California Company Town

Lee Anne Schmitt explores California's landscape and past to document the history of one-time boom towns built and abandoned by the industries that necessitated their creation. Sold as a limitless land expansive with free opportunity, California was actually, from its onset, fissured by the interwoven needs of private and public interests. Schmitt's film covers various locations through time, as the major industries of the early 20th century (mining, lumber, oil) give way to the military, eventually leading to multinational corporations, and the use of small towns as satellites for growing urban metropolises.

2008-09-22 | en

Javier con i, Íntag

On April 10, 2014, the environmental activist and president of the Junín community, Javier Ramírez, was arrested and sentenced to ten months in prison for the crimes of “rebellion, sabotage and terrorism”. A few days later, the National Mining Company entered the area accompanied by a squad of at least 200 policemen to carry out studies related to the Llurimagua mining project, in the Íntag cloud forest. Javier with I, Íntag collects Javier Ramírez's reflections after his release, his feeling of condemned innocence, the pain of living in a divided, busy and frightened community, with its social fabric destroyed.

2018-05-07 | es

Thacker Pass: Mining The Sacred

In Nevada’s remote Thacker Pass, a fight for our future is playing out between local Indigenous tribes and powerful state and corporate entities hellbent on mining the lithium beneath their land. Vancouver-based Lithium Americas is developing a massive lithium mine at Thacker Pass, but for more than two years several local tribes and environmental organizations have tried to block or delay the mine in the courts and through direct action.

2023-09-12 | en

In the Low

Join the working men of a northern powerhouse: on the job in Gateshead workshops and at the long wall of a Northumberland pit.

1946-02-01 | en

Make money. Salut, bonsoir!

2004-06-06 | fr

Harlan County U.S.A.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

1977-01-23 | en

Iron and Steel Supply of the World

Time-travel to a 1940s classroom with this exemplary educational film.

1947-09-01 | en

Westray

In this feature documentary, filmmaker Paul Cowan offers an innovative, moving account of the Westray coal mine disaster that killed 26 men in Nova Scotia on May 9, 1992. The film focuses on the lives of three widows and three miners lucky enough not to be underground that day when the methane and coal dust ignited. But their lives were torn apart by the events. Meet some of the working men, who felt they had no option but to stay on at Westray. And wives, who heard the rumours, saw their men sometimes bloodied from accidents and stood by them, hoping it would all turn out all right. This is a film about working people everywhere whose lives are often entrusted to companies that violate the most fundamental rules of safety and decency in the name of profit.

2001-09-14 | ab

Coal

CHARBON depicts how Europe was built on fossil fuels over the past 100 years. And how it was torn apart by wars that were the result of these same fossil fuels. During 3 trips to Ukraine, Italy and Iraq, filmmaker Manu Riche explains how he and his French-German family are inseparably connected to the fate of the Iraqi filmmaker and refugee Hayder Helo.

2025-03-06 | nl

From the Ashes

Capturing Americans in communities across the country as they wrestle with the legacy of the coal industry and what its future should be under the Trump Administration. From Appalachia to the West’s Powder River Basin, the film goes beyond the rhetoric of the “war on coal” to present compelling and often heartbreaking stories about what’s at stake for our economy, health, and climate.

2017-04-26 | en

The Cost of Cobalt

In the cobalt mining areas of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), babies are being born with horrific birth defects. Scientists and doctors are finding increasing evidence of environmental pollution from industrial mining which, they believe, may be the cause of a range of malformations from cleft palate to some so serious the baby is stillborn. More than 60% of the world’s reserves of cobalt are in the DRC and this mineral is essential for the production of electric car batteries, which may be the key to reducing carbon emissions and to slowing climate change. In The Cost of Cobalt we meet the doctors treating the children affected and the scientists who are measuring the pollution. Cobalt may be part of the global solution to climate change, but is it right that Congo’s next generation pay the price with their health? Many are hoping that the more the world understands their plight, the more pressure will be put on the industry here to clean up its act.

2021-03-31 | en

Ms Rhymney Valley

Portrait of a community in the heart of South Wales almost one year into the miners' strike of the 1980s.

1985-07-10 | en

The Devil's Miner

'The Devil's Miner' tells the story of 14-year-old Basilio who worships the devil for protection while working in a Bolivian silver mine to support his family.

2005-11-05 | en

Senghenydd - Glamorgan, South Wales, portrait of a mining town

Warwick company newsreel material of the Universal Colliery at Senghenydd on fire after an explosion on 14th October 1913, and footage of a funeral procession for some of the 439 mine workers who were killed, is followed by a collage of images of the town and its people as they are 50 years later. Wynford Vaughan Thomas, narrating his own commentary, wonders if "colour"- superficial re-decoration – can really make any difference to "the inner heart of Senghenydd". Shot on spare, blank pieces of film by James Clark. Assisted by local amateur photographer and former miner Bill Probert. Script written and narrated by Wynford Vaughan Thomas. 1964.

| en

The Miners' Strike and Me

Documentary marking the 30th anniversary of the 1984 miners' strike, one of the bitterest industrial disputes in British history, with stories from both sides of the conflict.

2014-03-12 | en

The Last Glacier

A docudrama on the closing of the town of Schefferville. When Raoul loses his job at the mine because the operations are ending, he's been settled there for ten years with Carmen and their son. They're now forced to leave the town, leaving behind the traces of an ephemeral prosperity.

1984-11-16 | fr

On Denniston

Eighth Wonder of the Industrial World

2005-12-31 | en

Generations

Thirteen static shots of coal-fired power stations across the United States, seen in rural landscapes, urban settings, sun or cloud and at all times of year. Whatever the location or season, there’s always at least one chimney belching out fumes.

2020-02-21 | en

Země se otvírá

1939-05-26 | cs

Mladí nastupují směnu

1951-01-01 | cs