
“The Spirit of '45” is a documentary film by British director Ken Loach, focused on and celebrating the radical changes in postwar Britain under the Labour government of Clement Attlee, which came to power in 1945. Relying primarily on archive footage and interviews, and without a narrative voiceover, the film – which screens Friday, April 10 at American University, with a reception at 6:30 p.m. in SOC's Media Innovation Lab in the McKinley Building -- recounts the endemic poverty in prewar Britain, the sense of optimism that followed victory in World War 2 and the subsequent expansion of the welfare state, founding of the National Health Service and nationalization of significant parts of the UK's economy. The film documents the extent to which these achievements, as Loach sees them, have since been subject to attack in the decades that followed, particularly under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. “Generosity, mutual support and co-operation were the watch words of the age,” says Loach. “It is time to remember the determination of those who were intent on building a better world.” Presented by the National Gallery of Art and American University's School of Communications, and co-sponsored by the British Council and the DC Labor FilmFest