Why Kes is still soaring after 50 years: The Yorkshire Post says
Almost 50 years since Kes was released in cinemas, the powerful Barnsley-based film about a working-class boy and his deep bond with a kestrel still retains an important place in popular culture and a message that resonates to this day.
As director Ken Loach tells this newspaper this weekend, his acclaimed adaptation of the Barry Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave provides a simple but powerful contrast between a bird soaring in the sky and a boy lacking that level of freedom over his own life as he is set on a course of semi-skilled manual labour by the circumstances of his life and environment.
While working life may have changed in many ways since the late 1960s, problems facing left-behind communities and the lack of opportunity for many who live in them sadly remain too common.
But another aspect of the film that made it so successful was its celebration of Yorkshire humour. That is also something, more thankfully, that has endured over the years.