TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Ken Loach

My Name is Joe

Ken Loach
1998 - United Kingdom / Germany / France - 1h45

Screenings : monday 22 - 7:45 pm - 400 Coups - 5 saturday 27 - 4:45 pm - 400 Coups - 5

Joe lives in Glasgow. He has been unemployed for far too long. His life was a livinghell because of alcohol and, little by little, he lost touch with society. But after yearsof drinking, Joe surprised everyone who still knew him. He stopped drinking andregained his energy, which he now uses to support an amateur football team. Oneday, on a visit to the home of one of the players, he meets Sarah, a charming socialworker, and immediately falls in love.

“Ken Loach has always felt passionately about the working class. From the homeless to the undocumented, from the unemployed to the childless (meaning deprived of their children, as in Ladybird), this time he explores the character of Joe, who has little left but his name. And while he still draws his inspiration from the same dark waters of the misery of the underprivileged, his gaze is no longer directed at his long-time political enemy (the socio-economic system inherited from Thatcherism) but more at a figure of social decay: the local mafia. In other words, a parallel organisation built on the feudal model which, by means of various bad practices, exercises a strong yet perfectly illicit authority in certain working-class circles. As you might guess, this situation places people in a world where only the law of the strongest prevails. With no police protection, no money, no refuge because they themselves are in an illegal situation (Sabine) or has been branded with the seal of prison infamy (Liam), the individual has no other option but to submit or, hunted down like Liam, to disappear. He then remains a prisoner of his world (or ‘underworld'), a territory belonging to an all-powerful lord who places others under constant physical pressure.” (transmettrelecinema.com)

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Peter Mullan, Louise Goodall, Gary Lewis, Lorraine McIntosh, David McKay, Anne-Marie Kennedy
Screenplay : Paul Laverty
Cinematography : Barry Ackroyd
Sound : John Hayward
Editing : Jonathan Morris
Music : George Fenton

Production : ARD Degeto Film, ARTE, Alta Films, Channel Four Films, Diaphana Films

French distributor : Sixteen Films