Mémoires de la mine (1981)

This documentary, directed by Jacques Renard in 1981, retraces seventy years of life in the mines through the testimonies of miners from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coalfield. Confronted with numerous archival documents, the protagonists tell their stories and reflect on their past and present history. These four episodes (The Mine, The Memory, The Heart and The Body) shed light on the beginnings of coalmining, its working conditions, social and political struggles, the different technical evolutions of the miners’ work and the decline of the sector. Mémoires de la mine is unique in the history of French television documentaries because of its scope: never before have such life and career stories been recorded. Mémoires de la mine won the Prix de la critique and the Prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres.