Dear all,
My name is Andy Mark Simpson, I'm a film Director from Ashington in Northumberland, and I'm looking to make a short documentary about life in coal-mining towns. I've worked hard to find email addresses because I am looking to make contact with people who have worked or lived around the coalmines or who are interested in coal-mining history and to listen to your thoughts.
I have made one film already which is a fictional film set during the 1974 miners strike ('Young Hearts Run Free' out in cinemas in the Spring) and I am now interested in making a documentary with a view to perhaps putting it on dvd.
I'm looking for opinions on what to shape the documentary around. I'd like people to come forward with memories and stories. I'm interested in the life around the villages and exactly what it meant when the mines closed. Is there a future for the coal industry in Britain? Will clean coal technologies be brought in? Can there be a coal-mining workforce?
I'm also interested in the socialist politics and in the strikes, especially the differences between the 1984 strike and those in the 1970s which are less well documented. What do you think were the rights and wrongs of the strikes?
If you're interested in my previous film 'Young Hearts Run Free' which is set in a mining village in 1974 there is a trailer at www.bedefilms.co.uk and you can leave contact details to demonstrate support for it's release around the country in April.
It's a subject I'm very interested in and I'm eager to learn more. I would be grateful if you could share your experiences and memories to help me shape a documentary. If you have friends and others who have worked in the mines or are interested in mining history then please feel free to circulate this email. I'm keen on discussing it with as many people as possible.
Thank you,
Andy Mark Simpson
Bede Films
info@bedefilms.co.uk
www.bedefilms.co.uk
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How'ya. I just stumbled across this document by accident and hope you've had replies before mine! I live In Ohio (USA) alongside many, many factories using coal to create fuel for the East Coast (such as New York City.) They are dotted up and down the Ohio river. As a child, rain would be yellow and painful; definitely not good for farming. Eventually the strip mines were finally bare and poverty set in.I think some mines are still in operation, but not sure which ones
ReplyDelete. I am very interested in the historical side of this, simply because it is still a stalemate: Close or downgrade power plants and the job loss would be tremendous: the people of our area are slaved to those jobs. That is all that is available employment here. And so they own us, just like in times not all so far away when you were owned by the company town. Why? Because they didn't pay money, but vouchers to buy things in the company store. And they provides places to live, but you had to pay rent. That rent didn't come from money, either, but from back breaking work. And so the payments never stop.
Anyway, I am not afraid to name names. The biggest power producer near me is AEP (Appalachian Electrical Power.) Eventually they got tired of having to pay people in the surrounding area money to have their cars painted twice a year, due to acid rain destruction. So...THEY BOUGHT THE WHOLE BLEEDING VILLAGE THAT SURROUNDED IT AN BULLDOZED IT TO THE GROUND. NO SHIT. THE VILLAGE OF CHESHIRE, OHIO IS GONE, NOT EVEN A GHOST TOWN, JUST LIKE IT NEVER EXISTED. But it did, as I went to school there.
Check out the West Virginia state archives, They have loads of information and are great. While you are at it, listen to the now sadly defunct band Uncle Tupelo sing an American traditional songs. They will break your heart, then make you want to live in a world where people are good. They were young then, just a wee bit older than I because I couldn't go to their shows unless they were all-ages and I didn't booze it up. Innocence lost. Innocence defiled.
Oh, I do remember our coal is delivered to AEP via barge on the Ohio River, from...the South, since they are north bound. So I guess all our mines are dried up. Sorry to waste this letter that didn't help at all!