ITALY: KEN LOACH'S LATEST FILM "THE NAVIGATORS" ABOUT BRITISH RAILWAY WORKERS IS PREMIERED AT THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Record ID: 391957

  • Title: ITALY: KEN LOACH'S LATEST FILM "THE NAVIGATORS" ABOUT BRITISH RAILWAY WORKERS IS PREMIERED AT THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
  • Date: 4th September 2001
  • Summary: LIDO, VENICE, ITALY (SEPTEMBER 4, 2001) (REUTERS) WIDE OF VENICE LAGOON AND BOATS AT DUSK GV EXTERIOR OF VENICE FESTIVAL VENUE WITH CROWDS AND MEDIA SMV CROWDS SLV BRITISH DIRECTOR KEN LOACH AND CAST OF `THE NAVIGATORS' ARRIVING AT VENUE AND POSING FOR MEDIA (4 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 19th September 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LIDO, VENICE, ITALY
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAC6X67BHC8SFUCR0FZSLR5V5KJ
  • Story Text: British film director Ken Loach is admired by critics and moviegoers the world over. And although he's a man who shies away from the glitz and glamour associated with the film industry, his films are welcomed with open arms at festivals.
    Last year Loach took `Bread and Roses' to Cannes, but this week the Venice Film Festival had the opportunity of showing his latest film, `The Navigators', to audiences for the very first time.
    Reuters caught up with the cast and director.
    Loach's last film `Bread and Roses', explored the world of illegal immigrant cleaners who were being unfairly exploited by their bosses.
    That film was set in Los Angeles in the United States but for his latest movie, Loach has returned to more familiar pastures - South Yorkshire, northern England - to be precise, where he highlights the plight of railway workers after the privatisation of British Rail.
    The idea for the film - in competition at the Venice Film Festival - came from first-time script writer, Rob Dawber, a man who had spent 18 years of his life working for British Rail within the Signalling and Telecommunications department in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
    He had witnessed first-hand the misery felt by hundreds of railway workers forced to take redundancy, when Brish Rail was sold off to a number of consortiums. The writer himself was eventually forced to take compulsory redundancy.
    Had Dawber not injured himself on a holiday in 1996, his script may never have been written. He'd corresponded with Loach to tell him of his concerns regarding the demise of the railways and was surprised to receive a response from Loach saying, `where's the script, show me the script'.
    The result touched Loach enough to make him want to transform it into a film.
    `He talked about the way it had happened and the way people had gone from being a coherent group of people working together with all the comedy and the stories and the anecdotes that that brings to a point where everybody was fragmented they were agency workers that didn't know when they'd be working again or how many days in the week or whatever and that process I thought was so important and so typical of what is happening and completely under-represented,' said Loach.
    `The Navigators' follows the fortunes of a group of rail track workers based at a depot in South Yorkshire who experience at first hand, the effects of privatisation of the railways.
    When Harpic (Sean Glenn), the depot boss, gives Paul (Joe Duttine), Mick (Tom Craig), Jim (Steve Huison) and the rest of the gang a new brief the company's `Mission Statement' performance-related pay and unpaid holidays seem like a joke to the lads. Before long however, the reality kicks in and the gang have to take their chances with redundancy money and life as a casual agency worker, or they can risk staying with the depot, the choice isn't easy.
    When casting, Loach didn't venture far beyond the boundaries of Yorkshire.
    `I think one thing that's really important if the film is going to be homogenous and really credible is that you respect the language and so this is South Yorkshire, you know it's very particular so we cast people from South Yorkshire, there are one or two, there's one guy from Lancashire, Jerry, there's some folks from Leeds, Bradford area which is more West Yorkshire obviously but in principle we tried to stick to Barnsley and south so it's mainly South Yorkshire and to me if it works, it gives it a real sense of credibility because there is an argot, there is a way of speaking that just rings true,' Loach said.
    During filming, screen writer Dawber was present throughout.
    A bitter irony however was that he was dying. He'd been diagnosed with cancer a cancer he'd contracted while working with asbestos on the railways.
    The cast were obviously deeply affected by the knowledge that such a talented man might not live to see his work brought to fruition.
    `We just wanted to honour his wishes really and be truthful to his story,' said Duttine.
    `We did it for him really, I think we did it because we knew he was dying, he knew he was dying and we want to represent story as best as we could,' said Huison.
    `Being on the set of a film written by a man who is dying of a disease that he's contracted from working on the railways, it just makes you put your heart and soul into it,' said Duttine.
    Dawber fought the cancer to the end, living much longer than doctors had hoped or predicted. On the day he died, he saw the final cut of the film.
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