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Ken Loach on Cannes

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(CNN) -- Last year at Cannes, British director Ken Loach carried away the Palme d'Or for his film, "The Wind that Shakes the Barley." This year, he, along with 32 other leading directors, took part in the Cannes "Chacun a son cinema," a series of three-minute films to celebrate the festival's 60th anniversary.

We spoke to him about the challenges of making a short film, receiving the Palme d'Or and his latest movie, "It's a Free World."

CNN: How did you approach the "Chacun a son cinema" project and what was different about it?

Ken Loach: We were all asked to make a three minute film that we could join up, which I guess was going to be over two hours of three minute films, which is a pretty daunting thing to be confronted with. It's like an endless selection of hors d'oeuvres where there's no main meal. It had to be set in the cinema, so you then had to think of a little story or a little situation.

CNN: How did you manage to do it and maintain your integrity?

Loach: The challenge was to find an idea that was worth telling. I think we must have gone through a dozen ideas, and the moment you put pen to paper you realize that there's nothing there. Not to be too heavy about it, it's only a little film. You can't be pretentious about that. The challenge was to find one simple idea, like a joke really, that you can bring to life within three minutes.

CNN: Can you tell us about the film?

Loach: If I tell you, it will shrivel in the sun! You just have to see it really; it was good fun to do. We worked with some people who were working on another film with us in East London, and we filmed in the Red Sea cinema in Brixton and they were very helpful.

CNN: Tell us about the shoot.

Loach: It took us about a morning; it was very simple. There's only five or six shots in it. I think we started at ten in the morning and we finished at two.

CNN: Was the edit process also very simple?

Loach: We cut it in a day, and the technical side is very simple, but the problem is finding an idea that will engage the audience and has a point in a light way, and has got a little kick at the end. So we spilt a lot of midnight oil on that.

CNN: What differences do you encounter when shooting a short film rather than a feature film?

Loach: I think the problem with a short film is that it can be glib. I'm not a great fan of very short films. There needs to be enough that you can tell a story: if there's any less than that, it becomes a bit gimmicky. We didn't want to be gimmicky.

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.

Endless three minutes was a bit tricky: you keep eating all these short morsels but you're still hungry at the end.

CNN: How did you feel about receiving the Palme d'Or?

Loach: Cannes is the largest festival of world cinema. It obviously means a lot because it's an award for the whole film. I guess it validated the project. That was particularly sweet in Britain because we had a few raving headbangers who attacked us in a solid way. But in the end you don't make films to win awards; you make films for communication.

CNN: Why is that in Britain you are somewhat overlooked, while in Europe your work is recognized and praised?

Loach: There are different cinema traditions in France, Spain and other European countries. There's a much stronger intellectual tradition: cinema is seen in a more serious way. You think of the Italian neo realist movement, or the French new wave, the Czech films of the 60's or Bergman's films from Scandinavia, or Spain and its surrealist tradition.

But we have been so dominated by American cinema, purely because we share the same language. We have run out of space in British cinema for those other movements. We have to play the Uncle Tom, presenting ourselves to the imperialists in a way that they find acceptable. We've looked across the Atlantic too much instead of looking to Europe. We get squeezed out.

CNN: Tell us about the new feature you're working on.

Loach: The working title was "These Times," but we're going to call it, "It's a Free World" now. It's about two girls, one of whom gets the sack from an employment agency, and she realizes that she can run an agency herself, with mainly Eastern Europeans that come to work here. The film follows her journey, with the people she finds employment for and the relationship she has with one of them and the dark world it takes her to, and her response to that.

CNN: What makes it different from your other films?

Loach: It's trying to tell the story of somebody who does quite tough things. Often you'd tell the story from the point of view of someone who has things tough, but this is from the point of view of somebody who is prepared to be quite ruthless really, probably someone who is quite close to the spirit of the age.

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