2023-10-27 21:20:29
Updated Friday, October 27, 2023 – 21:20
The 87-year-old director presents ‘The Old Oak’, a film designed to confront what remains of the solidarity of the working class with the new xenophobic fever of the extreme right.
The film director Ken Loach, yesterday in Valladolid.NACHO GALLEGOEFE
Ken Loach (Nuneaton, 1936) still there With everything that that supposedly innocent phrase means. It is contemplated by two palms d’or at Cannes, more than fifty films and the clear awareness of a frontal cinema, allergic to cynicism and essentially transparent.
The two-time winner of the Golden Spike in Valladolid returns to the Seminci with ‘The old oak tree’, a film that confronts the old working class solidarity with the new xenophobic fever. The director, always committed to his own commitment, now focuses on the existence of some Syrian refugees in the northeast of England, where the mines were replaced by the most basic desperation.
Accompanied by his head scriptwriter, Paul Laverty, The director appears happy, recovered from an old shoulder injury and as fit “as a butcher’s dog.”
I remember that at the last Cannes Film Festival, when asked if he missed any plot in his filmography, he referred to the tragedy of the Palestinian people. And he added that the governments of all states turn their backs on the Palestinians and pretend that nothing is happening and, yet, they are suffering the same as the Ukrainians. It seems that reality has caught up with him. There are many stories that I still have to tell, but this is undoubtedly one of them. I think it deserves a documentary. It is a story that requires going back very far, almost 100 years, because, as the UN Secretary General says, everything has a context and the catastrophe we are experiencing now certainly does. The oppression that the Palestinian people have experienced is one of the great crimes of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of this one.[Paul Laverty, a su lado, puntualiza: “Es muy importante dejar claro que nuestra condena es extensiva a los atentados de Hamas contra civiles israles inocentes. Es una aberracin. Pero el secretario general de la ONU habl de 56 aos de ocupacin y cuando se le quiere hacer callar, en realidad con lo que se quiere acabar es con el derecho internacional. Hay un empeo por ver las cosas en blanco o negro, y as nunca resolveremos ningn problema. Son tiempos aterradores en los que se habla de desescalar el conflicto a la vez que se envan portaaviones”]
The attack on Israel on October 7 is as condemnable as Israel’s response by murdering Palestinians and their children.
On several occasions he has attacked the way in which information about the conflict is given… Very rarely do we hear the Jewish voices that oppose the war. And there are. I know them personally, I have spoken with them and they are the ones who give me first-hand information. It is rarely said that independent organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have denounced the creation of a regime very close to Apartheid. It’s like it’s embarrassing to say it. You always hear about Israel’s right to defend itself, but you never hear a word about international law. And we have heard high-level jurists talk about the right to resist illegal occupation. The narrative is very biased. There is a kind of self-censorship resulting from fear that dictates that if you criticize Israel you are necessarily anti-Semitic. Precisely, racism is what occupies the plot of his latest work… In reality, without intending to, ‘The Old Oak’ completes a sort of trilogy with ‘I, Daniel Blake’ and ‘Sorry We Missed You’. The previous ones analyzed the consequences of neoliberal policies that have ended up ruling that if you are poor it is your fault. Poverty has ended up being a crime and you have to be punished for it. If you don’t accept what the State tells you, they cut off your subsidies. The eight-hour day, medical care, paid vacations… All of this has once again been discussed in the gig economy. The new film looks at areas that have been abandoned and where industry has disappeared. They are places that have become fodder for the extreme right where racism points out from the media and from certain politicians to immigrants as the cause of all evils. And, obviously, they are not. They are not the ones who destroyed our healthcare or the ones who caused the housing crisis or the ones responsible for the climate crisis. And it is there, in fact, in the abandoned society where the film that was Paul’s idea was born. Places where long ago there was solidarity… that was the question that moved the film: would the tradition of solidarity or racism be maintained?
[Laverty: “Hay un dato que s conviene tener en cuenta y es que, pese a haber grupos en esas zonas involucrados con la iglesia, nunca vieron su motivacin como caridad. Era ms bien una cuestin de justicia. Digamos que la gente de fe y los sindicatos estaban unidos en una causa comn”].
And in the middle is the bar as an institution…In Britain we don’t have a cafe culture. It is in the bar where you drink and talk about everything, football and politics. But that is being lost too. Before, there was a bar in each town as a meeting and coexistence place. Also in that the system is clever. Beer is cheaper bought in a supermarket and delivered to homes in a van. Another public space is being lost; Another place where communities meet is being lost. In the panorama it draws, I understand that the left-wing parties that have stopped doing their work will have some responsibility…Without a doubt, we have witnessed the collapse of social democracy. When the left puts the businessman’s right to obtain profits ahead of any claim regarding wages or working conditions, everything is lost. Once you admit that nothing can be done, that the priority is profits, you accept the same thing as the right. They have been insisting for some time that the spirit of union of the post-war period, that of ’45, is crumbling… Yes, now What you find is fear, anxiety, the fragmentation of entire communities… These are truly desperate times.
[Laverty: “Gegrafos como Danny Dorling ya han analizado y comprobado que vivimos la peor crisis desde finales del siglo XVIII. Y no es retrica. Pero el problema real es que no ves a niingn partido poltico que proponga nada para remediar nada. Hay un autntico vaco poltico que ocupan las soluciones simplistas de la extrema derecha].
If we continue like this, we will destroy everything good about our civilized societies. There will be more violence, more hatred and more conflict. These are dangerous times.
I don’t dare ask him about the future…Well, now we are clear that there is an end. The climate situation makes it clear to us that if we do not change this it will be a catastrophe. It is absurd to insist that we have to produce more when it has become clear that resources are not infinite. Either we find a different way to make economies sustainable or there will be no future. I fear for my grandchildren’s children and for my own grandchildren. How many grandchildren do you have? Ten. Almost a football team.
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