Light out of Darkness

Throughout October and November we continue the BFI's celebration of Britain's coal heritage with our Reading Room display. We focus on The Mining Review and documentaries, but give a small salute to feature films as well.

The National Coal Board's Films on Coal catalogues, and the Film Unit's Mining Review archive can be requested via the Reading Room counter. The later is part of Special Collections and contains commentaries, dubbing sheets, correspondence and other ephemera relating to the making of the cine-magazine.

The items listed below are on open display.

• The British Film Institute presents a series of programmes on: the documentary film in Great Britain, compiled by Edgar Anstey (London: British Film Institute, 1951)
• Caverns of the Night, edited by William B. Thesing (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2000)
• Cinema and community, by D.W. McKiernan (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
• The documentary film; being a lecture given to the British Film Institute's 1945 summer school on film appreciation, by Donald Alexander (London: British Film Institute, 1945)
• Donald Alexander interviewed by Bert Hogenkamp ([n.d]: [s.n.], 1996)
• The film in industry, by Public Education Films (Pinner, Middlesex: Public Education Films, [194?])
• Gala day and The Challenge: a study of two films, idiosyncratic in that they exemplify, and exaggerate, the transition between the tradition and methods which had evolved in British documentary by the early sixties...., by Joe Wood (Unpublished project, B.A. Humanities, Ealing College of Higher Education, 1982)
• Guide to industrial film making, by British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association and British Engineers Association (London: British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Assn/British Engineers Assn, 1950)
• A kestrel for a knave, by Barry Hines (London: Penguin, 1969)
• Life after Kes: an anthology of the film Kes, by Simon W. Golding (Bridgnorth: GET Publishing, 2005)
• Light out of darkness: the coalfields of the North-East on film, by Northern Film and Television Archive (Gateshead, Tyne and Wear: Northern Film and Television Archive, 1987)
• Michael Balcon presents: a lifetime of films, by Michael Balcon (London: Hutchinson, 1969)
• The Molly Maguires, by Arthur H. Lewis (London: New English Library, 1969)
• Paul Robeson: the years of promise and achievement, by Sheila Tully Boyle and Andrew Bunie (Amherst; Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)
• The silent village; a story of Wales - and Lidice, by Noel Joseph (London: Pilot Press Ltd, 1943)
• Television and the miners' strike, by Guy Cumberbatch (London: Broadcasting Research Unit, 1986)
• This modern age, by Richard Harkness (Unpublished essay, London Film Seminar, not dated)
• Using projectors, by National Coal Board. Film Section (London: National Coal Board, [1965?])
• Wales and cinema: the first hundred years, David Berry (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994)
• Which side are you on?: Ken Loach and his films, by Anthony Hayward (London: Bloomsbury, 2004)
• The whole world in his hands: a pictorial biography of Paul Robeson, by Susan Robeson (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1981)
• 'With an eye to the future': Donald Alexander and Budge Cooper - documentary film makers, edited by Janet McBain and Kevin Cowle (Glasgow: Scottish Screen, 1997)

For a history of coal mining on screen see King Coal (Screenonline).