The Happy Lands is a feature length film about the 1926 Coal Miners Strike. It was filmed in West Fife using local people instead of professional actors and premiered last year at The Alhambra in Dunfermline. It will be screened next on 22 October at Beath High School in Cowdenbeath. In this exclusive interview the film’s director Robert Rae talks to Fife artist Ian Moir and testifies to the community spirit of working class people.

IM: Did you grow up wanting to be a film maker?

RR :  I enjoyed films like everybody else as a kid – went to the ABC Minors on a Saturday morning. I first got into theatre with  7:84 Theatre Company (England) when John McGrath  was looking for somebody who understood both the trade union movement and theatre.  I’d trained as an actor and director but was working with teenagers who had been excluded from school.  I joined John and produced The Six Men of Dorset about the Tolpuddle Martyrs. We opened at the Sheffield crucible at the start of the 84/85 Miner’s strike – very powerful.

IM: What motivates you to make a film about an historical event?

RR: When this scheme came up from Creative Scotland called ‘Inspiring Communities’, they said it’s for artists who would like to do projects with communities they never normally have the resources to do. So I went across to Fife:  I knew about its history and how the red flag went up on Lumphinnans town hall to mark the Russian Revolution. I’d read The Militant Miner, which was David Proudfoot’s detailed account of the 1926 strike.  When I started talking to people they were very positive about the idea of commemorating that period of history and as a lot of that generation were getting old it would be lost.

IM: You say people were positive. The Fifer’s have a reputation for being quite insular. It doesn’t sound like you encountered that.

RR:  I’ve worked in a mining community before, so I knew that they weren’t going to be easy to convince. But I felt that once people grew to trust us then they would get involved. We told people at public meetings and put leaflets in school kids bags about the project. We started by saying ‘Come and tell us your stories’ then invited people to try other things – maybe even acting.

IM: So it was a gradual process of persuasion.

RR: The first public meeting we had there were only two or three people –  Archie King, who plays the mighty Karno in the film – and one other! But I wasn’t despondent because I knew that once miners get that you’re on their side and that you’re going to treat their culture with respect and dignity they’ve never been slow on the uptake when it comes to cultural activity. Jenny Lee came from the Fife coalfield communities and set up the Arts Council – the Fife miners had introduced a cultural levy to support the arts and sports in the Mining Communities. Miners were responsible for a lot of the early libraries. One of the things that annoyed me about Billy Elliott was the notion that Billy wanted to go off and be a dancer but the mining community were all going “Haw..why d’ye wanna go an’ do that?” My experience was that it just wasn’t true.

IM: Was it difficult to get funding for the film?

RR: They rejected it the first time on the basis that they didn’t believe we could deliver all we said we were going to do. But fortunately Iain Munro – one of the Directors at Creative Scotland – is a Fifer and he got what we were trying to do and knew how important it would be to people. 

IM: This didn’t strike me as art for art’s sake. Does the film have a social function? A community has been brought together here. Was this part of the overall plan?

RR: What worked spectacularly well is that it was created by a community and a community was created by making the film. By a community producing a film of high quality and coming together to do it is proof  that all those values of community continue to exist and that people just need the focus and opportunity to come together – to act together. Okay so we haven’t got the industrial organisation that came via the pits and the unions but that spirit is still there,  I think that’s what really works in the film.

IM: What  I found fascinating was that you were able to do that with a work of  art.

RR: I guess that’s a tradition already within the mining communities with their brass bands and the likes of Joe Corrie and the Bowhill Players. I think there’s something really moving about ordinary people creating art – for me it enhances the enjoyment of the film.

IM: Its not inauthentic though.

RR: Exactly, that’s the whole point. If you put an actor pretending to be a miner in among one of those lads they’d look slightly ridiculous. You forget how mannered a lot of screen and stage acting is – minimalist and dead-pan. Set that against the Happy Lands which is really full on and passionate. Real people. Its a different cinematic experience but just as good – if not a better one.

IM: My favourite scene in The Happy Lands was when the protagonist is released from jail. When the older man pins a medal to his lapel he says, ‘You are a true working class hero’.  I realised that working class heroes, socialist heroes are missing from Hollywood narratives. Do you think your film could be accepted by American audiences?

RR: I suspect that there are communities in America who share exactly the same values as the people in Fife and probably feel that they’re not being well serviced by their film industry.

IM: I understand George ‘Joki’ Wallace who played the magistrate was nominated for a BAFTA

RR: Yeah that’s right. A BAFTA New Talent Award. Wonderful accomplished performance. Theres other performances that stand out too – but they could only nominate one from each film. Joki was sacked in the 84/85 strike and his contribution to the film was immense – so it’s so well deserved. For my money he should be up for a full UK BAFTA too – stunning.

IM: How has the film been received?

RR: We’ve tried to build a grassroots support for it. A critic sitting at home watching it on dvd screen may not get it. Sitting in the Adam Smith’s theatre with four hundred people, all from the mining community, is going to feel very, very different. It’s quite a social experience which is why we are so keen to get it into the cinemas. It was the same in France recently – people applauded at the end and clapped along with the final tune.

IM: What’s the next project? Do you have any plans?

RR: We have. We’ve been talking about a project – ‘Sweetness and Light’ . The idea for the film is about some young ‘written off’ folk today in Fife being inspired by grandparents and great grandparents to set up a self improvement society.  We want to celebrate the quirky kids, the working class kids who are into art and philosophy.

IM: They aren’t all shooting up.

RR: Exactly. I enjoyed The Angels’ Share but it was almost like these kids reached their zenith by being able to head off into the sunset with the girlfriend in a VW camper. I’m not saying it’s inaccurate, but it’s a group that often gets focused on, the ones that ‘escape’. But there are kids in working class communities who are prepared to be different, to challenge, and want to change the place they live in – without leaving. I’m interested in them.