Terry Dimmick, an active member of the Chapter Film Workshop and Chapter Video, presents a series of films with discussion on how Wales and the UK were changed forever by the Miners Strike which ended 40 years ago. The cultural interventions of Welsh filmmaking groups provided an alternative voice to mining communities engaged in this divisive period of Welsh Industrial history.

Rumours at the Miners Fortnight
Wales | 1984 | 26’
During the hot summer days of July 1983, miners and their wives, on a fortnight's holiday in caravans by the sea at Porthcawl, discuss the situation of their industry under the onslaught of Thatcherism. The year-long miners' strike (March 1984-85) is on the horizon. Produced by the Television History Workshop and Chapter Video Workshop in association with Channel Four.

Ceiber - the Greatest Improvisors in the World
Wales | 1986 | 46’
The men at the Penrikyber Colliery know that there is plenty of excellent coal still left in the pit, yet poor management and chronic lack of investment means that the future is stark. This is a moving portrait of the Penrhiwceiber community (featuring miners, ex-miners and members of the Women's Support Group) during the 1984/85 Miners' Strike and its aftermath.

Only Doing Their Job 
UK | 1984-5 | 26’
An insight into the story of the strike from the miners’ point of view, this powerful film was one of 6 newsreels made by a unique network of filmmakers and workshops across the UK. Featuring dramatic testimony of the policing around the events of the strike including the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ from miners and women and other eyewitnesses revealing a shocking bias used to oppose the organised labour and Trade Union structures. The Miners’ Campaign Tapes won the Grierson Award for documentary Film in 1985.

Films preserved and digitised by the National Library of Wales Screen and Sound Archive

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Chance to see miners' strike filmed from the miners' point of view