This Working Life: King Coal

Screening across the UK from September 2009.

Launching in conjunction with the BFI's Britain's Industrial Heritage project, this programme offers a remarkable insight into an industry which came to define 20th century Britain, from precious early films such as A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner (1910) to 1940s animation and 1980s documentary footage shot during the turmoil of the Miners' Strike.

King Coal *
(1948 | 3 mins)
Commissioned by the National Coal Board, this colourful and inventive animated propaganda film shows King Coal roused from his underground kingdom by the sound of Britain's industries, railways and homes calling out for more coal.

Miners Leaving Pendlebury Colliery *
(1901 | 1 min)
Taken from the Mitchell & Kenyon collection, 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.

A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner
(1910 | 10 mins)
One of the first authentic documentaries (as opposed to simple actuality records), 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.
Score courtesy of Vector Lovers

Coal Face *
(1935 | 11 mins)
Long regarded as a classic of British documentary, chiefly for its remarkably inventive soundtrack (words by W.H. Auden, music by Benjamin Britten), but also for its vivid depiction of mining conditions a dozen years before nationalisation.
Courtesy of Royal Mail Group Ltd.

The Sandgate Nursing Song *
(1964 | 2 mins)
Composed by the blind singer Robert Nunn in the early 1800s, this 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.

Mining Review 7th Year No.12: Balletomines *
(1954 | 3 mins)
Miners from the West Riding Colliery give a performance of Delibes' 'Coppélia' for charity at Normanton Central Town Club, with firm support from the newsreel commentator: "If Robert Helpmann's a bit better, so what? It's all in a good cause!"

Gala Day
(Dir: John Irvin | 1963 | 10 mins (extract))
This portrait of the Durham Miners' Gala was filmed in July 1962 for the BFI's Experimental Film Fund. The historic annual event bursts into life as thousands descend on the city for a lively meeting of politics and play.

Songs of the Coalfields: The Best Little Doorboy
(1964 | 2 mins)
Ewan MacColl performs a 19th century ballad from the Welsh valleys, celebrating by name the various support workers at the Rhondda pits, especially the boys who used to work the ventilation doors as the first stage in a mining career.

Big Job *
(1965 | 2 mins)
Very much of its time, this NCB-produced recruitment ad aims, not always convincingly, to present a career in mining as making an essential contribution to helping the 60s swing.

What About That Job?
(Dir: Peter Pickering | 1970 | 6 mins)
One of several films acted by real mineworkers and used in NCB management training courses. These films betray a rather sour early-70s view of things, in this case Big Job in reverse: a new recruit isn't happy working down the mine...

Forty Years On
(1978 | 3 mins (extract))
This film was made to celebrate the achievements of nationalisation, its commentary confidently (if tragically erroneously) predicting coal's central role in the British economy, "not only for the next 40 years but for the next 400".

The Battle of Orgreave *
(Dir: Mike Figgis | 2001 | 2 mins (extract))
Artist Jeremy Deller conceived this re-enactment of one of the most violent clashes of the 1984 Miners' Strike, when picketers fought with police in the streets and fields of Orgreave, South Yorkshire.
Courtesy of Channel 4

Not Just Tea and Sandwiches *
(1984 | 12 mins)
One of the campaign videotapes made to help present the striking miners' cause in the face of an overwhelming government propaganda blitz. This complete edition is particularly poignant, as it looks at the impact of the strike on miners' wives and families.
Courtesy of Platform Films

Songs of the Coalfields: The Blantyre Explosion *
(1964 | 3 mins)
This mournful Scottish ballad commemorates the disaster at Dixon's Colliery at High Blantyre in 1877, in which 310 miners perished. The ballad has added poignancy by being told from the viewpoint of one of their girlfriends.

Mining Review 2nd Year No.12 *
(1949 | 5 mins (extract))
Miners and their families take a well-earned break with visits to Blackpool and Butlins at Filey, in this edition of the National Coal Board's long running newsreel Mining Review (1947-83).

* Titles marked with an asterisk are part of the shorter version of this touring programme.
Total running time: long version, 77 mins; short version: 45 mins.

For a list of venues playing King Coal, please visit www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/mediatheque