Festival will launch with miners’ strike film ‘Pride’
THE remarkable story from the 1984 Miners’ Strike, telling how a group of gay and lesbian activists supported striking miners, is to take pride of place at the start of a long-running film festival, it is announced today.
The 2014 film Pride, which tells the real life tale of how a group of gay activists in London ondon decided to fundraise e for a south Wales mining ng community, is one of a number of open air r screenings in this year’s Purbeck Film Festival in Dorset.
Films will be shown at venues s including National al
Trust’s Corfe Castle and Durlston Country Park, from the end of May.
The full festival, which has been running for more than a quarter of a century, is from October 14-29, with more than 70 films at over 30 venues across Purbeck.
In Pride, former Labour MP Sian
James is depicted by actress Jessica Gunning as being one of the most passionate supporters of the lesbian and gay activists group’s efforts. Ms James, who was a housewife married to a miner in the Swansea Valley when the strike began, started starte by volunteering to help other oth mining families, eventually event helping feed 1,000 1,00 families a week across acr the valleys. She said: “The Pride movie told the story of a very special relationship. ti One between b two unlikely groups, gr the first a group gro of young gay and lesbian lesbia activists from London and the other, ordinary working-class workin people from the mining communities of the Neath, Dulais and Upper Swansea Valleys. “We were fighting to maintain our mines, our jobs and our future, they were fighting for fairness and equality.”