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Mining Documentaries

‘It’s not just Appalachia’s problem’: imagining a future without coal – by Adrian Horton (The Guardian – August 8, 2023)

https://www.theguardian.com/

The rhapsodic film King Coal blurs the lines of documentary and memorializes the coal culture that has shaped Appalachia

The film-maker Elaine McMillion Sheldon grew up roving around West Virginia. Like many children of Appalachia, her world was shaped by coal – her father worked for a mining company, and the family moved to seven coal fields in 12 years for his job. Her brother became a fourth-generation miner. “Everybody in my community worked in the coal mines,” she said. “If you were going to stay there and work, if you weren’t a doctor or a lawyer, that’s what you did.”

It wasn’t until she studied abroad as an undergraduate and asked people what they did for work that she realized the totalizing extent of coal. “Not everywhere has a king,” said Sheldon. “Not everywhere is completely dominated by this industry that controls everything from our rituals to the ways we live our life.”

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Review: Oliver Stone wants you to think about ‘Nuclear Now’ in new documentary – by Robert Abele (Los Angeles Times – April 27, 2023)

 

https://www.latimes.com/

With a recent Gallup poll indicating that American support for nuclear power is the highest it’s been in nearly a decade, and the news getting worse about our imminent reckoning with climate change, there may be no time like the present for a documentary to make the case for a maligned energy source — one more associated with war and catastrophe than lighting our homes — as the best solution for a grim future.

The question then is whether a dyed-in-the-wool rabble-rouser like Oliver Stone is the most persuasive guy for this argument when he’s more likely these days to make news for being controversial (he’s been called a Putin apologist); and his most recent feature being 2016’s ignored “Snowden.”

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‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ Review: Brilliant Diamond Doc Reveals What Could Burst the Bauble Bubble – by Peter Debrug (Yahoo Finance – February 13, 2022)

https://finance.yahoo.com/

It takes perhaps a billion years to make a diamond, and just 87 minutes to shatter so many of the misconceptions audiences have about them in “Nothing Lasts Forever.” Make that eight minutes. That’s roughly the point at which jewelry designer (and “Stone” author) Aja Raden — the only woman interviewed in Jason Kohn’s wild, decade-long delve into the secretive world of the diamond industry — offers up this gem: “The truth about diamonds is: They’re all exactly the same, and none of them are really worth anything.”

For some, that revelation could hit with the force of being told there’s no Santa Claus, even though it’s been an open secret for ages. Most audiences probably already have some inkling of how the De Beers diamond cartel took a not-particularly-rare stone and infused it with value by cornering the market, stockpiling most of the world’s supply and controlling the release at such a rate as to set the price.

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Nothing Lasts Forever film review — funny and caustic profile of a panicked industry – by Danny Leigh (Financial Times – February 9, 2023)

https://www.ft.com/

Read the room next time you step into a jewellers. You may sense a gnaw of anxiety. The cause is laid bare in Nothing Lasts Forever, Jason Kohn’s funny, caustic documentary of panic in the diamond industry.

Having just about persuaded consumers to forget its grisly history in African war zones, the existential threat to the trade these days is “synthetics”: lab-grown stones impossible to tell from the real thing. Technology is killing even bling.

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‘Bisbee ’17’ Documents Dark History Of Mass Deportations In Arizona Mining Town – by Robin Young (WBUR.org – July 15, 2019)

 

https://www.wbur.org/

More than a century ago, nearly 2,000 copper miners — most of them immigrants — were deported from Bisbee, Arizona, to the desert of New Mexico. Those who survived the deportation were banned from returning.

At that point 1917, copper was critical for Americans fighting abroad during World War I. The miners, who were underpaid and worked in dangerous conditions, had joined the Industrial Workers of the World, which threatened a strike. Some residents saw the workers as communists who were undermining the war effort.

Authorized by the sheriff, residents dragged workers and their sympathizers from homes and businesses, forced them into cattle cars and deported them miles from town.

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Timmins at the centre of new gold mining documentary – by Maija Hoggett (Northern Ontario Business – March 6, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Click here for Part 1 and 2: https://bit.ly/2UqZJr2 and https://bit.ly/2TySjp5

With gold running deep through the region’s veins, a new documentary is focussing on Timmins’ rich history with the industry. Northern Gold is an original two-part documentary series debuting on TVO this week.

“It is, in a nutshell, about the history of mining in Northern Ontario told through the lens of one mining town, Timmins, Ontario,” explained director/producer Catie Lamer.

Knowing that TVO was looking at exploring gold as a theme, Lamer started digging into different histories. In Northern Ontario, she said, they found an “untold hidden history” of its impact in gold mining and how the industry shaped Ontario and Canada’s economy.

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NEWS RELEASE: Uncover the gripping history of Ontario’s gold mining industry in NORTHERN GOLD

 

World premiere March 6 at 9 pm ET on TVO and tvo.org

February 27, 2019 (Toronto, ON) － From Alibi Entertainment and producer, director, and writer Catie Lamer, TVO Original Northern Gold shines a light on Canada’s complex history of mining, its current effects on the economy, politics and environment, and the shadowy business of high-grading (the theft and smuggling of millions of dollars in gold).

“Many people are probably unaware of Timmins’ own Gold Rush – a part of Ontario’s legacy that is seemingly forgotten – not by all, but by many,” says Lamer. “This once-famous working town is now facing an identity crisis – like many towns in Canada built on the back of one industry.”

“Gold is one of the most scrutinized commodities in markets around the world, and the history of gold is frequently romanticized,” says John Ferri, Vice President TVO Current Affairs and Documentaries. ” Northern Gold gives a voice to the people who are rarely heard from – those directly involved in extracting it.”

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NEWS RELEASE: [Documentary] The Shadow of Gold explores the dark side of the world’s most precious metal (January 19, 2019)

 

Do you know where the gold in your ring comes from?

TORONTO (January 30, 2019) – The Shadow of Gold pulls back the curtain on the world’s most coveted heavy metal. Filmed in Canada (Mount Polley, BC), the U.S., London, Dubai, China, Peru and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the feature film is an incisive global investigation of the gold trade, from raw material to market, exposing its impact on human lives, the economy and the planet.

An international Canada-France co-production by award-winning filmmakers Robert Lang (Canada), Denis Delestrac (France) and Sally Blake (France), The Shadow of Gold makes its world premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on February 22, followed by screenings in Ottawa (February 27), Vancouver (March 11), Calgary (March 20), Montreal (March 26) and Halifax (Date TBA).

The film will make its broadcast premiere as a two-part documentary with expanded content in back-to-back episodes March 13 at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. on TVO, and March 28 at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Canal D (Canada). Additional broadcasts on Knowledge Network (BC) – date to be announced, ARTE (France, Germany), SVT (Sweden) and NRK (Norway).

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Treasures of the Earth: Metals – (Nova Documentary – December 1, 2016)

 

Treasures of the Earth: Metals

https://www.pbs.org/

What is it about the nature of metals that have made them a pillar of human civilization?

“Treasures of the Earth: Gems, Metals, and Power” is a 3-part series that will take us on a journey deep inside Earth to uncover the mysteries of how these treasures were created, and to explore how they have allowed humankind to progress and build our great civilizations.

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Mining Documentary: Review: In ‘Bisbee ’17,’ Anti-Union Violence Haunts an Arizona Town – by A.O. Scott (New York Times – September 4, 2018)

 

https://www.nytimes.com/

Bisbee, Ariz., not far from the Mexican border, is a quiet former mining town, one of many such places scattered across the American West. Tombstone, site of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and a popular tourist destination, is just up the road.

Bisbee has a notably violent episode in its past as well, an event that is the subject of “Bisbee ’17,” Robert Greene’s clearsighted and gratifyingly complicated new documentary.

Starting on July 12, 1917 — a few months after the United States entered World War I and in the midst of labor agitation across the mining industry — sheriff’s deputies rounded up around 1,200 people thought to be union activists, forced them into boxcars and transported them to the New Mexico desert.

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O’Neill ‘undermining’ Bougainville peace deal, vote plan, says Miriori – by PMC Editor (Asia Pacific Report – May 8, 2018)

Asia Pacific Report

A Bougainvillean leader has accused Papua New Guinean Prime Minister Peter O’Neill of “undermining” the island’s 17-year-old peace agreement and the independence vote due next year.

Martin Miriori also condemned O’Nell for lacking sensitivity over Bougainville that struck a New Zealand-brokered peace agreement which ended a 10-year civil war and included a referendum vote on independence.

Miriori, a Panguna landowner and pro-independence leader, was reacting to a statement by O’Neill at the Business Forum in Brisbane last week and repeated in PNG’s The National newspaper that the vote was not about independence, but what was best for the people of Bougainville.

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The Uranium Film Festival & The Perils of Nuclear Power – by Carolyn Fortuna (Clean Technica – December 27, 2017)

 

https://cleantechnica.com/

White block letters flash in over a stark black background. “You can’t smell it. You can’t see it. But if Tschernobyl” — a gray industrial landscape of towers and high walled enclosures appears. “Fukushima. You can hear it.” A Geiger counter eerily, constantly clicks in the background. “This is uranium.” uranium film festivalA disembodied hand wrapped in a purple latex glove lifts a wedge of rock.

Then cartoon characters scream and run haphazardly across the screen. They tear at their helmet-covered heads while a warning horn punctuates the chaos. A spokesperson with a wry smile then says, “Uranium changes everything.”

Two sets of clips from mid-20th century black-and-white horror films are next, followed by a blinding yellow ball of light with a golden halo and violet rays around it. The light dissolves into an atomic bomb detonation with accompanying screams of terror.

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[Copper Mining History] Deportation ‘17: A Film About a Film in Bisbee, Arizona

Deportation ’17: A Film About a Film in Bisbee from Lone Protestor on Vimeo.

https://www.facebook.com/bisbee17/

July 12, 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the Bisbee Deportation, where over a thousand striking miners were rounded up by the mining company, forced onto cattle cars and deported to the New Mexico desert. As a film crew comes to Bisbee to make a documentary about the Deportation, the whole town gets into the act.
The documentary Bisbee ’17 will be produced by 4th Row Films and is directed by Robert Greene.

The following is from Amazon.com: Bisbee, Arizona, queen of the western copper camps, 1917. The protagonists in a bitter strike: the Wobblies (the IWW), the toughest union in the history of the West; and Harry Wheeler, the last of the two-gun sheriffs. In this class-war western, they face each other down in the streets of Bisbee, pitting a general strike against the largest posse ever assembled.

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[Norilsk, Russia] Global Lenses: Diverse political films tackle war, energy and the impact of history – by Daniel Glassman (Point Of View Magazine – April 26, 2017)

http://povmagazine.com/

Three new Canadian films take on contemporary global issues through radically different lenses. Stopping off in an Arctic Russian mining city, the ruins of Basra, Iraq and a massive thermonuclear reactor in Southern France, François Jacob’s A Moon of Nickel and Ice, Ann Shin’s My Enemy, My Brother and Mila Aung-Thwin and Van Royko’s Let There Be Light investigate the entangled issues of history, war, energy and ecology from the bottom up, through intense focuses on individuals and their stories.

Quebecois director Jacob makes his feature debut with A Moon of Nickel and Ice, a multi-faceted portrait of the Siberian nickelmining city of Norilsk. Three facts about Norilsk: It’s the world’s northernmost city with over 100,000 inhabitants; it’s one of the most polluted places in the world; and it’s a “closed city”—foreigners have been banned since 2001, and it was closed to most Russians as well during the Soviet era. Norilsk Nickel’s on-site smelting facility gives the gifts of acid rain, smog and fully 1% of the world’s sulfur dioxide emissions.

You may be wondering how they got 100,000 people to move there. Answer: they forced them. Yes, Norilsk was the site of a Soviet Gulag.

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Blood on the Mountain: Blood on Their Hands – by Michael Berkowitz (Huffington Post – April 18, 2017)

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Mari-Lynn Evans and Jordan Freeman’s “Blood on the Mountains” is a searing indictment of the coal industry’s war on the people of Appalachia. But beyond its story of regional devastation, this stirring documentary is a template of class struggle across America.

Evans and Freeman track the development of the coal industry, nicely framing the main issues and players as they roll out their woeful tale. In the late 19th century, cheap abundant coal fueled the United States’ industrial growth. Because this resource was located in rural areas, nascent coal companies were able to steer development.

They could structure every aspect of the companies’ composition and of their workers lives. Coal barons were able to shape this system in part because of the remoteness of mines from population centers and the failure of corrupt local and weak, remote federal governments.

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