Happy Lands now on tour

As part of the Glasgow Film Festival, that recently finished, the hugely successful premiere of The Happy Lands took place. Indeed, so successful was the film, that an extra (third) screening had to be added!  The film is a unique collaboration between many hundreds of volunteers from the Fife coalfield communities and Theatre Workshop Scotland.  It tells the story of the 1926 General Strike and the subsequent miners’ lockout as it impacts on a pit town in Fife. More details are in a previous blog.

Dan Guthrie, miners leader,
confronts the pit supervisor

I reviewed the film in the Morning Star, here. And one of the points I made is that the film does not have a commercial distributor. This is because the distributors are unsure that the film will have an audience. Therefore the producers have started a roadshow (with the premiere) that is traveling to many coal mining and other areas in Scotland and the rst of Britain and being shown in halls and theatres as well as cinemas to try and  build up the level of support to take back to the distributors.

The details of this roadshow change frequently, but the list below is where things stand at present. Links to the venues for tickets (where appropriate) are included.

MARCH:

• FRI 1^st; BLANTYRE MINERS WELFARE blantyre miners welfare
• SUN 3^rd; PENICUIK CINEMA penicuik cinema
• SUN 10^th; EDEN COURT, INVERNESS eden-court. whats-on
• SUN 10^th; ADAM SMITH THEATRE, KIRKCALDY adam smith
• MON 11^th; ADAM SMITH THEATRE, KIRKCALDY (11.00 am)
• SAT 16^th; DURHAM MINERS, REDHILLS, Durham Miners
• MON 18^th; LOGANLEA MINERS WELFARE (Pitstop) loganleamw
• WED 20^th; GALA CINEMA. DURHAM gala durham
• FRI 22^nd; KIRKCONNELL MINERS MEMORIAL HALL – Dumfries Kirkconnel Miners
• TUE 26^th; SHEFFIELD SHOWROOM  sheffield showroom
• SUN 31^st; BONESS HIPPODROME  Boness Cinema

APRIL: 

• FRI 5^th; NATIONAL COAL MINING MUSEUM, WAKEFIELD, ncm
• SAT 13^th; LEICESTER PHOENIX ARTS CENTRE phoenix arts
• WED 24^th; CANTERBURY GULBENKIAN Gulbenkian Kent
• FRI 26^th;  COLINSBURGH COMMUNITY CINEMA, FIFE cccinema

• 21-28; BEIJING INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL bjiff

MAY:

• WED 1^st; RIVERSIDE STUDIOS, HAMMERSMITH, LONDON riverside studios
• SUN 5^th; DCA Dundee dca

If you are around any of these venues when the film is being shown, I can heartily recommend it. Why not get along, have a great night, and increase the pressure on commercial distributors to give The Happy Lands a mainstream release?

The Happy Lands opens at Glasgow’s Film Festival

Following the success of the ‘Red thread’ running through the Celtic connections festival this year (see my article in the Morning Star here) , producers of a number of films and other events are hoping that this interest and involvement in things cultural, is no one-off!

Film Poster for The Happy Lands

First out of the blocks is an important film getting its public premiere as part of Glasgow’s Film Festival. The Happy Lands, is a production by theatre workshop, an edinburgh-based theatre company, and tells the story of the General Strike and the subsequent lock-out of the miners, and how that affected a community in Fife.

Theatre workshop spent four years working with 1,000 volunteers from the Fife community, many of whom had family connections with the miners on strike. Many of the volunteers ended up starring in the film. 

Although it deals with three families in a specific mining village in Fife in 1926, the film has both universal appeal, and lessons for today. The film deals with questions of loyalty, honour, love and trust as these are put under huge strain by the strike. Set at a time when a Conservative-Liberal pact meant slashing of wages and rights for the worst off in our society, the film clearly has messages that resonate in similar circumstances today.

The first public showing of the film is at the GFT on Sunday 17 February at 13.40. If you can’t make that, in an interesting development, the film will be screened again at the Clydebank Empire on Monday 18 February at 11.00. See a trailer here, and get tickets for the film festival showings here. The tickets for the Clydebank Empire showing are a flat £4.50.

The film will then go on a UK roadshow tour to (among other places) Blantyre (1 March), Inverness (10 March) and down South to Durham, Sheffield and Wakefield. Check the website for more details. We hope to welcome it back to Glasgow for the MayDay celebrations!

An Drochaid- The Bridge Rising

The Skye Bridge

Another recently made film shown on BBC Alba in early January, is the Media Co-Op’s documentary of the campaign against the tolls on an early Tory PFI project in Scotland - the Skye Bridge. An Drochaid - the bridge rising, deals with the history of the non-payment campaign.  “An untold, bittersweet story of passion, ego, and financial skullduggery, through the testimony of those who took part. - as the Media Co-op website says! 

It is currently being edited for general release. Hopefully it won’t be too long until another important fight by people against the financial exploitation of governments and big business is properly documented. See a trailer here!

MayDay plans

Events are beginning to emerge for Glasgow’s MayDay celebrations too! Watch this space for more news soon! Or check the Friends of MayDay site. If you have some event around MayDay and want to see it in the programme, why not let me know? chrisbartter@btinternet.com or @chrisbartter on twitter will find me!