Ever since Edwardian times, cameras and screens have had a vast yet intricate, complex and fascinating relationship with coal, coalmining, coalminers and coal communities. This is an inherently cinematic industry, with its elemental basis, its visual contrasts, its human dangers and dramas, and an iconic – if contested – place in our national story, rooted in the industrial revolution. This story took on new dimensions as videotape production arose first to supplement then to supplant film’s generations-long fascination for the coal industry, itself entering its final decades - which were intense, troubled and tragic. The nationalised industry itself – the National Coal Board (later British Coal) – had been actively using film since its 1947 inception. Now a separate video unit emerged, producing tapes in parallel with the more prestigious film unit's celluloid production up until the 1984 miners strike. After the strike, the film unit having closed, it solely inherited the task of using moving image to communicate company information to colliery staff. Meanwhile, national and regional TV took an ever growing interest – from many angles, not least that of growing industrial strife. Last but not least, video enabled coalmining communities to project their own voice. All these media forms are represented in this richly engrossing collection.