Password: oaks1866
Director – Stephen Linstead
Genre – Documentary, Short
Duration – 24 minutes 14 seconds
Country – United Kingdom
Language – English
Year – 2016
SYNOPSIS : This film, made on the 30th Anniversary of the end of the year-long coal Miners’ Strike in the UK, was completed as the last deep coal mine in the UK closed. It looks at the erasure of the industry physically from the landscape and the issues of memory that creates for the communities that continue to struggle to survive. The focus is on a small area around Barnsley, once the capital of the coalfield, following the main seams of coal, the mines and communities built on them, the stately homes and the ruined villages. The technique is that of the “video-ballad” – my own adaptation of the “radio-ballad” of Parker and MacColl – using music written and performed by miners, their sons and daughters, a small amount of “actuality”, to carrying the narrative, with some text captioning – but no direct interaction with people. The focus then is on emotion and context and communicating a mixed sense of dislocation and shared affection – of ghosts, of memory haunting the stones. But the memories can be harsh – the melancholic note of longing for a lost collective is, at best, conflicted and unresolved. But some spirit has survived and constantly reasserts itself – the struggle with dysphoria and dystopia goes on.
DMOFF AWARD –
Official Selection March 2016
