Ken Loach

When you're at the wrong end of your 70s, everything is a challenge."

I challenge the idea that films about rich people are escapism and films about working class people are dour and sad. I find the opposite's the case.

I think that's one of the things that sport teaches you. You are only as good as the team around you.

The BBC is very aware of its role in shaping people's consciousness… it's manipulative and deeply political.

If all political parties are committed to the role of the free market, the politicians act as, I don't know, as traffic policemen; they stand outside the ring and let the real decisions be slugged out by entrepreneurs. That doesn't seem to me a proper democracy.

The E.U. is an economically right-wing organization that prioritizes the interests of big corporations.

Film can do lots of things: It can produce alternative ideas, ask questions, just record the reality of what's happening, it can analyze what's happening. Of course, most commercial films are controlled by big corporations who have an interest in not doing those films.

Most cities are eclectic. There's a bit of medieval, Georgian, some Victorian and some 20th century. That's fine. Bath is different because it was built within 100 years or less. It has a homogeneity.

I made one contribution to a film about the 11th of September: there were 11 directors and everyone had a different take on that. Some I thought were valid and some less so, but there was a substantial point that knitted all the films together - a comment on the bombing of the World Trade Center - so there was something to get your teeth into.

As a medium, film has great potential, but its use is dominated by big capital.

Iain Duncan Smith and his regime, they wanted to make the poor suffer and then humiliated them by telling them that their poverty was their own fault and, to demonstrate that, if you're not up to mark then you're sanctioned and the money stops.

I think that cinema is medium of communication. It's as valid as novels or fine art.