Ken Loach: My directorial career not over by a long shot

Ken Loach isn’t done yet.

The 77-year-old British director said he has “enough petrol in the tank” to probably make a “little one more”. While making his latest film, Jimmy’s Hall, Loach suggested it would be his last fictional feature.

But at the Cannes Film Festival, where Jimmy’s Hall, premiered yesterday, Loach said his retirement announcement was uttered in “a moment of maximum pressure” during production.

“But you come out the other end, you know. We feel we (will) just watch the World Cup (in June) and then see what the autumn brings,” the British director, who is a keen football fan, said.

“There may be a little film, maybe not, we’ll see. It’s a hard job to give up.”

Jimmy’s Hall, which Sony Pictures Classics acquired for distribution ahead of its debut, is a kind of real-life Irish Footloose about the Irish 1930s communist leader James Gralton (Barry Ward) and the dance and schooling hall he opens to the anger of the local conservatives. It’s Loach’s record 12th film in competition at Cannes.

Loach said one of the dispiriting trends in movies he’s witnessed has been the phasing out of film in favour of digital. Loach not only still shoots on film, but he edits on film, too — which is particularly unusual these days.

“You can check on the cricket score, you can get a cup of coffee,” said Loach. “It’s a much more human way of working.”

But while cutting the film Loach and his editors ran out of an out-of-production edge-numbering tape. They sent out “an SOS to all lovers of film” and were rescued by an unlikely saviour: Pixar. The digital animation company sent the tape.