Help can sometimes be found in the most unlikely places. Ken Loach, the most indefatigable of old-school, social-conscience film directors, has had his plea for vital film-making supplies answered by the animation house Pixar, some 5,300 miles away just outside San Francisco.

What's all the more remarkable is that Pixar, the cutting-edge studio, which has revolutionised animation through the use of computers and digital technology, has supplied the British film-maker with hard-to-find, fast-disappearing equipment for traditional film editing, done the old fashioned way with celluloid and adhesive tape.

Loach, 77, is currently working on Jimmy's Hall, an Irish-set drama about a communist who returns to the country of his birth in the 1930s to reopen the dance hall he once ran. It is likely to be Loach's last full-length feature film, after which he plans to concentrate on documentaries. The veteran director is editing the film in London's Soho on a Steenbeck flatbed editing machine – unlike nearly all modern film editing, which employs computer-based systems like Avid or Final Cut Pro.

Loach's producer Rebecca O'Brien said she thinks Jimmy's Hall could be the last ever feature film made in the traditional way – "shot on film, edited on film" – but possible disaster struck this time last week when, she said, they realised they needed some 25 rolls of "edge numbering" tape – vital for synchronising picture and sound when they are two separate, physical tracks. "We could have gone to a manufacturer and persuaded them to make up a new batch – but that would be 500 rolls minimum and completely out of our price bracket," said O'Brien.

Instead, O'Brien persuaded UK film industry trade magazine Screen to run a short item, and she was staggered by the response. Steve Bloom, an editor working at Pixar Animation studios just outside San Francisco who just completed a second editor role on Monsters University, got in touch on behalf of Pixar's entire editing team, to offer them their entire stock – 19 rolls of edge number tape – and FedExed it over straight away.

Loach said: "Most of us in this business enjoy working with real

35mm film stock. So it was very heartening to know that the editors at

Pixar share our enthusiasm. The computer isn't king everywhere just

yet."

O'Brien added: "It's really heart-warming to get such support from

them" and explains that, unbeknown to anyone in Loach's company, the Pixar team were apparently huge fans of Loach's work. "Steve had spent time building bridges in Nicaragua, so was very fond of Carla's Song [Loach's 1996 film about a Scottish bus driver, played by Robert Carlyle, who travels to Nicaragua during the civil war]."

Ken Loach and co-editors recreate an illustration sent to them by Pixar. Photograph: Pixar

Bloom also sent over a drawing, by Monsters University story supervisor Kelsey Mann, of Monsters Inc characters Mike and Sulley surrounded by rolls of film in an editing room, signed by all the Pixar editors with a good luck message. Loach returned the compliment with a photograph of himself, Morris and Clegg giving the thumbs up.

O'Brien said Loach is not simply an anti-digital diehard. Their last film, the documentary The Spirit of 45, about Labour's postwar election victory, was edited on a computer: "All the archive footage is digitised, so you have no choice." But Loach and his team – editor Jonathan Morris and assistant editor Paul Clegg – prefer working with physical film. "It's not that we're digging our heels in, most people prefer to do it this way. The period in between the cuts," said O'Brien, "is thinking time. Plus, you tend to make less cuts as each one becomes more important."

To Loach and O'Brien's delight, five more rolls arrived yesterday courtesy of London-based editor Mary Finlay. "We can definitely finish now," said O'Brien. Jimmy's Hall is likely to be finished in spring 2014, with a potential release pencilled in for that summer after a festival run.