Akenfield

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Akenfield is a 1974 British film directed by Peter Hall in 1974, based loosely upon the book Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village by Ronald Blythe (1969). Blythe has a cameo role as the vicar and all other parts are played by real-life villagers who improvised their own dialogue; there are no professional actors in the piece. Blythe's book is the distillation of interviews with 49 local people, maintaining privacy with false names and sometimes amalgamating two people in one. Blythe once referred to his book as a work of poetry. The film is a work of fiction, based on an 18-page story synopsis by Blythe.