Above Us the Earth

Karl Francis filmed the closing of Ogilvie Colliery as it happened in 1975 and cut the footage together with staged scenes played by the men it was happening to. The result is a documentary drama that blames the National Coal Board and the unions in roughly equal measure, and is now held in the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales.

The mining history in this record

Karl Francis grew up a few miles from Ogilvie, in the Rhymney valley. He had come to film through television — an independent investigator in 1971, then a production post at London Weekend Television on Weekend World, then the BBC from 1973 — and Above Us the Earth, which he wrote, produced and directed, was his first film.

He shot it in the spring and summer of 1975, the months the National Coal Board was closing the colliery. What he recorded was not only the closure but the argument around it: the fractious dealings between politicians and union leaders, and the forces pulling the community apart. The film is critical of the Board and of the unions both, and works through the contributing factors almost forensically and from several directions at once, which is not how films about pit closures usually behave.

The method is what makes it a record as well as a film. Documentary footage of the closure and of the miners' response to it is intercut with staged sequences following the decline and death of an old miner from lung disease, and the cast mixes professionals with amateurs — with, that is, the people the events belonged to. Windsor Rees, Gwen Francis, Dai Morgan and Evan Jones are the names the British Film Institute lists.

People

Karl Francis, writer, producer and director, from the Rhymney valley a few miles from the colliery. The cast the British Film Institute lists is Windsor Rees, Gwen Francis, Dai Morgan and Evan Jones, amateur and professional players together; the film's method means several of those on screen were miners of the colliery it records.

Legacy today

The film is held by the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales and can be rented through the BFI Player. In 2010 BBC Wales chose it as one of the ten greatest films about Wales, and in 2012 the BFI and UK Film Council named it the best independent film made in Wales. Francis went on to a long career in Welsh film and television and was head of drama at BBC Wales from 1995 to 1997.

For this archive its value is narrower and simpler. Ogilvie closed in April 1975 and its buildings are gone; the film is eighty-two minutes of the place and its people at the moment it stopped.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• A documentary drama of eighty-two minutes, written, produced and directed by Karl Francis and released in 1977, about the closure of Ogilvie Colliery in the Rhymney valley by the National Coal Board in 1975. (documented fact) ¹
• The film was shot in the spring and summer of 1975 — that is, during the closure it records, not afterwards. (documented fact) ²
• Francis used amateur and professional actors together to explore the community impact of the closure, intercutting documentary footage of the colliery and the miners' response with staged sequences. The British Film Institute lists Windsor Rees, Gwen Francis, Dai Morgan and Evan Jones among those featured. (documented fact) ^1,2
• The film is critical of the National Coal Board and of the trade unions alike, focusing on the fractious interactions between politicians and union leaders and on the forces attempting to divide the community. The BFI's own description says Francis lets no negotiating party off the hook. (documented fact) ¹
• The film is held by the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, and in 2010 BBC Wales selected it as one of the ten greatest films about Wales. (documented fact) ²
• Wikipedia states that in 2012 the BFI and UK Film Council selected Above Us the Earth as the best independent film made in Wales, but marks the statement as needing a citation and none has been found. It is repeated widely and recorded here as unverified. (unverified claim, uncertain) ²

Mines

• Ogilvie Colliery — Caerphilly
  The film is about this colliery: Francis shot the National Coal Board's closure of Ogilvie through the spring and summer of 1975 and built the film around it.

Operators

Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Company

Regions

Caerphilly

Related Culture records

• The Green Death
  The two founding records of this category were made at the same colliery two years apart: Doctor Who borrowed Ogilvie as a location in March 1973, and Karl Francis filmed its closure in 1975.

Sources

1. (secondary) Above Us the Earth (1977) — BFI Player
2. (secondary) Karl Francis — Wikipedia

Record created: 11 September 2026 · Last researched: 11 September 2026