The North East Film Archive is one of a network of regional film archives established to collect, preserve and show film made in, or about the North East of England. Our collections are non-fiction, and date from the early 1900s to the present day, providing a rich record of life in the region over the 20th century. Many of our films are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Coast of Commerce
Take a revealing tour along a coast of contrasts, from the folksy freshness of Whitby to the coaly Tyne, queen of all rivers.
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Overview
Presenter Austin Steele invites viewers on a fascinating visual sweep along the industrious and scenic North Sea coastline, collecting characterful and instructive stories as he goes. This poetic 1960s television travelogue takes in the imaginary Gothic spirit of Whitby, a web of steel in boom-town Middlesbrough, historic Cerebos salt works at Greatham, the cosmopolitan South Shields market and the shipyards of Tyneside where so many journeys have begun.
Between 1962 and 1963 Tyne Tees Television broadcast superb documentaries on the rivers and coastline of the North East in a series called Your Heritage. Coast of Commerce continues the legacy of the travelogue, with a combination of social insight, picturesque landscape, evocative camerawork and descriptive voiceover. It is beautifully scripted by Phil McDonnell, despite the dubious comparison of South Shields market to an Eastern bazaar due to a glimpse of three Yemeni men out shopping. True to the genres early roots, this travelogue alludes to the exotic, which is also evoked in picture postcard fisherwomen in Staithes bonnets and Bram Stokers imagined Whitby Goth.
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