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Media Magazine

Article Written By: Richard Benn was formerly Head of Media Studies and Film at the British School in Brussels. He is now teaching at Silverdale School, Sheffield.

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 18.

Ken Loach - 5 reasons to study:

C1 "In Riff-Raff (1991) set in London, we are shown the London of squats and building sites rather than the more usual heritage and high culture"

C2 "With Ken Loach we get representations of places in Britain which we have never seen on screens before"

Heading 1: P3

C3 "While the mise-en-scène in Ken Loach's films often features deprived living spaces and estates, he also uses the British countryside in symbolic ways"

Heading 1: P4

C4 "Not just the where but the who of Loach's representations sets him apart from other film makers. He focuses not just on what we might call the 'working class', but the underclass - people who are rarely represented on the big screen and certainly not with such generosity - the unemployed, single mothers and bullied school children."

Heading 1: P5

C5"Loach is showing us that there are no easy fixes to the difficult and deep-rooted problems that afflict us; and that those problems still exist after we leave the cinema." 

Heading 2: P3