This Cultural Life Folgen

Over six decades, Ken Loach has forged a reputation as Britain’s foremost politically-engaged filmmaker, exploring issues of social justice, freedom and power. He has twice won the prestigious Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes The Barley, set amidst the Irish struggle for independence, and twenty years later for I, Daniel Blake, a contemporary British story about unemployment and poverty. Ken Loach recalls his Midlands childhood as the son of a factory worker, and annual summer holidays in Blackpool. It was there that he saw end-of-pier variety acts and comedians, including Jewell and Warris, Nat Jackley and Frank Randle, all of whom helped ignited an early passion for storytelling and performance. He recalls how, after studying law at Oxford, he joined the BBC’s Wednesday Play production team, with the aim of creating television drama out of contemporary social issues. His television films Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home, which tackled abortion, unemployment and homlessness, were each seen by over 10 million people, and played an influential part in the public debate about the issues. Loach reveals that Czech cinema of the 1960s, including the films of Miloš Forman, were a huge inspiration on his own filmmaking career, with the use of the naturalistic performances and camera-work that captured the environment from a distance most clearly seen in his classic 1969 film Kes. Ken Loach also chooses as a major influence, the real lives of people whose stories have inspired his films throughout his career, including veterans of the Spanish civil war and Nicaraguans who had seen schools and health centres destroyed by the Contra rebels. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Es Devlin is the world’s foremost set designer, having conceived stage sets for superstar musicians including Beyoncé, Stormzy, Kanye West, U2 and Adele. She has also created sets for opera houses around the world, and for productions at the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and many more. Es also works as an artist in her own right, designing sculptural installation pieces that address issues of social justice and sustainability.For This Cultural Life, Es Devlin remembers a scale model of her home town, Rye in Sussex, that fired her imagination and encouraged her interest in storytelling. She chooses the sleeve of Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album The Kick Inside, which she tried to recreate as a collage in her teenage bedroom. She recalls a career breakthrough when, in 1998, she designed a National Theatre production of Harold Pinter’s play Betrayal, a set which was inspired by Rachel Whiteread’s artwork House, a concrete cast of the interior of a Victorian terraced house in London’s East End, which was demolished in 1994. Her final choice of cultural inspiration is her work with the hip hop artist and producer Kanye West, with whom she collaborated on several spectacular stadium shows. Producer: Edwina PitmanAudio of 'The Story of Rye' with kind permission from The Rye Heritage Centre

Actor and former MP Glenda Jackson reveals the influences and experiences that inspired her work on stage and screen. One of the greatest actors of her generation, Glenda won Academy Awards for Women in Love and A Touch Of Class, and was Oscar nominated for Sunday Bloody Sunday. She has also won Tony, Emmy and Golden Globes awards for her theatre and television work. In 1992 she gave up acting to become a Labour MP, winning her seat five times. But in 2016 she returned to the stage, playing King Lear in London and New York, and to television for a BAFTA winning performance as an elderly women with dementia in Elizabeth Is Missing. Glenda Jackson recalls her working class upbringing in Birkenhead, and how she won a scholarship to the drama school RADA with help from the manager of the Boots chemists’ where she worked at the time. She chooses the director Peter Brook as a major influence on her work, having starred in his radical 1964 stage production of the play Marat/Sade, and the version he subsequently adapted for cinema. She remembers also working closely with the director Ken Russell on several films, including the Oscar-winning Women in Love, adapted from the DH Lawrence novel. Glenda’s comic appearances on the Morecambe and Wise Show in the early 1970s are recalled as career highlights. Glenda Jackson also chooses Margaret Thatcher as huge influence on her life and career, as it was the policies of the former Prime Minister which prompted her to give up acting for 23 years while she served as a Labour MP.Producer: Edwina Pitman