Mining Review 15th Year No. 5

In this feature documentary, filmmaker Paul Cowan offers an innovative, moving account of the Westray coal mine disaster that killed 26 men in Nova Scotia on May 9, 1992. The film focuses on the lives of three widows and three miners lucky enough not to be underground that day when the methane and coal dust ignited. But their lives were torn apart by the events. Meet some of the working men, who felt they had no option but to stay on at Westray. And wives, who heard the rumours, saw their men sometimes bloodied from accidents and stood by them, hoping it would all turn out all right. This is a film about working people everywhere whose lives are often entrusted to companies that violate the most fundamental rules of safety and decency in the name of profit.

A talented group of orphaned children in Swaziland create a fictional heroine and send her on a dangerous quest.

In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.

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Documentary about the emergence of the strike movement in the iron ore mines of Rudňa in Slovakia. The miner Michal Ogurčák introduced a new way of mining iron ore here, overcame initial misunderstandings, and eventually inspired 160 followers to perform striking feats by his example.

A light and somewhat satirical look at the problems and pleasures of Continental holiday travel. A passenger on the Hook Continental Express from Liverpool St. imagines the possible destinations of his fellow passengers.

Warwick company newsreel material of the Universal Colliery at Senghenydd on fire after an explosion on 14th October 1913, and footage of a funeral procession for some of the 439 mine workers who were killed, is followed by a collage of images of the town and its people as they are 50 years later. Wynford Vaughan Thomas, narrating his own commentary, wonders if "colour"- superficial re-decoration – can really make any difference to "the inner heart of Senghenydd". Shot on spare, blank pieces of film by James Clark. Assisted by local amateur photographer and former miner Bill Probert. Script written and narrated by Wynford Vaughan Thomas. 1964.

Documentary marking the 30th anniversary of the 1984 miners' strike, one of the bitterest industrial disputes in British history, with stories from both sides of the conflict.

From 1950 to 1953, one hundred thousand children were orphaned by the Korean War. With no resources to mend the wounds, the two sides, North and South, took different paths to find homes and families for the war orphans. While the children of South Korea were sent to Europe and the United States through ‘International Adoption’, the children of North Korea were distributed across Eastern Europe through a method called ‘Commissioned Education’. As a result, more than five thousand children from the North had to spend nearly a decade living in foreign lands across Eastern Europe. This story is a record of their lives, which used to be kept hidden from the rest of the world. There is a key to understanding how North Korea's closed political structure began and how the ‘Juche ideology’ was formed in this documentary movie. Understanding North Korea in the 1950s is an important way to understand North Korea at present.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastover's refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

Gold fever has gripped northern Niger. In search of the precious metal, and despite the risks, an army of researchers has invaded the sites of interest. While camps are set up and dismantled as rumours of new leads spread, Moussa and his companions are banking on the Ikazan vein.

The movie recalls children who suffered mental and physical harm both during the last century, particularly in religious orphanages, and during the time of early modernperiod witch-hunts. It shows that the mindsets and behavioural patterns of both time periods are more alike than one might think.

Documents the cultural and ecological impacts of coal stripmining, uranium mining, and oil shale development in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona – homeland of the Hopi and Navajo.

The mining industry, which always had been “sponsor” and “financier” of the soccer clubs in the Ruhr valley during the post-war period, doesn’t exist anymore nowadays in that form. Many of the once glorious clubs which dominated German soccer until the 1970s faded into obscurity without financial backers. The documentary “Im Westen ging die Sonne auf" ("The sun had risen in the west“) shows the history of the “Revierfußball” from after the second World War until the decline of the mining industry and recalls legendary players and forgotten clubs. The film shows especially how deeply rooted the sport was back then in the entire lifestyle of the Ruhr area - in private life as well as in society - and how structural change also left clearly visible marks in sports. With pictures from back then, interviews with contemporary witnesses, and footage of original locations nowadays, a contemporary document of German post-war history, by taking the example of soccer, has been created.

Part-fiction documentary into the New Silk Road. AAA Cargo traces the anticipation of infrastructure and trade on a planetary scale, following its distribution networks which are expanding across vast regions between China and Europe. Here, government efforts to speed up the movement of trade collide with more-than-human choreographies of sand, people and goods.

Newly into addiction recovery, an urgent threat emerges to spur filmmaker, Mark Titus back to the Alaskan wilderness - where the people of Bristol Bay and the world's last intact wild salmon runs face devastation if a massive copper mine is constructed.

Documentary about a Finnish mining company struggling with production and environmental management problems.

A documentary about Nain, a Labrador Inuit community located near the world's largest nickel and copper deposits. As commercial mining interests prepare to exploit the resources, local residents consider the potential environmental and cultural impact. Meanwhile longstanding Aboriginal land claims are unsettled.

A film about the first benefit rock concert when major musicians performed to raise relief funds for the poor of Bangladesh. The Concert for Bangladesh was a pair of benefit concerts organised by former Beatles guitarist George Harrison and Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. The shows were held at 2:30 and 8:00 pm on Sunday, 1 August 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, to raise international awareness of, and fund relief for refugees from East Pakistan, following the Bangladesh Liberation War-related genocide.

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