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Watch online: Cinema mines rich seam of Britain's coal heritage
FROM life deep underground to wearing tutus for a charity ballet if offers a fascinating glimpse of the century of coal.
King Coal, a programme of films from the British Film Institute's National Archive, promises insight into a bygone era of a miner's life through the ages.
Next month the Picture House, Keighley, will be presenting a one-night screening of the 11 rare films from the Mitchell and Kenyon collection, the GPO and National Coal Board Film Units, as well as campaigning videotapes made on behalf of striking miners to create a riveting piece of history.
The films show working conditions from the 1900s to the 1980s, mining stories in both speech and song and what miners got up to in their spare time, whether visiting Butlin's (at Blackpool and Filey) in the 1940s or donning tutus for a charity ballet at Normanton, half a century before Billy Elliot.
There are recruitment ads and propaganda films, but perhaps most poignantly there is also a candid and outspoken look at miners' wives supporting their husbands during the 1984 strike in Not Just Tea and Sandwiches.
From 1910 there is the evocative A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner – one of the first authentic documentaries shown here with a new score. It depicts various stages in a miner's working day, from locking the lamps prior to descent to sorting the freshly-won coal.
And in Miners Leaving Pendlebury Colliery from 1901 this is one of the earliest films of British miners, shown here at the end of a shift.
One of the miners is black, a reminder that Britain had a small ethnic minority long before mass immigration.
Charles Morris, owner of the Picture House, said: "We are very privileged to have been chosen to present this programme of interesting and entertaining films.
"Some of the places shown will be familiar to Yorkshire folk and it is both nostalgic and a little sad to look at some of the films of fifty years ago and witness the optimism they displayed, with the knowledge of what eventually happened to this industry .
"Our new digital projector gives us access to programmes like this; I hope this will be the first of many such events."
Eileen Gilchrist, manager at the 100-seat Picture House, added: "It will be interesting to see what kind of audience turns up for this screening.
"We might get a lot of students coming in who are interested in history as part of their course and perhaps we might get people who have family who were miners and are now living in Keighley.
"I am intrigued by it. I like to see different parts of British society. We ran an art film at our Skipton cinema recently called Britain at Bay (a morale-boosting film about Britons defending the country against the Nazis), to show audiences part of British life they may not have been aware of.
"Because we now have a digital system this allows to show this type of documentary films to a wider audience and which are normally something you would only be able to see on BBC or Channel 4.
"Coal mining formed the backbone of the industry of this country and enabled so many other industries to flourish by supplying their heating needs and so on.
"If it was not for people who had to live that lifestyle at the turn of the century we would not have the industry that we have today.''
The showing takes place at the Picture House on December 9 at 7.45pm.
The true film noir
Many of the films contained in King Coal are shot in black and white and are all the more evocative of the brutal conditions miners often had to endure.
In Songs of the Coalfields for example there is the poignancy of The Sandgate Nursing Song from 1964.
The Newcastle ballad is performed by Ewan MacColl and Isla Cameron, who portrays a mother singing to her baby son about his likely future as a miner.
And The Blantyre Explosion from the same year – 1964 – marks the disaster at Dixon's Colliery at High Blantyre in 1877, in which more than 300 miners lost their lives.
Footage courtesy BFI National Archive
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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