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Mediastan is a journey from Afghanistan to Manhattan, through the boundaries of freedom of speech. Venturing into the minds of those who shape our understanding of the world.

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Eric the postman is slipping through his own fingers...
His wife has gone, his stepsons are out of control and the house was chaotic even before a cement mixer appeared in the front garden. Life is crazy enough, but it is Eric's own secret that is driving him to the brink. How can he face up to Lily, the woman of his dreams that he once loved and walked out on many years ago? Despite the comical efforts and misplaced goodwill of his mates, Eric continues to sink.
In desperate times it takes a spliff and a special friend to help a lost postman find his way, so Eric turns to his hero: footballing genius, philosopher and poster boy, Eric Cantona.
As a certain Frenchman says "He who is afraid to throw the dice, will never throw a six."

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"The genesis of Sweet Sixteen may have been back with the making of 'My Name is Joe," says writer Paul Laverty. "When you're imagining a story there are often dozens of characters screaming for attention, all saying 'me, me, me, me'. We can't feed them all otherwise the story will collapse. But there was one persistent character who would not give up or shut up. He demanded our attention." That voice became the character of Liam.

"Paul and I made Bread and Roses in L.A. and thought it would be good to do another film on home ground," explains Ken Loach. "We went on a trip at Paul's instigation to Greenock which is a town just along the Clyde from Glasgow. The scenery is spectacular, which is more than can be said for the job opportunities since the shipyards closed."

Laverty began his task by spending lots of time with young people. "For some time I'd been talking with Ken about doing another very personal story; about how one young person tries to make sense of his life. It's as simple and as complex as that. Friends, family and community connect or smash up against each other in endlessly complex patterns. Liam is at a delicate point in his life. Some things just don't fit, though he is absolutely determined to use his considerable talent and cheek to make them do so."

"What struck me," says Laverty, "from talking to lots of carers who work with children (either in children's homes with foster carers or even secure accommodation) was that, no matter how chaotic the family home, most were still determined to make contact with their mother. There's something extra concentrated about adolescence. There's a special energy which can be exhilarating or explosive. Fragility, and often a wild courage, even if misplaced, can sit easily side by side. We were keen to try and capture some of those qualities in our story."

"During auditions we worked with hundreds of young people in sports clubs, schools and community groups," explains...

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If first-time script writer ROB DAWBER hadn’t torn a tendon falling off a sand dune on holiday in 1996, The Navigators may never have been written. “I sent in a letter to Ken Loach about my experiences working on the railway and he wrote back saying he was interested and would like to see the script” said Dawber. As there was no script to speak of, the enforced rest after the holiday accident provided the six weeks needed to shape ideas into a script.

Dawber spent eighteen years working for British Rail within the Signalling and Telecommunication department in Sheffield, Yorkshire. As a union representative he worked through privatisation until 1997. The changes worried him deeply and, despite many occasions on which he raised concerns about safety and working conditions, the new managers didn’t seem to respond.

“The idea of dramatising the issues was born largely out of frustration” recalled Dawber. “We were down to the last six men in the depot who refused to take redundancy.” Ultimately, they were forced to take compulsory redundancy, despite the union winning agreement that all redundancies should be on a voluntary basis.

Rob Dawber died on 20 February 2001. The cause of his death was mesothelioma, a cancer contracted while working with asbestos on the railways.

An internal management memorandum revealed that although workers were continually being exposed to lethal asbestos, it was considered to be too expensive to remove it all or to educate them about safer ways of handling it.

It was a bitter victory for Rob when he established in court that his employers were to blame for his illness.

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Here I am in the United States, ten years have gone by since

I crossed as a wetback, with no identity papers I'm still illegal.

I've got my wife and my kids - who came so young they don't remember

My beloved Mexico which I'll never forget and where I can never return...

Los Tigres del Norte

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THE UNDERSIDE OF A DIVIDED CITY

A love story full of humour, passion and danger, "My Name is Joe" was filmed in the heart of one of the poorest and most neglected neighbourhoods of Scotland's biggest city. Two street-wise but vulnerable people struggle to overcome the harsh conditions that press in upon them, leaving few choices in their lives.

The details of their story reflect the reality of today's Glasgow, a divided society where options are so limited that the hair's-breadth frontier between survival and disaster is often just a matter of luck. Can these two people, from different walks of Glasgow life, emotionally hampered as they are, succeed in building a relationship in these circumstances?

The film explores the emotional struggles of Joe and Sarah amidst the drugs, prostitution and violence that condition their lives. No longer young, the couple bring baggage from the past so that tenderness is laced with the wariness of those bearing scars of previous emotional battles.

Like all Loach's films, "My Name is Joe" portrays its setting with unsentimental honesty, and celebrates the power of the human spirit to overcome apparently insuperable obstacles.

The background of the film was meticulously researched with the aid of Glasgow community workers, ex-drug addicts and former prostitutes who made invaluable contributions to both plot and detail. The screenwriter Paul Laverty says: "I spent three months just walking the streets of Glasgow, talking to people, hearing their stories, before I started to write a word. The characters came first, then I spent months working out the story they would tell."

A pair of important secondary characters soon emerged: Joe's young friend Liam, a good hearted lad all but crushed by his personal circumstances who tries to steer clear of the drug culture after serving a jail sentence, and his girlfriend Sabine, fighting a heroin habit fed by prostitution, and trying to keep their...

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Carla's Song tells the story of the relationship between George, a free-spirited Scottish bus driver and Carla, a Nicaraguan refugee who is adrift in Glasgow. The setting is 1987 and in Carla's home country the Contra rebels are continuing their assault on the people and their Sandinista government.

As George's feelings for Carla deepen, he believes the only way for her to overcome the traumas that haunt her is to return to her homeland. But will she be able to bury the ghosts of her past and stay close to George?

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1936. David an unemployed young man, leaves Liverpool to join the fight against Fascism in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. He joins an international section of the Republican Militia on the Aragon front where he experiences the trials and anguish of the war.

Wounded, he convalesces in Barcelona and is caught in the conflict on the Republican side between the Communist Party and his revolutionary comrades in the militia.

The resolution of this conflict and David's return to the front may seem tragic but his belief in the possibility of revolutionary change is unshaken. His story is revealed only after his death, sixty years later, in letters discovered by his granddaughter.

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Ladybird, Ladybird, inspired by real events, is a love story; the story of Maggie and Jorge and their struggle to have a family. Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by Social Services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her. She finds it difficult to escape the image that is described in her official records. Ladybird, Ladybird is an emotional and harrowing story of a woman's fight to keep her children and her relationship intact.

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(Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 1993 & Best Film, Evening Standard British Film Awards 1994)

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(FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes Film Festival 1991 & Best Film, European Film Awards 1991)

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(Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival, 1990)

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Two linked dramas look at the lives of those living in a Yorkshire colliery community. The first part, Meet The People, takes a look at preparations for a visit by Prince Charles, as management try to enlist the miners help in sprucing up the pithead. Completely different in tone, Part Two, Back To Reality, is set one month later as an underground explosion has disastrous consequences – above and below ground.

For these episodes of BBC films, Loach was reunited with playwright Barry Hines and producer Tony Garnett for the first time since they worked together on Kes. Filmed on location at the disused Thorpe Hesley pit, Part One saw the unusual casting of several northern comics including Jackie Shinn, Duggie Brown, Stan Richards and Bobby Knutt.

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“The only war worth fighting is the class war".

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This film, directed by Ken Loach and produced by Tony Garnett, was originally commissioned by Save the Children and London Weekend Television in the 1960s to mark the Charity’s fiftieth anniversary.

The film was shot in 1969 in the UK, Kenya and Uganda. Already an established filmmaker, Loach opened the film with a quotation from Friedrich Engels, and went on to construct a film that explored the politics of poverty, class and charities and the relationship between them. At that time Save the Children representatives felt the film subverted their aims. They did not agree to a public screening of the work and the film was immediately withdrawn and kept in the BFI’s national archive. L.W.T. wrote off their investment.

Forty years later Save the Children is pleased that the film is to be shown to the public. It depicts a unique slice of British social and cinematic history and highlights how much the charity world and Save the Children have changed.

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British filmmaking showed much of its potential in this marvellous production chronicling the boyhood experiences of Billy, whose expectations lead no further than following his brother into the pit when he reaches manhood. Written off by his teachers and often neglected at home, his future is pre-determined.

He finds and trains a young kestrel. Through his care and respect for the bird, we see qualities in Billy that the world cannot allow to be recognised.

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For The Wednesday Play, BBC, tx. 1/3/1967 - 75 mins, black & white

Kate, a young girl under psychiatric examination, suffers from a lack of confidence, self-esteem and self-control – telling of the “bad Kate” who commits immoral acts. Could the hypocrisy, selfishness and weakness of those around her have led to this state of mind or can Kate simply be diagnosed and dismissed as a schizophrenic?

In a drama told in Loach’s convincing documentary style, writer David Mercer questioned the accepted condition of schizophrenia. The film, broadcast in The Wednesday Play series, led to heated discussions on television and in the press, while Mercer won the Writers' Guild Award for the Best Television Play of 1967.

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London in the 1960's: this is an account of a young woman trying to cope while her husband, a small time thief, is in jail. Clutching at any slight chance of happiness, she has a promiscuous relationship with his best friend which in turn leads to heart breaking consequences.

Poor Cow is a poignant, controversial slice of raw social realism, and in true Loach style, is an imaginative exploration of the thin line separating fiction and real-life.

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"The most important piece of dramatised documentary ever screened" The Sunday Times

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Taking its title from a Home Office ruling that three clear Sundays were to elapse between a sentence of death and execution, James O’Connor’s "emotional autobiography" tells the story of Danny, a young prisoner put up to attack a warder by two old lags. When the warden dies, Danny is left to await and contemplate the ultimate punishment.

Jimmy O’Connor‘s moving, warm and, at times, humorous play was based on his own harrowing experiences. He had been sentenced to death for murder only to be reprieved two days before he was due to hang. Shown in the BBC’s The Wednesday Play series in 1965, the broadcast was watched by 11 million viewers and boosted the abolitionist lobby during the then raging debate over capital punishment.

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For The Wednesday Play, BBC1, tx. 17/11/1965

70 min, black & white

In this off-beat musical – a satire that combines fantasy, social observation and songs – a working class man goes to put a deposit on a new house only to find he prefers spending to saving and is happy to spend his money on a few hours of happiness rather than a lifetime's conventionality.

Written by poet and Private Eye contributor, Christopher Logue, with music from Stanley Myers (best known for Cavatina, the signature theme for the 1978 film The Deerhunter), the film features songs from Samantha Jones, Long John Baldry, Lesley Wood and others and locations ranging from Fortnum & Masons to a strange gas-works in the East End of London.

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For The Wednesday Play, BBC, tx. 3/11/1965 - 75 minutes, black & white

“We told our director, Kenneth Loach, that none of the sacred cows of television drama need stand in his way… This is a show which defies the categories. It is not a play, a documentary, or a musical. It is all of these at once. It is something new - but, more important, it is something true.” Tony Garnett

This ground-breaking drama saw Loach take the filming out of the studio and onto the very streets depicted in the story. With an immediacy only ever seen in current affairs programmes, the portrayal of ordinary people’s lives had an authenticity seldom witnessed in television drama.

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