Karl Francis
Over the last 30 years, Karl Francis has become the leading Welsh film and television director and producer with films that are keenly awaited in his home country and shown to great acclaim at festivals around the world.  Yet Karl has always remained rooted firmly outside of the establishment, even, arguably during his stint as Head of Drama at BBC Wales in the '90s.

He has maintained a determined independence and his films often savagely criticise the institutions which run Welsh political and cultural life.  In contemporary cinema, Karl has always been defiantly unfashionable, a film maker whose prime concern is, and always has been, content over style. That is not to imply that his films lack finesse and visual imagination, indeed they often display a very real cinematic sense - but in a period more dedicated to fantasy than fact, Karl Francis is a determined realist.

Francis has always been a shamelessly partisan film maker.  He has no time for the notions of balance which politicians demand of television. His idea of film-making is to represent the feelings and grievances of the people in the film, rather than impose on them from the outside.

In much of his early work Francis documented and analysed the political and social issues of contemporary South Wales - the traumas of pit closures, the disintegration of communities and the mass unemployment which followed in their wake. Many of these films are located and shot in areas close to his own birthplace, and feature many local people in key roles.  This intimacy and special knowledge contribute much to the power and sense of purpose of this work.

Francis has also demonstrated a considerable versatility and has successful diversified into some more mainstream projects.  However in these films and television series have always held the Francis stamp of political didacticism.  All his best work has been centred on ordinary people and their struggle against difficult circumstances caused by the poverty of their environment, or the decisions made by those in positions of power.

Sound Bites:
Film works when it has meaning

Without meaning film is meaningless.

Film works best if it enters your dreams and if you wake up in the morning with it in your mind then …

Always bite the hands that feed you

Glenda Jackson taught me so much. There was this definitive 2 page scene I had written. 'I can do this in two lines and a look' she said. And she was right.

It is one of the great lies that film has to entertain; why shouldn't film make you think - like a book or the scriptures. Why should film be owned by the stupid rich?

Hollywood assumes that their audience are stupid and sentimental; actually it is the other way around.

Always remember that Disney was an FBI spy.

Always remember the Hollywood 10

All film producers are crooks. The greater the canvas the greater the crime

All films are censored. The best bits are always on the editing room floor

FILM is IMPORTANT BECAUSE AS AN ART FORM IT TRANSCENDS THE CLASS SYSTEM IN WAYS OTHER ART FORMS CANNOT.

I taught film at an Ivy League university where I was told I could not fail my students because their parents had paid I thought education was about standards. I am right it is.

Someone wrote about me in TIME OUT - Karl Francis is one of Britain’s best filmmakers and the least known probably because he is Welsh.

Being a Welsh film maker is a bit like being Icelandic

Most media students think Truffaut and Tarkofsky are omelettes

Wales has become a corrupt limited company

It is not that Welsh bureaucrats are dumb the problem is they are dumb in both languages

Paul Robeson where art thou?

French film La Jette by Chris Marker shaped my passion for film. It was about fascism of the mind - and remains one of the greatest films ever made. I saw it 18 times non stop

I come from a Welsh coal mining village destroyed by Margaret Thatcher. A beautiful family of courage and wisdom the chapel being a place where the communists learned to pray. In my youth film belonged to the rich it still does I am simply a guerrilla film warrior

Films can be many things and are often best when they make you laugh and think. My first independent film was made in 1976. It was called ABOVE US THE EARTH - NOT A SUBMARINE FILM BUT A FILM ABOUT MINERS. JOHN BERGER the art critic and novelist said it was the first film he had seen where working people inhabited film as if it belonged to them

Mine is the Christianity of Jesus as I see Him and my politics are those of Aneurin Bevan and Tony Benn,

God is so much bigger than we see Him and his House has many mansions

There is no real excellence in this world that cannot be separated from right living.

Gwyn Thomas said I had John Ford's great ability to find humour on the gallows. This all helped me get more films made and in many respects I have had a great deal of help often from the most conservative of people

Thatcher wrecked film by making public broadcasting accountable to the market and the BBC has yet to recover.

Sentiment is the great enemy of real film. Fat fast film as I call it. Disney  does for the soul what  French fries do too the body.

Christians are well advised to stop paying their license fees in very large numbers

Being a Welsh Christian Socialist filmmaker in the West is not easy

Film is owned by market hedonism, socialism by self righteous egotists and Christianity by everyone except Christ.

My films have always been about the poor and the broken hearted and it is probably true that on most of my larger canvasses you will see the cross of forgiveness,

Sure, most of my films have been banned by some country or other.

I have heard of Hollywood producers charged with paedophile rape but I have never seen a Hollywood producer charged with mind rape. But rape it is.

Improvisation in films means the actor can’t remember his lines.

Real film acting is found in the rehearsal rooms where the bond between actor and director is forged in the heat of creation. Transforming that experience to the stage is easy.

Don’t blame actors because the director has wiped the producer's bottom

Being a Christian in film is a lot harder than being a Socialist in film.

Beware the producer who thinks the slums make good photography

I was brought up in a street in the mining village Bedwas inSouth Wales in 1950's Britain. Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa might have both learned their respective calling in this small, strange and mysterious country called Wales.

And it is my experience that Welsh working class people talk more articulately about film realism than most of the posh film critics I have met.

Why it is the real secret arts of film making are never discussed at film festivals? The only thing the audience wants to know is where did I get the money. Oh yes and who slept with who? Sick isn't it.

And why is it we have to talk to film audiences before they see the film?

British films are nearly always about the aristocracy, posh dresses and actors who speak like the Queen.

Film is racist. "The Full Monty" was written with a black cast in mind.

Black actors are discriminated against and I have endless evidence to prove it.

Paul Robeson - RS Thomas - where are you?