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Pride (movie) - when Welsh miners and gay activists teamed up to fight Thatcher

Can i use this thread to make people aware that another miners strike themed film is out next month:

Still the Enemy Within

Still the Enemy Within is a unique insight into one of history’s most dramatic events: the 1984-85 British Miners’ Strike. No experts. No politicians. Thirty years on, this is the raw first-hand experience of those who lived through Britain’s longest strike. Follow the highs and lows of that life-changing year.
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Follow Norman Strike [paging The39thStep ], from devising ingenious ways of getting past police road blocks in a key battleground, Nottingham, to suddenly finding himself a minor celebrity after a mishap on national television; Paul Symonds, from the optimism and excitement of a young man fighting for his future to the tragic death of his best friend on a picket line; Joyce Sheppard, from her life as an ordinary housewife to becoming a political activist and facing violence as huge numbers of police are sent in to Yorkshire villages to break the strike.

They along with a range of fascinating characters who fought alongside them, give a frank, emotional and ultimately inspiring account of ordinary people at the centre of extraordinary events. From the infamous Battle of Orgreave, where miners found themselves in a brutal confrontation with over five thousand police, to the hardship endured after almost a year on strike – their story is not just one of personal drama but one that shaped the world we live in today.
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Screenings here.
 
dynamicbaddog said:
Yes! Even after all these years Mark is still prominent in my thoughts. I used to hang about in the YCL office when he was working there, helping him make banners and that. A remarkable man who had a profound and lasting influence on me politically
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We lost so many good men in the 80s while Thatcher and the press vilified us. I miss them still too.
 
We'll be making sure to go and see Pride very soon.

festivaldeb was at Uni (in Swansea) at the same time as Sian James (important in strike real life, and in the film, and now MP here in Swansea East). She's pretty sound, as mainstream Labour MPs go, but we hear she's retiring at the next election :(
 
Saw the trailer last night at the pics, hadn't seen this thread. Looked very 'feel good' from the trailer but I suspect there'll be a lot more politics in it when you see the actual film (sorry, couldn't think of a non-pompous way of writing that sentence!). I'm sure it will make me cry! :thumbs:
 
Saw the film with my freebie tickets last night. Very moving, very entertaining, very true to the spirit of the times. It's left me feeling somewhat depressed today though.

There are very few dramatic representations of what it was like to grow up gay in the 80s (in fact I'm struggling to think of anything apart from the video to Smalltown Boy) and reliving the virulent homophobia and dark shadow of AIDS was difficult, 'triggering' I guess is the word some people might use... The scene where Joe is confronted by his parents was a gruesome re-enactment, almost word-for-word of my own unmasking a couple of years later. I'm not sure though that a younger generation would quite pick up on all the references ('swirling in a cesspit of their own making' etc) and realise just how mainstream being actively homophobic was in those days.

I'm not sure if the making of this film represents victory or defeat. To my 15 year old self it would have seemed utterly remarkable that the 'loony left'/gay rights axis would ever be the subject of a heartwarming brit-com. But is that just because at 30 years distance all those ideas about solidarity are no longer a threat, a bit like how Tony Benn became a cuddly national treasure?

So yeah, really proud of those people and glad their story has been immortalised, still angry about the newspapers who ranted about perverts and now will probably give this film a 5 star review, and sad that we've collectively lost so much since those times, even if we've gained in terms of equality.
 
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