Social realism genre

We have done some research into social realism following our recent change of genre.

The introduction of social realism to film was to bring authentic representations of the working class to screens, which were often absent from the mainstream British media and culture at the time (mid 1950s).

During the early sixties, rough-edged, often black-and-white character pieces, often referred to as “kitchen-sink dramas,” narratives became more popular and at the end of the decade, Ken Loach, a political filmmaker, took social realism even further with the ground-breaking Kes, a tough and grimy portrait of a boy in a Northern England mining town, featuring nonprofessional actors.

The legacy of British social realism continues more recently with the work of many filmmakers, such as Mike Leigh, Lynne Ramsay, and Andrea Arnold.