Hands - seen by Sid Chaplin

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 18th Year

Issue

Issue No.

8

Date Released

Apr 1965

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1A Mine is Born
2. 2Feet
3. 3Hands - seen by Sid Chaplin

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 3

Summary

NoS synopsis: Hands and the miner. Study of the miner’s work, ending with the modern machines that reduce heavy manual labour.
NCB Commentary - The faces of men at the end of their pit shift, the faces of men after a hard day’s work. A miner’s face is a map of his world. The world of darkness and the world of daylight. The world of work and the world he makes for himself.
No matter what kind of day it is, it’s a good day when you come out of the pit. Ab Melling speaks for miners everywhere when he says he likes light.
The dust streams away. No one minds the jostling.
From the pit baths onwards, the world opens up.
Hand and eye capturing the coutryside, trees, buildings, water or the pit where he works.
Light and the gulls stream behind the plough. The lenth of the furrow is three hundred yards - the very length of his working world down below, the coalface.
From the daylight world to the world of darkness, a world where faces are in shadow, a world where hands speak better than words. Hands hard at it, shovelling, filling a crack where the coal came out, keeping a roof over his head. In the age-old history of mining it was always the hands that had it, that took a beating.
In the odd moments of waiting, pitmen let their arms and hands hang slack to ease off the tiredness. Until one day, a man asked himself how to put power in the hands of the miner. This is the answer - power to cut and load, and power to hold up the roof - power at the fingertips. This way, the hands of the miner win, hands down.

Keywords

Mining

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases
Films on Coal Catalogue   1969, p.50
Film User   Vol.19 No.230 December 1965, p719.
The National Archives COAL 32   /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963

Credits:

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit

Commentator

Sid Chapin