The second DVD in the BFI’s ‘This Working Life’ series – celebrating Britain’s industrial heritage on screen, and begun with the acclaimed Portrait of a Miner box set in 2009 – is Tales from the Shipyard. Released on 14 February alongside a season of films at BFI Southbank and in cinemas in Belfast, Glasgow and Newcastle, this 2-disc box set features 23 films made between 1898 and 1974.
For millions of people, this isn’t just Britain’s industrial heritage – it’s their family history. Tales from the Shipyard contains over five hours of material that portrays our nation’s shipbuilding past through acclaimed documentaries, little-known cinematic gems and emotive actuality films, made at the great shipyards of Belfast, Clydeside, Tyne and Wear and elsewhere. It draws together films from the BFI National Archive and two brand new restorations from the Scottish Screen Archive at the National Library of Scotland.
Beginning with three Mitchell & Kenyon films and scenes of jubilant workers celebrating spectacular launches in the early 1900s, further highlights include King George V and Queen Mary's morale-boosting trip to Northern England's shipyards at the tail end of the Great War; rare footage of the stunning SS Olympic (1910) showing the building and launch of the Titanic’s sister ship; beautiful colour film of the iconic Queen Mary in RMS Queen Mary Leaves the Clyde (1936); Sean Connery's perspective on Glasgow's industrial relations in The Bowler and the Bunnet (1967) – the only film Connery ever directed – and lyrical documentaries in celebration of industrial might such as Shipyard (Paul Rotha, 1935) and the Oscar-winning Seawards the Great Ships (Hilary Harris, 1960).
