power.
Is happens whenever you whenever you become involved in politics, on on issues like that and in discussion.
It's a dangerous time. It's a dangerous. It's dangerous.
Yeah. There's a question from Kenneth, which Kenneth says Ken.
Which is kind of in a way, following on from what you've just said, which is what was the response?
Could you tell us a bit more about the response of the local county cork community to the story that you were recalling from their past?
Oh, David, they were terrific. I mean, they they couldn't have they couldn't they couldn't have been more worn.
I mean, in fact, the I mean, we didn't make a lot of fuss over for me.
You know, every time to move about on a fairly unobtrusively. And we were in the countryside for most of it.
But the birdlife that were there were very supportive and particularly amongst our kids.
You know, we had some academics who worked with us and in a detailed historical details and their knowledge, and they they were very supportive.
But then you start smiling once you get off the plane, you know, whatever.
Terrific people. Lovely place to to other. Beamish starts going back to the question of sort of the danger.
Another question. Right. That's just come in is how difficult is it for you to get your films financed?
Well, we've been lucky.
I mean, there was a period in the in the 70s when after casting the film called Family Life Work, we couldn't do similar films at all.
And they they were they were the carry ons or oh oh works.
I mean, I quite like the carry ons Bill. Yet, you know, we obviously were that it was only American films.
The eighties were a very difficult time because the low Channel four began and making films.
It was a it wasn't an easy time for people of, you know, where I stood and people like me stood.
We were certainly not flavour of the month. So I did two films that one film in the ages, and I did it.
It was a good script, but I worked. My work was poor on this.
I didn't do well. That was my fault. And then we start again.
We got films made again via Channel four that was okay and then made London Freedom, which we worked with European co producers.
And that's been the model. Yeah.
And we because of money for the biggest audiences in France, by Miles, I mean is one example with the wind that shakes the body.
There were 40 I think 40 prints in British cinemas.
There were over 400 in France. Yeah, over 400. Is that in Ireland there were 70.
Yeah. So I find it's mainly it's come from France and Italy and other European countries and Japan and that's been rock solid.
That's interesting. Sorry, I don't want to.
That's interesting.
Partly because as we were talking about before we came on air, as it were, I can picture Fassbinder in the background and I wondered whether European.
Yeah, you clearly are greatly celebrated. For example, in France, where where I work and I'm a French professor.
I just wondered whether your whether the question thought from Louise actually, which are I'll frame in the terms that she puts forward,
which is which directors were responsible for your political film education and I'll gloss it.
British ones or European ones or what. Who were they.
European ones. And not for the political education that that came from political engagements really in the sixties.
Same thing seeing through the Labour government that Harold Wilson,
when I delivered pamphlets for him and then two years later, you saw that he didn't make any change at all.
And then there were political movements there. And that was and I really learnt and met people who were actually engaged in politics.
And you you learn and you live in the world and you see how it operates. They the film influences Wurm style.
It was stylistic and also saying that working class life is a fit subject for films.
That last film was the Italian neorealist of the 50s, the post-war period to seek particularly the obvious one is bicycle thieves.
There was a great favourite, but they and these they their importance to us was saying this is a fit subject for the cinema.
Yeah, this is okay, you can do this. It doesn't have to be about posh people in smart apartments.
Yeah. The stylistic ones were the Czech filmmakers.
Milos Forman, Ya'ari, mentor of the Velvet Revolution, again in the sixties.
And if you want to watch a couple of wonderful films,
A Blonde and Love about Milos Forman and closely observed change by a so lovely films make you smile, touch.
You are very human and beautiful.
Come and study them all here at Oxford University in the European film course.
But I suppose if we could turn now, we are effectively now turning to Fogleman to just two or three questions towards the.
One is about music. You mentioned your your kind of common musical composer who's worked with you.
Sort of a good deal. George Fenton, you a along the sort of larger question is how do you use music in your field, in your films?
Because in the discussion you talked about liking when the violins come in.
But nonetheless, there is, if you like, extra digested. There is music that complements the mood in your films.
How do you make those decisions? Well, there is a sense of not you must not use music to make up for the deficiencies of film.
The film has to the action and what is said.
And the people should engage you without having to resort to music.
If you believe music to make it more exciting, that's a failure. So, I mean, our attitude to music and the stability over the years with.
Is it just to give you another perspective?
I mean, for example, you might be doing a scene that is really a microcosm of something is this happened once or twice with George.
The scene is a microcosm. That is that relates to a huge issue across society, across the country,
across the world or other countries, whether a music fan can say, look, this is something very precise and.
In this in this man's eyes are this this little group.
But actually there's a wider significance and it can it can be the equivalent of a much wider shot.
It says this is this is something eternal about this that you're watching.
Even though it is utterly precise in particular to these characters. Yes.
And so it's it's that sense of another perspective. I think that has to be very careful, because if you use it sparingly,
as we've been doing, if it comes in and you notice it, then you undermine the film.
So it's it's in. I mean, George has said it's harder to write two notes at the end than a full scale.
For that reason. Yeah.
I wonder if again, following on from this idea of the sort of particularity of the moment, the gesture of the word and the larger picture, Lucas,
is that to what extent do you find directing in another language presents difficulties
to show it is responding to gesture and expression enough in this context?
I think I think in particular about land and freedom. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's very difficult.
I mean, that's why we had to do it through the eyes of an international group, not the International Brigades,
because they haven't arrived yet, but an international group of of volunteers.
And then the role languages and some of it is in Spanish, quite a bit in Spanish.
But I really struggled on that. And I have had to have someone mushing in my ear what they're saying and someone who is
sensitive to if a word had a slightly different connotation from a literal translation.
Mm hmm. That I was aware of it. And when we were cutting it, we had a Vasana pesto came and sat in the cutting room with us as we were.
And she was saying, well, he actually means that he doesn't mean what you think he means.
He said that he absolutely had to rely. But it's very difficult.
Most difficult part of it all is to know what word to say to trigger a response from the actor, because you say the wrong word.
You can you can throw people right up that that's really difficult.
But almost everybody in the cast, they had it idea some English.
So we we compile in no way am I right in thinking that a good few of the cast members in London, freedom again were quote unquote, amateur actors.
I never say amateur actors. No, I thought I put it in quotations.
But one of the questions is here. How difficult is it then to work with.
Okay, what do we say? If it's not an attractive people who aren't trained actors, it expands yet.
And you take them all the same. Exactly the same. They they act as if with big experience.
And I've worked some with a lot of experience like Peter Mullan and Kelly and obviously Robert Carlyle,
Ricky Tomlinson and, you know, lots and lots of experience but actually treat everyone the same.
You did. You did. And by the ones who know how films work.
Just by how they are, they they communicate that to the others.
No, by saying anything. And the they also from the people whose whose life experience might might connect to the power they are doing,
they become of term of form a reference, you know. How would you do this or what some if you actually approach the job.
How do you manage this or say that again. But move by process of osmosis than, than anybody saying.
And you have to do fewer takes or more takes. No, it doesn't.
It still doesn't affect us. So because you practise little things like that without the knowing you're practising.
Right. OK. I've got two more questions for you. Yeah.
We're already nearly five past, but let's carry on for another five minutes. Okay.
One is a sort of again, a kind of Quaid I technical question.
Although it's not only technical and that is what's the difference between making a film for television and a film for the cinema?
This will when I began, there wasn't really a difference.
I mean, I guess it is the essential things are the same.
Is this story worth telling? What's this? What's the point of it?
Is a significant. Is it interesting? Do I care about it?
Am I engaged by. I said that film making level. And then what's the truth.
How do you how to reach out. What's the story line. And then on the day we get everything ready.
Where's the light. How can we get it if it's raining. You know the same things.
You might shoot the television film a bit closer because the screen's a bit smaller.
You know, you might you might do that rather than waste shots. Yeah.
The apart from that, I wouldn't want to make any.
But also I haven't done a television fiction film for.
I mean, I haven't done a television fiction film for many years.
I mean, over 40 years. So I'm not the person to ask.
I mean, that was before the zapper came in. Yeah. Well, I guess that would be another question if I was you being.
Yeah. Listen, I've missed that you mentioned Malcolm Wise when you were talking about your relationship with your your writer.
I think we can agree that you're not really mocking him. Not least that your films are not exactly a barrel of laughs.
But one question. The last one, perhaps, is that it's from Lucy.
Despite examining different of very difficult, often bleak political subjects, your films always seem to me to be quietly hopeful, to find the beauty.
Is this something you agree with? And if so, how do you go about this?
Well, thanks, Lucy. I mean, I'm glad you say it, too. Absolutely.
seise. I mean, it's it's the it's the beauty of simple things, isn't it?
It it's it's the it's the beauty in a in an old face as well as a young one.
He says, thinking of his own. And it's and it's a beautiful little casual things you the way of.
Simple things, and then many again, it's done to lights and framing and how you select them put it.
It's in it's in Hoby. It's in people's resilience. The fact people will always fight back, you know, does the hope.
It's it's the hope that if you're in trouble, don't go to a rich area, go to April, kill one, because that's where people always help each other.
And it's and it's comedy. You know, if you want to laugh, don't go with wealthy people.
Go and stand in the bar with a rage. Just ordinary folks. You'll hear laughter and it's genuine laughter.
And there's a warmth to the humour. And people, you know, sometimes say, why do you put jokes?
Well, it's full of jokes and the heart of the situation.
Often the the of the jokes and just the sense of humour.
The top people smile and people who are deaf things and wear funny clothes.
These just these silly things that are made. And so that sense of humour, the sense of warmth to send, of friendship, comradeship, solidarity,
mutual support, even, you know, even when there's great oppression, as in the Irish film,
you know, even when there's an occupying army beating it to death and and taking your land and whatever there are,
there's those moments of gentleness and moment as as.
And as Judith was kind enough to say, I mean, there's moments of tenderness and and care, and that's.
I'll give you hope, isn't it? It's that is the generosity of spirit that most people have and the sense of
justice that most people have and that and the determination to fight back.
And that's what gives you hope. Thank you.
I'll end with a comment, which is takes us, in a way back to the St. Peter's side of things that's coming from Charlie.
Can you above anyone make me proud to be a St. Peter's alumnus?
I Daniel Blake was the last film to bring me to tears.
Thank you for consistently striving to represent the stories of the unrepresented and those left behind.
I think if if it's okay, we'll stop on that comment on less, you particularly want to add anything else?
No, I just want to say thank you. It's my.
I had some wonderful moments, said Sam Peters, when he was some peaceful.
And the warmth and friendship when I've been back is as generous as it was then.
So it's a it's always a huge privilege to come back. And thank you for that.
I think that should bring us to the end of our time at the end of our discussion this evening.
So thank you to both Judith for making this happen and to can thank you to all our viewers at home for watching.
I should say this event would not have been possible without the support from many others behind the screens, including the torch team.
So thank you. I extend my thanks to all of them as well. But for now, I think Judith has disappeared from our screens.
But thank you, Judith. And also thank you can and goodbye.
Thank you. We do hope that you, our viewers, will join us again for future.
We have that. You, our viewers will join us again for future Big Ten live events over the coming weeks as we continue to bring together researchers,
students and creative artists from across different disciplines to explore some of the important subjects in the humanities.
I've also been asked to point out that some peaches will be hosting a public event on March the 1st,
in which Dr. Suzanne Hudson will be reporting on another important event for humanity, namely some of her work on the Oxford vaccine trials.
Now, thank you all for joining us and goodbye for now.
Thank you.