This film is part of Free
In the Low
Join the working men of a northern powerhouse: on the job in Gateshead workshops and at the long wall of a Northumberland pit.
Overview
Claustrophobics will quiver at the miners in a low shaft, laying on a conveyor belt and transported deep under Northumberland. Work on the floor of the belt makers in Gateshead is less cramped but no lighter. There are youthful apprentices and old hands side by side at jig and lathe; in the era before automation, manual operations rule and there's a job for all. The dialogue between narrator and an American reveals the film's promotional intent, but surely no one's buying that phoney accent?
Production company the Big Six Film Unit was one of many small documentary outfits outputting industrial films in the post-war era. While filming of the nationalised coal producer was sewn up by the state's documentary makers (at the Central Office of Information and National Coal Board Film Unit), Big Six's eccentric supremo, Edward Cook, picked up work around the industry making low-budget promotional films for ancillary companies and the National Union of Mineworkers. This film followed and continued another Big Six film, In the Pentland Hills, made for the same client: mining machinery supplier Hugh Wood & Co.
Related
Miner Miner
Documentary 1950 36 mins Silent Location: Featherstone
Absorbing overview of coalmining in the early years of nationalisation.
Thud and Blunder in Knock off Time Thud and Blunder in Knock off Time
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1964 2 mins
Miners' safety training - marked by stylish animation and gallows humour.
Energy Energy
Advert 1935 42 mins Silent Location: Cardiff/Caerdydd
Coal, between the world wars, makes the industrialised world go round and Cory Bros & Co Ltd, with collieries in south Wales and oil refineries across the globe, is a major player.
Big Pit Big Pit
Industry sponsored film 1978 7 mins Location: Blaenavon
Memories of Blaenavon Colliery, Monmouthshire, as it nears its end.
Guilty Chimneys Guilty Chimneys
Documentary 1954 18 mins
Elegiac sponsored film imploring viewers to "allow the sun to penetrate the haze of ignorance" and relieve British cities of pollution.
People Will Always Need Coal People Will Always Need Coal
Advert 1975 1 mins
Deliriously kitsch recruitment ad for the implausibly glamorous world of coalmining.
Frederick Wiseman's High School - a discussion Frederick Wiseman's High School - a discussion
Short documentary 2026 22 mins
Filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman and curator Matthew Barrington discuss Frederick Wiseman’s High School with Sandra Hebron.
Hard, Cracked the Wind Hard, Cracked the Wind
Horror 2019 17 mins
A haunting with words is the lure between life and death for a young Cornish poet.
A Last Resort A Last Resort
Comedy 2022 17 mins
Rose is desperate to celebrate her 60th birthday in style, but her daughter Genevieve is struggling to ignore some recent tragic news about her mum.
The Walk The Walk
Drama 2023 12 mins
Adeel Akhtar portrays a man on a weekly trek to his nearest JobCentre, entering a state of purgatory through barriers put in place by the system.
Seagull Seagull
Horror 2022 6 mins
Seagull is a recovering drug addict who is about to have a very strange night on The English Riviera.
Octopus Octopus
2021 13 mins
Upon returning to her home town for a funeral, a young woman reconnects with the friends she left behind.