Double Vision: Boxing for Hartlepool

Synopsis

George Bowes was a professional boxer whose career spanned the economic boom years of the late fifties and sixties. He was also a face worker at Blackhall colliery in Co. Durham during the period of Roben’s "rationalisation" of the mining industry. Despite his acknowledged skill and effort, and against all predictions, George’s ambition to win a title was never realised, but his aspirations have been fulfilled a generation later by the young boxers he trains at his own gym in Hartlepool.

In this partly dramatised film, the activities of the gym are seen against a background of economic decline, through the eyes of Ron an ex-boxer (Sammy Johnson) and Ray (Ray Stubbs) a television researcher, whose research into a subject for which he has little affection, forms the framework of the film. Even during the boom period of the 50s and 60s when Lord Robens was visiting drilling towns off Blackhall Colliery and promising "200 years of coal", the Hartlepool area had one of the highest levels of unemployment in the country. In the eighties, with steelworks and shipyards derelict, the region was littered with abandoned mines, including Blackhall, and the unemployment level was around 25%.

Boxing has traditionally flourished in working-class areas, and in the past has been seen as an escape route from the web of poverty -the "hungry fighter" syndrome of the 1930s. In this film, through his interviews with boxers in the 80s, Ray discovers reasons other than hunger to be the spur -a desire for the trappings of affluence- a holiday every year, house, car, things inevitably denied to those for whom lucrative work has ceased to be a possibility. The desire to be "somebody" in a society where status is inexorable linked to "success", and to lift a town from the bottom of the league, as expressed by George Feeney in his assertion that he is "Boxing for Hartlepool".

Through the conflict between the two dramatised characters, the film is an attempt to address the contradictions within a sport, which is accepted by all as brutalising and dangerous and tries to examine the dilemma of the boxers themselves - competitors in a free enterprise world, where "winning is the proof of everything" and the losers are destined for oblivion -"you deserve nothing that your two hands can’t earn". DOUBLE VISION grew from documentary material, the drama being developed to examine questions thrown up from contact with the boxers

Language

English

Country

Great Britain

Year of release

1987

Year of production

1986

Subjects

Sociology; Sports science

Keywords

boxing; communities; mining industries; motivation; unemployment; working classes; North-eastern England

Online availability

URI

http://jiscmediahub.ac.uk/

Price

academic subscription

Delivery

Download

Distribution Formats

Type

Film

Format

16mm

Availability

Hire

Type

VHS

Format

PAL

Price

£15.00 (+p&p)

Availability

Sale

Duration/Size

60 minutes

Year

2003

Production Company

Name

Amber Films

Web

http://www.amber-online.com External site opens in new window

Phone

0191 232 2000

Fax

0191 232 3217

Address

5 Side
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 3JE

Distributor

Name

JISC MediaHub

Notes

NB. As of 1 September 2016, the Jisc MediaHub subscription service is no longer available. However, all the multimedia content that Jisc has licensed for use by higher and further education institutions, which is currently accessed via the MediaHub subscription, is available through a new service, MediaPlus, at http://mediaplus.alexanderstreet.com.