A Miner's Daily Life

Shirebrook
1 Jan 1904
Silent
3m

A day in the lives of colliers at Shirebrook coal mine on the Nottinghamshire Derbyshire border

This strikingly well-preserved film is the earliest of a number of proto-documentaries exploring the hidden world of the coal miner, which has held a fascination for audiences ever since. The danger is emphasised from the first shot, as a miner tests his Davy lamp and we see foremen searching miners for matches. There's even a dramatic arrest when a man is discovered smuggling matches and tobacco down the pit. There are impressive recreations of the work of digging the coal and beautiful low-level shots of the coal carts rolling on tracks to the rail yard.

Later in 1904 the Mitchell and Kenyon company would make a longer, more detailed film, Black Diamonds: the Collier's Daily Life, with 18 scenes following the path from coal face to domestic hearth. In 1910 Kineto produced the well-known A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner, which uses a similar structure.

With thanks to Swedish Filminstitute Stockholm.

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From the collection

Robert Paul: Giant of Early Film

The most prolific filmmaker of the pioneer period of British film

The multi-talented Robert Paul (1869-1943) was the first British filmmaker to project film for a paying audience, in 1896. A contemporary of the Lumiere brothers, Paul had been producing film, in partnership with Birt Acres, for his own brand of Kinetoscope viewer since April 1895. Shortly after, he began producing for his Theatrograph and Animatographe machines, enjoying a long run at the Alhambra in Leicester Square. As an engineer, Paul made a number of significant innovations - such as an intermittent mechanism for efficiently projecting film. But he also made key innovations in film language, such as the first two-shot fiction film, Come Along Do! (1898). To cap it all, he was a shrewd businessman, with an instinctive grasp of audience tastes.