This film is part of Free

Title of error

See Help

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.

Industry sponsored film 1946 20 mins

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.

Featuring

Lionel Marson

Genres

Industry sponsored film

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Subjects

Watch for free

Miner Miner

Documentary 1950 36 mins Silent Location: Featherstone

Absorbing overview of coalmining in the early years of nationalisation.

Watch for free

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.

Watch for free

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.