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This two-shot Mitchell & Kenyon film is of unusual historical interest, partly for anticipating Kineto's more ambitious proto-documentary A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner (1910) by six years, but also for being a rare example of a Mitchell & Kenyon film depicting workers actually working, as opposed to simply leaving their workplace at the end of their shift. The title suggests that the filmmakers had greater ambitions than the film was able to deliver. Technical restrictions of the time (not least lighting) made filming underground impossible, so instead the film's two shots stay firmly above ground. The first consists of a slow pan from the top of the winding mechanism across the conveyor belt on which recently won coal is sorted by two parallel lines of headscarfed women (another is shovelling larger chunks of coal in the background. The second is a low-angled shot of the exterior of the winding tower, perhaps the definitive iconic image of the British coal industry. Michael Brooke
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Mitchell and Kenyon 92 (1:26)
