This film is part of Free
Mining Review 6th Year No. 5
An intriguing blast from soccer's past: Wrexham meet Beighton Miners Welfare in FA Cup First Round.
Overview
Action highlights of a 1952-53 FA cup first round match form the centrepiece of this fine edition of the cinemagazine Mining Review. It's an intriguing blast from soccer's past: the days when a miners welfare team (from Beighton, S. Yorks) could face a third division club (step forward, Wrexham FC). An zealously even-handed commentary stresses that despite Wrexham's 3-0 victory, Beighton put up a highly respectable defence. Not only that - Wrexham's goal-scorers are fellow coalminers!
In a characteristic Mining Review mix, the football story is bookended by a 'technical' opening item, and a 'social' closing piece, part of the series' ongoing sequence of pit 'Profiles'. The opener, from Lanarkshire, re-packages footage from an internal technical training film, 'Surface Mechanisation (Kingshill Colliery)', as the peppy and pleasurable 'Rope Trick'. The Profile, meanwhile, is of the NCB's East Midlands Area medical officer, based at Thorseby (later, incidentally, among the very last UK pits to close, in 2015). It's framed as a family story: the doctor and his brothers, all university graduates, are sons of a miner who's worked 43 years underground (i.e. since 1910!). It's a touching illustration of the social mobility, resulting from social reform, that marked the last century.
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.
Shoot Your Shot Shoot Your Shot
Drama 2022 12 mins
An emotional stand-off takes flight, as teen best friends Ronit and Brennan come to terms with navigating that fuzzy feeling in their stomachs, all whilst learning to skateboard.
Yellow Yellow
Drama 2023 13 mins
In Taliban controlled Afghanistan, Laili walks into a Chadari store in Kabul to buy her first full body veil from a Talib shopkeeper and face a new future.
Look Like You Look Like You
Drama 2022 13 mins
While visiting the adoptive family of her eight-year-old biological son, Tara relays advice she gathered from growing up as a queer outcast.
Nehemich Nehemich
Drama 2023 23 mins
Banished in a dilapidated village hut during her menstruation, a young girl waits to elope with her lover.
Interview with Pam Cullen Interview with Pam Cullen
Inside Film 2020 53 mins
Interview with Pam Cullen who at 97 boasts an incredible career spanning over fifty years in the Indian film industry.
Muscle - Exclusive Q&A Muscle - Exclusive Q&A
Short interview 2024 34 mins
Director Gerard Johnson talks Nia Child through the making of Muscle, an adrenalized drama that tears into the stereotypes of masculinity and male friendship.