The far right was on the march in the 1930s, and we defeated the fascists through a great united working-class effort. That sense of unity and strength is what gave people confidence to change things.
Ken Loach
I don't think films about working class people are sad at all; I think they're funny and lively and invigorating and warm and generous and full of good things.
We have to defend the migrant workers and give them our support and demand that they have the rights that workers here have from day one, but absolutely hate the system that forces people to leave their country, leave their homes, leave their families, to go somewhere else to be exploited.
There has been no more principled opposition to racism than Jeremy Corbyn: he was getting arrested for protesting against Apartheid when the rest of them were doing deals and calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
I challenge the idea that films about rich people are escapism and films about working class people are dour and sad. I find the opposite's the case.
If you're a politician, you can see there might be times when, to secure the greater good, you have to take a backwards step. That is a matter of tactics.
Most cities are eclectic. There's a bit of medieval, Georgian, some Victorian and some 20th century. That's fine. Bath is different because it was built within 100 years or less. It has a homogeneity.
You'll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone.
Bath was dusty and a little shabby when we moved here. It did look its age and you felt its history in its streets and buildings and little alleyways. The sense of the past was palpable. There were some bad modern buildings but there was a patina of age.
The problem is, if you make a film that has certain implications in the story, and then you don't follow through, it's a cop out really, isn't it?
It's more interesting to see new people on the screen when you go to the cinema. I don't want to see the same old faces.
In general I think that in art you only have the responsibility to tell the truth.
A film has got to demand to be made. Otherwise - if it's just, 'Shall we? Why not?' - you shouldn't make it.
The most enjoyable things are the old eighteenth-century terraces that are still standing, that domestic architecture.
I was stage-struck from an early age. I just loved the language. We lived quite near Stratford so I would cycle and watch the plays.
The old Craven Cottage stadium at Fulham, before they built the river stand; that was a great place to watch football. When the football wasn't very good, people used to turn around and watch the boats on the river.
I think that's one of the things that sport teaches you. You are only as good as the team around you.
I think people think of auteurs as being a dictator shouting over everyone about his vision. That's not the way I think of auteurs or the way I work.
A journalist uses the most precise words he or she can. An artist does the same sort of thing. You gather material about a particular subject, you refine it as best you can.
I think it's time British filmmakers stopped allowing themselves to be colonized so ruthlessly by U.S. ideas and stopped looking so slavishly to the U.S. market. It demeans filmmaking when they do that.
Jimmy's Hall' is set in Ireland in the '30s and everything that went under the camera we had to generate.
Jeremy Corbyn's election was the most hopeful thing since the Labour Party began. He's the first Labour leader who's ever stood on the picket line along with workers.
Politics lives in people, ideas live in people, they live in the concrete struggles that people have.
We made 'The Wind That Shakes the Barley' about the war of independence and the civil war, which were the pivotal moments of Irish history, really. 'Jimmy's Hall' would seem to be a smaller story 10 years later.
After 'The Gamekeeper' I made one other film called 'Looks and Smiles,' but making British films was very difficult. There wasn't a tradition of British cinema.
The worst thing about being a freelance film director is that you're scrambling around Soho with a briefcase, looking for somewhere to make phone calls. That was my position for 10 years.
Film is one small voice in a great cacophony of noise from newspapers, from the television, from social media, so it can have a little dent, you know? It can help to create a climate of opinion.
I think the Norweigan model of municipalities owning cinemas and being programmed by people who know about films is a good one.
Cannes is the largest festival of world cinema.
I know there are people who can direct sitting down away from it all at a video monitor. But I can't do that.
If all political parties are committed to the role of the free market, the politicians act as, I don't know, as traffic policemen; they stand outside the ring and let the real decisions be slugged out by entrepreneurs. That doesn't seem to me a proper democracy.
I hate programmes where some TV personality looks you in the eye and tells you what to think - the Andrew Marr version of history. I hate the authorial voice telling you what to think.
It seems to me the big weakness in most films is the writing. You can learn directing, but you can't learn writing.
People talk about Thatcherism all the time. I felt it was important to record the memories of those almost written out of history who upheld the spirit of '45.
Often people write stories about people who are suffering, and they're miserable all the time. That's not the case. You go to the food bank or wherever and there's laughter, there's comedy, there's stupidity, there's silliness and warmth. And that's the reality of people's lives. If you cut out that sense of humor and warmth, you miss the point.
For the writers I have worked with and for me, the relationship between the personal comedy of daily life and the economic context in which that life happens has always been very significant.
You always feel a degree of insecurity about getting through a film.
Churchill the right-winger has been elevated to a status where you can't criticise him. People from the time remember him as an imperialist, a hard-right politician, very instrumental in the oppression of Ireland and the attempt to defeat the general strike.
I made one contribution to a film about the 11th of September: there were 11 directors and everyone had a different take on that. Some I thought were valid and some less so, but there was a substantial point that knitted all the films together - a comment on the bombing of the World Trade Center - so there was something to get your teeth into.
Those in power always try to distort reality, to suit their needs and keep things safe.
Film can do lots of things: It can produce alternative ideas, ask questions, just record the reality of what's happening, it can analyze what's happening. Of course, most commercial films are controlled by big corporations who have an interest in not doing those films.
All politicians will say they celebrate the NHS, but to a greater or lesser extent, they've all undermined it.
There's a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.
I've been going to Labour party meeting for over 50 years.
Surprise is something that's very difficult to act.
Preparation is really important for actors; they need to know who they are, where they're from, and the experiences up to the point that we make the film.
What strikes me - we're apparently at the mercy of an economic system that will never work and the big question is, how do we change it, not how do we put up with it.
The thing is, it's much easier to be a rightwing populist than a leftwing one, because the left always have to explain why things are the way they are. The right can just blame the foreigners.
Paul Laverty is a wonderful writer and we've worked together for a quarter of a century.
The BBC is very aware of its role in shaping people's consciousness… it's manipulative and deeply political.
