The Miners tapes

1984/5,  6 tapes, total running time: 92 mins   various video formats
Winners of the 1985 Grierson documentary award.
In 1984 a group of independent film and video makers including Platform Films decided to show their support for the miners’ strike. On the picket lines, at the marches and in the soup kitchens, they recorded the testimonies of striking miners, their wives and supporters, in a fight against the anti-strike propaganda dominating the mainstream media. These are the videos they produced, a testimony to solidarity and activism, tackling issues which continue to occupy us today: the right to demonstrate, police tactics, political double-speak and the role of the media. They document a cataclysmic episode of British history.
“The Miners’ Campaign Tapes are key examples of a strand of radical oppositional filmmaking in Britain which stretches from the workers’ newsreels of the 1930s to the contemporary video activism of organisations such as Undercurrents and SchMovies”. Julian Petley, Professor of Screen Media and Journalism Brunel University