Category Archives: films

My interview with Ken Loach; remembering the dreamers and the builders…….

Ken Loach at the Working Class Movement Library, March 2012 “This is my truth, tell me yours”, Nye Bevan Last week I met up with Ken Loach at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, where he was researching and … Continue reading

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Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch….35 Shots of Rum (DVD), a film  made by one of my favourite directors, Frenchwoman Claire Denis. It’s about  a side of Paris that most tourists (and maybe many Parisians) never notice; African workers. The main character is an African … Continue reading

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Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch… Happy People (2010) A year in the Taiga by Dmitry Vasyukov. Siberia extends from the Urals to the Pacific and is one and a half times the size of the USA. 38 million people live in this area, but … Continue reading

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Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch… Ken Loach at the BBC. During the 60’s and 70’s at the BBC he directed some of his most innovative work with Tony Garnett and Jim Allen which is now collected on this excellent DVD. It includes Cathy Come … Continue reading

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Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch… Passion Fish(1992). A film by John Sayles (US equivalent of Ken Loach). The story of the relationship between a soap star, who is paralysed and returns home to rural Louisiana, and her care assistant. Not just the story of … Continue reading

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Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch… Shabby Tiger. Made by Granada TV in 1973 it’s the adaptation of  a novel by Howard Spring. Set in 1930’s Manchester,  it’s the love story between an artist and an Irish waitress,  and  the story of how the depression … Continue reading

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Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch… Army of Crime (2009)  French film about the Resistance. Directed and co-scripted by Robert Guédiguian,  son of a German mother and an Armenian father,  who is best known for his leftwing movies about working-class life in the Marseilles area.  … Continue reading

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Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch… The film  Frida (2002). A fictionalised account of the life of Mexican artist and political activist  Frida Kahlo (1907-54).  Her pictures tell the story of her life.  Crippled in an accident as a young woman  she portrayed this experience … Continue reading

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Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch….. Saturday Night Fever is my favourite film. Set in Brooklyn it’s the story of many young working class people across the world, music and dancing being the passport from a boring life. In the late 70’s me and my … Continue reading

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