The Spirit of '45

This special limited edition slipcover (designed by Brandon Schaefer) is limited to 1,000 units and is only available on our website and at select indie retailers. Absolutely no major retailers will be stocking them.

The Film Desk is a theatrical and disc distributor founded in 2007 by Jake Perlin, dedicated to releasing masterpieces of international cinema, with a focus on titles never before released in the United States, or long out of circulation, primarily in new 35mm prints.  

A powerful, unabashedly pro-socialist documentary of England’s postwar transformation from a working-class hellscape in the 1930s. Endemic poverty and Dickensian squalor are upended by Clement Attlee’s 1945 Labour Party landslide over the patrician Winston Churchill. What follows is the nationalization of the mines, railways, postal service — and the jewel in the crown, the National Health Service, which made medical care free of charge.

"The Spirit of ‘45 masterfully collages first-person accounts of prewar England with archival footage that exposes the disparity between everyday reality and the myth of the Greatest Empire on Earth." –Karen Cooper, Director, Film Forum

directed by: Ken Loach
starring: Various
2013 / 99 min / 1.85:1 / English DTS-HD MA 2.0 & 5.1

Additional info:

• Region A Blu-ray
• 24-PAGE BOOKLET including:
  • A new essay by Sukhdev Sandhu
  • A vintage interview with Ken Loach by Gavin Smith, featuring a new preface by the author
  • A transcription of Ken Loach and Nigel Lawson’s debate on BBC's Newsnight, 2009
• New trailer by Zach Clark
• English closed-captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing