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Citizen Shane

Director Shane Meadows and producer Mark Herbert
  • Posted at 12:19pm
  • 29 February 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

Along with fellow RT contributor Stuart Maconie, I co-hosted a late-night ITV film review show in 1997. We inaugurated our own award, the Barn d'Or, to honour our film of the year.

The first and only spray-painted toy farm building was awarded to a then-unknown film-maker from Uttoxeter for his first almost-feature, crime caper Smalltime. It was just under sixty minutes long and shot for pin money on borrowed equipment with his mates, and we considered it a Nottinghamshire Mean Streets with humorous wigs. The young writer/director/producer/star was Shane Meadows, 24, and he sportingly posed for photographs with the Barn d’Or, worn as a hat.

Just over ten years and five full-length features later, Shane Meadows (left, with producer Mark Herbert) has just picked up the marginally more prestigious best British film Bafta for the sublime This Is England. Although his films have been critical rather than commercial hits, Meadows has established himself as one of this country’s most significant talents. With his broad humour, immaculate sense of place and skilful blending of the styles of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, he represents the very best of British.

It’s fitting, then, that Film4’s British Film Fortnight (which begins on Monday 3 March) should find a place for Dead Man’s Shoes, the uncompromising vigilante drama that earned Meadows his first Bafta nomination in 2005. On top of that, there's documentary Shane’s World, which offers film-making tips and contains four of his short films.

This is the medium that served as his apprenticeship, but still animates him. All four shorts star Paddy Considine, a photographer pal who'd never acted on screen when Meadows cast him in A Room for Romeo Brass, but whose naturalism and charisma led to a mainstream career – he was last seen in The Bourne Ultimatum. Considine’s own Bafta-winning short as writer/director, Dog Altogether, is also showing as part of the season. The Meadows universe keeps expanding.

That the down-to-earth clown who donned a ridiculous wig and masterminded a dog food heist in Smalltime should be prominent in a British cinema season is testament to Meadows’s indomitable spirit and deep well of ideas. And he’s still only 35.

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