This Working Life: Steel

100 years ago in Sheffield, Harry Brearley discovered a rustless steel alloy which forged a strong, shiny new future for a city and a nation. To celebrate this anniversary, Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema are to screen a series of British Film Institute archival films revealing the great feats of design, labour and love which sustained this remarkable industry.

The Showroom have selected from a BFI film set collectively entitled This Working Life: Steel. A voyage into the history of the steel industry; from the everyday man and woman and the way in which steel offered structure and survival to their communities and families,   how steel stood a metaphor for strength and national pride, forging a steadfast international reputation for Britain. Also in documentaries we see the masterful feats of engineering that were perfected and delivered across the country and overseas.

Highlights include a 3-minute film ‘Parkgate Iron and Steel Co, Rotherham’ (1905) exposing steel manufacturers at work and in ‘feisty form’. ‘Women of Steel’ (1984) delivers the crucial story of women’s roles in the manufacturing process, and Penny Woolcock’s ‘Northern Newsreel No 7’ (1987) looks at fascism and unemployment as the steel industries began to close down.

The Steel industry offered a rich, exuberant material to filmmakers, and as it evolved, so did filmmaking technology. This is a fantastic opportunity to appreciate all of that history and the beauty of the manufacturing process, in tapestries of sound, ‘dazzling’ Technicolor, animation, rudimentary documentary footage and hilarious propaganda films created to protect and perfect the British industry from decline and de-regulation.

Celebrating 100 years of steel at the Showroom Cinema

This Working Life: Steel

Saturday 23 February 6.15pm - book tickets here

[Preview written for DigYorkshire.com]

The Colour of Clay

"Look over there! You'll see girls shaping cups. Cups are shaped from within. Otherwise there's not a lot of difference. Afterall a cup is really only a small plate with it's collar up."

Set in one of Wedgwood's factories, sporting fabulous opening credits. The narrator talks exceptionally quickly, so try to keep up.
 
"The solemn cool and restful greens and browns of the trees and the gayer pinks and blues of the flowers, the leader of the unindustrious butterfly and the workshop of that selfconcious modelling [said too fast I can't decipher] of the busy bee.There is different colour which is so much part of our countryside which is reflected in all our trades and crafts. Most of all in the art and science of pottery."


"Isn't it nice to see girls putting handles on cups instead of knocking them off."
I can't remember the time I ever knocked a handle off a cup. I remember smashing a whole cup, but nothing more specific.

British Council Film - Colour In Clay, 1941

Risking it on expired film...

So here are my just desserts. That heart sinking moment collecting photos from the developers and the packet is tellingly thin. But I quite like the 6 survivors.

Hopefully it goes without saying these are entirely unedited. Look out for the squirrel.

Taken on Rollei 35T, Ilford Delta 100 (old. Past it.)