Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

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MichaelB
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Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu Aug 13, 2009 9:08 am

Full specs announced:
Portrait of a Miner
National Coal Board Collection Volume 1


The first collection of the wonderfully diverse and entertaining films of the National Coal Board Film Unit is released on DVD on 21 September 2009 as part of a major new BFI project, This Working Life: King Coal – A Century of British Coalmining on Screen.

This September, the BFI launches This Working Life, an ambitious three-year project that will explore and celebrate Britain’s 20th century industrial heritage on screen and its impact on our social, economic and political life. Beginning with coal mining, it will continue with the shipbuilding and steel industries in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

Elemental, visual, dramatic: coal mining is not only deeply cinematic, but as a huge part of British life for centuries, has profoundly shaped our society. The BFI DVD collection Portrait of a Miner showcases and celebrates the extraordinary work of the National Coal Board Film Unit which operated from 1947-1984, producing films to inform, entertain and galvanise working people across the country.

From intimate drama-documentaries and sublime safety cartoons to the sheer pleasure of the topical tales from the Mining Review cinemagazine, this collection is a beguiling invitation into the domestic, community and working life of miners and their families.

With stories from coal fields across Scotland, Wales and England – from pit ponies to brass bands, cutter loaders to the five-day week – this 2-disc set presents over 5 hours of re-mastered material, and contains an extensive bound book featuring newly commissioned contributions from Lee Hall (writer of Billy Elliot), the BFI’s curators and other researchers.

As well as the DVD release, This Working Life: King Coal will feature a Film & TV Season at BFI Southbank running throughout September of newly preserved and rarely-seen films from both the documentary and fiction collections in the BFI National Archive. A season will also run at the Sheffield Showroom cinema. The season launches at BFI Southbank on 8 September at 6.30pm in NFT1 with On the Face of It: A Century of Coalmining on Screen, presented by Lee Hall. A programme drawn from all the material will go on tour around the UK.

Disc One
Mining Review 1st Year No 1 (1947)
King Coal (1948)
Nines Was Standing (1950)
'Miners Health Centre', from Mining Review 2nd Year No 3 (1948)
Mining Review 2nd Year No 10 (1949)
Mining Review 2nd Year No 12 (1949)
Plan for Coal (1952)
The Shovel (1953)
'Time Out' from Mining Review 7th Year No 8 (1954)
'Balletomines' from Mining Review 7th Year No 12 (1954)
'Hungarians in Britain' from Mining Review 10th Year No 8 (1957)
New Power In Their Hands (1959)
Mining Review 13th Year No 4 (1959)
'Stormy Genius' from Mining Review 13th Year No 8 (1960)
Arthur Clears the Air (1961)
'Whitehaven Whippets' from Mining Review 15th Year No 7 (1962)
Mining Review 16th Year No 6 (1963)

Disc Two
Songs of the Coalfields (1964)
Big Job (1965)
Portrait of a Miner (1966)
Nobody’s Face (1966)
The First Adventures of ‘Thud and Blunder’ (1964)
Mining Review 20th Year No 9 (1967)
Hands, Knees and Bumps a Daisy (1969)
Mining Review 22nd Year No 5 (1969)
What About That Job? (Case Studies for Management No 1) (1970)
The Bother Breeder (Case Studies for Management No 4) (1970)
Man Failure (1971)
I’ll See You (Too Late Now No 2) (1976)
A Beautiful Memory (Too Late Now No 3) (1976)
You Pick the Moment (Too Late Now No 4) (1976)
Miners (1976)
Review 32nd Year No 1 (1978)
40 Years On (1978)

Release date: 21 September 2009
RRP: DVD £24.99 / cat. no. BFIVD851 / cert 15
UK / 1947-1978 / black and white, and colour / English, optional subtitles for the hearing-impaired / 347 mins / DVD9 / original aspect ratio 1.33:1

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#2 Post by MichaelB » Thu Aug 13, 2009 3:26 pm

...and here's a quick YouTube taster in the form of the complete Mining Review 7th Year No 12 newsreel, whose closing story, 'Balletomines', is included on the DVD (it starts at 7:06).

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#3 Post by MichaelB » Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:48 am

Incidentally, those bemused by the 15 certificate for a collection of documentaries (which are notionally exempt from BBFC classification) might like to know that it's entirely down to one film, Man Failure, a jaw-droppingly bonkers (and sexist) safety film from 1971 that blends graphic gore with full-frontal nudity (albeit not in the same scenes) while conveying the important message that marital problems or romantic dalliances (such as nude biking trips with bare-breasted women) might cause psychological problems underground, leading to potentially fatal accidents.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#4 Post by zedz » Fri Aug 14, 2009 4:10 pm

MichaelB wrote:romantic dalliances (such as nude biking trips with bare-breasted women) might cause psychological problems underground, leading to potentially fatal accidents.
You know, if this film reviewing lark doesn't pan out for you, you could always write horoscopes.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#5 Post by Wu.Qinghua » Thu Aug 20, 2009 5:49 am

Great news ...
=D>

But two short questions:
a) I can't find any texts on the NCB Film Unit apart from screenonline. Can you recommend a text (article, book), in which the work of the film unit is described and discussed in a critical way and which might be availabe outside of Britain?

b) In the last years, the BFI has restored and put out a string of films produced by some of the most important official, public sector and corporate units concentrating on educational and propaganda films as well as industrial films. Are there any plans to go beyond that and to delve into the realm of old leftist workers' films of the thirties which have been discussed in some length in Bert Hogenkamp's "Deadly Parallels"? Looking through his filmography I get the impression that there are quite some films which have survived and may be of interest for people who are interested in film history and social history. But as far as I know, only one of those films (London Film Group: Bread) has been made available yet on one of those old "Britain in the thirties" tapes.
Maybe in this case the BFI could lern a lesson from the Austrian Film Archive which in 2007 has released a great box set with "proletarian movies" of the twenties and thirties ("Proletarisches Kino in Oesterreich" - unfortunately no english subtitles).

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#6 Post by MichaelB » Thu Aug 20, 2009 3:35 pm

Wu.Qinghua wrote:a) I can't find any texts on the NCB Film Unit apart from screenonline. Can you recommend a text (article, book), in which the work of the film unit is described and discussed in a critical way and which might be availabe outside of Britain?
Not in any detail, as far as I'm aware - Patrick Russell mentions the NCB films in his book '100 British Documentaries', but I don't think he says much that isn't on Screenonline (for which he wrote much of the NCB material), and various NCB films were mentioned individually in passing in various documentary round-ups in assorted British film magazines, but usually very briefly. I daresay there may be one or two academic theses out there as well, but I haven't personally read any.

However, it's pretty clear that serious critical investigation of the NCB's films is still very much in its infancy - in fact, it's probably safe to say without much exaggeration that Screenonline's coverage and the booklet that will accompany the DVDs are about as comprehensive as coverage of this material currently gets.

Part of the problem is that the films have been largely inaccessible in recent years, until the BFI took over the catalogue and started contextualising it and making certain titles available (believe it or not, there are over a thousand - the NCB's film output is bigger than the far better-known British Transport Films catalogue). This DVD package is one of various fruits of this exercise, others including a big-screen touring programme, a permanent collection in the BFI Mediatheques and a significantly expanded Screenonline coal section, all of which will be launched next month.
b) In the last years, the BFI has restored and put out a string of films produced by some of the most important official, public sector and corporate units concentrating on educational and propaganda films as well as industrial films. Are there any plans to go beyond that and to delve into the realm of old leftist workers' films of the thirties which have been discussed in some length in Bert Hogenkamp's "Deadly Parallels"?
I'm not privy to long-term future plans (and in any case I wouldn't be able to go public now even if I did know), but I can certainly confirm that the BFI has no intention of slackening its documentary output. However, the present focus is on post-WWII British documentary, largely because we think it's the field that's currently most seriously and undeservedly neglected (certainly compared with pre-1945 documentary), aside from obviously crowd-pleasing things like British Transport Films or Free Cinema. Similarly, the 20,000-strong Central Office of Information catalogue (which the BFI now administers) has barely been skimmed as yet - the 1970s scaremongering public information films are disproportionately famous, but form a minuscule chunk of the total.
Last edited by MichaelB on Thu Aug 20, 2009 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#7 Post by Zazou dans le Metro » Thu Aug 20, 2009 4:38 pm

MichaelB wrote: I'm not privy to long-term future plans (and in any case I wouldn't be able to go public now even if I did know), but I can certainly confirm that the BFI has no intention of slackening its documentary output.
And there I was, hoping you were going to let slip news of an impending 'The Complete Works of Humphrey Jennings' on Blu-Ray !

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#8 Post by MichaelB » Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:45 am

Zazou dans le Metro wrote:
MichaelB wrote: I'm not privy to long-term future plans (and in any case I wouldn't be able to go public now even if I did know), but I can certainly confirm that the BFI has no intention of slackening its documentary output.
And there I was, hoping you were going to let slip news of an impending 'The Complete Works of Humphrey Jennings' on Blu-Ray !
I honestly don't know if there are any plans in that direction, though of course the BFI has released lots of Jennings over the last two years on Land of Promise and the GPO compilations.

Getting back on topic, here's a short extract from Patrick Russell's intro in the 52-page booklet:
One of the most important collections preserved by the BFI National Archive, it’s also extremely underrated. It’s certainly lesser-known than other products of the documentary tradition from which it came, and which the BFI has been busily curating in recent years – the work of the GPO Film Unit, for example, or of British Transport Films (the internal unit for another state corporation and therefore the NCB Film Unit’s closest parallel). The NCB has neither the GPO’s influential experimentalism nor BTF’s much-loved lustre. Yet it is perhaps even richer – the more so for having been left buried, like humble, potent coal itself, along with much of the social ethic it fuelled and embodied. These aren’t film masterpieces, and aren’t intended to be. Moreover their institutional status precludes them from speaking completely freely. But they are splendidly crafted. They’re stylistically diverse (compare Mining Review’s urgent, conflicted depiction of Scottish closures and migration in 1949, with its lyrical, resigned response to comparable Welsh events in 1963). They’re imbued with an unfashionable, infectious good nature. And they’ve left unmatched depth-of-coverage of an industrial and social history which, once the bug’s bitten, is gripping, addictive and moving.
I can absolutely endorse this - I must have watched dozens if not hundreds of NCB films over the last few years (I was one of the programmers of this particular compilation, which involved regular three-hour weekly viewing sessions over what seemed like months, and much rejection along the way - Wagon Handling at Dalkeith, a film screened for its evocative title, turned out to be just about the longest 15 minutes of our lives), and I can readily attest to their weirdly hypnotic and addictive qualities.

Much more than the GPO Film Unit or British Transport Films, the NCB cumulatively attempted nothing less than a top-to-bottom portrait of Britain from the late 1940s to the early 1980s, with coal at the heart of more or less everything that mattered - which in the early years at least wasn't that far from the truth. I especially love the way that Mining Review would find a coal angle in even the most unlikely subjects - for instance, 'Speaking Through Coal', included in Mining Review 13th Year No.4, explains how a particular type of Welsh anthracite is an essential ingredient in the microphones of ordinary domestic telephones, while 'Hungarians in Britain' explores the immediate fallout from the 1956 uprising, where thousands of highly skilled miners sought employment in Britain (often fruitlessly, despite government encouragement). And if a celebrity had a mining connection, like 'Stormy Genius' D.H. Lawrence, they'd get profiled too.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#9 Post by MichaelB » Mon Aug 24, 2009 4:24 am

Patrick Russell, the BFI National Archive's Senior Non-Fiction Curator, and the main driving force behind the recent surge of interest in the NCB collection, sent me an email after reading my reply to Wu.Qinghua's query. It's reproduced here with permission:
You're right that there's little [coverage of the NCB films], but there is a tiny bit-

Linda Kaye and Emily Crosby's 'Projecting Britain: The Guide to British Cinemagazines' (2008) talks a fair bit about Mining Review amid its general coverage of sponsored cinemagazines - rightly presenting it as first among equals where the industrial cinemagazine is concerned - though it doesn't touch the rest of the NCB output.

Leo Enticknap's PhD thesis about early post-war non-fiction, which is online, refers to Mining Review in that chronological context.

Ditto Bert Hogenkamp's thesis (not published, but there are copies in various British libraries) about Brit doc under the Attlee government - refers in some detail to the NCB, to Donald Alexander and to DATA.

Hogenkamp contributed an article on the NCB Film Unit to Ian Aitken's mammoth Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film.

The Scottish Film Archive published a pamphlet monograph on Donald Alexander and Budge Cooper some years ago which of course mentions their NCB work.

And don't forget that the upcoming Sight and Sound will include a piece by [Billy Elliot screenwriter] Lee Hall on coal films in which he praises the NCB collection to the skies. As will a piece by Lee in The Independent which is due to be published this week.

You're right that none of this amounts to an indepth critical analysis of the NCB collection as a whole, that such is overdue, and that the BFI is undoubtedly leading the way in getting it properly started. Let's hope the release of curated selections from the NCB, alongside recent BTF and forthcoming COI go some way to causing future general histories of British documentary to start plugging the shocking gaps in their historiography. I don't think the historical problem is just, as you implied, one of lack of access - although it is significant that the films never received non-specialist distribution to the USA, unlike products of the 'classic' era of British documentary. I think it's moreso that, even as the films were being quite widely distributed in the UK, critical consensus had already written off the sponsored documentary film and turned its attention elsewhere. Quite wrongly, on two counts: the films remained good and interesting (at least, you, I and fellow initiates think so); and it was in any case produced and seen in enormous quantities, reason alone to pay it some due.

But at least there are some scattered bits of writing 'out there' that your criterionforum correspondents could get hold of which, having been written without any particular BFI bias behind them, may encourage them to invest in Portrait of a Miner and thence to make up their own minds.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#10 Post by MichaelB » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:20 am

Coal: A Mine of Culture by Billy Elliot screenwriter Lee Hall.

I have one small credit-where-it's-due quibble - the season was actually curated by my colleague Ros Cranston.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#11 Post by MichaelB » Tue Sep 01, 2009 3:27 pm

Ken Russell gets a sneak preview of the DVD package and likes what he sees: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 812551.ece

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#12 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 03, 2009 5:35 am

Ian Jack (The Guardian) and Paul Routledge (The New Statesman) on the BFI's King Coal project, including reviews of the DVD.


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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#14 Post by MichaelB » Fri Sep 18, 2009 6:41 am

Indeed they have - and Screenonline launched its own coal collection last week, complete with a massive survey of Mining Review - every issue is described in outline, with over 75 stories covered in full.

Note that most of the YouTube material isn't included on the DVD - deliberately, because there's so much stuff in the NCB catalogue that we wanted an excuse to publish as many titles as possible.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volu

#15 Post by antnield » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:35 am

Oooh, now this is interesting: looks as though the next volume will focus entirely on the Miners Campaign Tapes of 1984 and 1985

And some info I found on the tapes themselves.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#16 Post by MichaelB » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:46 am

It's not "the next volume" as such - more of a companion piece to the NCB films that covers material that the NCB wouldn't touch with the proverbial ten-foot pole, for reasons that probably don't need explaining!

In fact, this DVD was supposed to come out a few months ago to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the start of the miners' strike, but was held up by rights complications (especially music rights), which took longer to resolve than expected.

They are, as you say, absolutely fascinating pieces - not just for their historical importance but also for the snapshot of particular production circumstances. Nowadays they'd have taken their fight to YouTube and Facebook.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#17 Post by Wu.Qinghua » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:47 am

Oooh yeah, right you are ...

I'm still waiting for the NCB package, but I was a bit suspicious of the recent BFI releases (NCB as well as GPO) representing official or entrepreneurial point of views only. So this is a major as well as pleasant surprise and may be even one of this year's most important releases imho.

Btw, many thanks for the link, antnield

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#18 Post by MichaelB » Fri Sep 25, 2009 11:26 am

Wu.Qinghua wrote:I'm still waiting for the package, but I was a bit suspicious of the recent BFI releases (NCB as well as GPO) representing official or entrepreneurial point of views only.
I don't see that there are any grounds for suspicion as such - the GPO and NCB (and British Transport Films) sets very clearly identify in their very titles the fact that they represent the output of a particular film unit, and they're offset by more diverse compilations such as Land of Promise or the more auteur-focused likes of Geoffrey Jones: The Rhythm of Film.

Not to mention extensive alternatives on the BFI's other digital distribution channels - granted, if you're outside the UK the likes of Screenonline and the newly-launched InView probably aren't much use, but the BFI's YouTube channel already has some 250 titles, the vast majority of which are non-fiction. So I would strongly take issue with your final word "only"!

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#19 Post by Wu.Qinghua » Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:03 pm

I was only refering to the recent (doc) dvd releases, that is NCB, GPO and BT (I forgot about it), Michael ... and was anticipating the upcoming COI boxes.
I am aware that "Land of Promise" represents a broader spectrum of views/films than the GPO boxes, though, as you might remember, I'd appreciate the release of some of those old workers' films of the 30s (Bread usf.) on dvd by the BFI.
I was just wondering whether the BFI would go on releasing official usf. documentary films without paying tribute to different perspectives ... the miners' ones in case of the coal films. I think Paul Routledge made a similar point in the "New Statesman".
Now I am very pleased to see that I was wrong and that there will be a supplementary dvd representing the views of the striking miners. I just didn't expect that and don't regard it as being self-evident or even likely.
Btw, I am very happy about the BFI's releases this year (GPO, NCB, Miner's Campaign, Ové, Julien, and especially Comrades) and consider not MoC but BFI to be the "dvd company of 2009".

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#20 Post by MichaelB » Fri Sep 25, 2009 4:20 pm

Lee Hall's Sight & Sound article, 'Going Underground', is now available online.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#21 Post by MichaelB » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:33 am

Excellent blog piece by Illuminations Films' head honcho John Wyver. It's expecially nice to see someone outside the BFI recognising the overall scope of its documentary ambitions over and above individual releases:
Portrait of a Miner is a new DVD set that continues the BFI's fascinating project to re-shape our sense of documentary history. For far too long a small group of films made in the 1930s and '40s by the GPO Film Unit and its successors has dominated conceptions of the documentary story. These familiar films, including many made by Humphrey Jennings, Paul Rotha and other significant filmmakers, were and are unquestionably important. But the release of many new films on the Land of Promise DVD set, on the trilogy of GPO Film Unit collections and on the British Transport Films compilations is shifting the sense of all aspects of documentary history.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#22 Post by Zazou dans le Metro » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:54 am

Mining a similar vein Network have come up with a potentially interesting box set here..http://www.amazon.co.uk/Public-Informat ... 977&sr=8-3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#23 Post by MichaelB » Mon Sep 28, 2009 9:22 am

Jezman from Brit Films.TV reviews the DVD.
A more than worthy addition to the BFI's equally interesting releases collating the work of British Transport and the GPO's film units. It’s certainly not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but there's more than enough in this first volume from the National Coal Board Collection to elevate it out of the specialist bracket and into something that can be enjoyed by anyone with a yearning to see how things used to be.

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#24 Post by Wu.Qinghua » Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:32 pm

Caramba ... It took quite some time to get the discs ... But:

This is a great package indeed. I zapped through some of the films on the weekend. The movies might be no masterpieces (which doesn't bother me because I'm usually not very interested in them) but they are even more exciting documents than I thought they would be. And apart from that, they are at times visually striking. If I were some kind of underground DJ specialising in something like, eh, ebm or drum'n'bass I'd get some of my visuals from from these discs. I have never seen machines like these and I still don't know what they were all good for. Btw, I have watched the film about shoveling three times yet. I think I'll have a go at the pioneer throw, too.

Well now, as this is volume 1, there will be another pair of discs in the nearer future ... I don't know whether you can hand on some information, Michael, but: Do you know when it will or should be released? And, beyond that, what will be on them? Will the second volume contain some thematically different films or will it contain films produced between 1978 and 1983?

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Re: Portrait of a Miner: National Coal Board Collection Volume 1

#25 Post by MichaelB » Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:45 pm

Wu.Qinghua wrote:Well now, as this is volume 1, there will be another pair of discs in the nearer future ... I don't know whether you can hand on some information, Michael, but: Do you know when it will or should be released? And, beyond that, what will be on them? Will the second volume contain some thematically different films or will it contain films produced between 1978 and 1983?
There will be a volume 2, but it's unlikely to be out for at least another year (late 2010 at the absolute earliest, but that may well slip) as the BFI's DVD production and non-fiction curatorial teams are currently working flat out on other ambitious multi-film documentary releases currently in preparation - not least the long-gestating postwar documentary sequel to Land of Promise.

It's far too early to state what will be on it with any confidence/reliability, though I'm pretty sure there'll be some post-1978 stuff - I certainly remember a programming meeting where the idea of concluding with the very last Review (Mining Review as was) was raised, to counterpoint the inclusion of the very first on volume 1.

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