Above Us the Earth

At times inclined to substitute special pleading for analytical fact, but extremely refreshing as a study of Welsh miners and their environment, especially given the alacrity with which the British cinema has usually retreated to defensive stereotypes to characterise the working class. Documentary footage concerning the closure of Ogilvie Colliery in 1975 and the miners' attitude towards this is intercut with staged sequences of the decline and death of an old miner from lung disease. The subject is sombre and its treatment reflective, as well it might be when the director, himself a miner's son, had to mortgage his home to help complete the film.