Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 22291 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| NO GRASS UNDER MY FEET | 1975 | 1975-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Sound Duration: 14 mins 8 secs Credits: Brian Byrne, David Eadington,Roger Schindler Cumulus Film Productions Teesside College of Art Transport: Andy Wood Genre: Amateur Subject: Working Life Urban Life |
| Summary This 1970s amateur film by students at the Teesside College of Art Visual Communication Course looks at the life of Middlesbrough steel plater, Bert Earl, who works as a local chimney sweep in his spare time. This portrait contains footage around South Bank, including Harcourt Road. |
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Description
This 1970s amateur film by students at the Teesside College of Art Visual Communication Course looks at the life of Middlesbrough steel plater, Bert Earl, who works as a local chimney sweep in his spare time. This portrait contains footage around South Bank, including Harcourt Road.
The first scene opens with a clapperboard slate used to sync film in post-production introducing the subject of the film, Bert Earl, who is preparing to sweep a chimney. [The house belongs to the tutor of the...
This 1970s amateur film by students at the Teesside College of Art Visual Communication Course looks at the life of Middlesbrough steel plater, Bert Earl, who works as a local chimney sweep in his spare time. This portrait contains footage around South Bank, including Harcourt Road.
The first scene opens with a clapperboard slate used to sync film in post-production introducing the subject of the film, Bert Earl, who is preparing to sweep a chimney. [The house belongs to the tutor of the students.]
He removes a cloth from the fireplace which he uses to prevent soot from the chimney settling in the surrounding room.
He explains in voiceover that his other job is as a plater's helper at Teesside Bridge engineering works. The film shows Bert using a grinding tool on a piece of steel in the engineering works as he describes his working life.
Title: A Film About Bert Earl - No Grass Under My Feet
Bert attends to another fireplace in the same house with brush in hand and newspapers on the floor, as he provides commentary on his early life, and where his job as a sweep takes him. He applies rods to the brush so he can push the brush up the chimney. He then removes the rods as he brings the brush back down the chimney. He chats to the team making the film, saying that he's been filmed by the BBC as part of a programme featuring local sporting events, in Bert's case a bowling competition.
The next sequence takes place at an indoor bowling club, Bert playing with friends. He explains that he also plays bowls for Yorkshire. A group of players gather around the bowls to ascertain who has won that particular game or 'end'.
Back in his client's house, Bert talks to the owner about types of fuel and how often a chimney needs to be swept.
The film cuts to South Bank in Middlesbrough, an area where a lot of old buildings have been demolished, leaving a bleak landscape. In voiceover Bert explains that fewer houses in South Bank with solid fuel fires means less work for him. Bert walks down a street, bemoaning the fact that, in his opinion, perfectly sound homes are needlessly being demolished. He stands in front of a gap in a street of terraced houses, which have been boarded up, and speaks about the problems of demolition and the apparent shortage of homes. He complains about work carried out shoring up gable ends of houses, which will be pulled down in any case. To Bert this is a waste of money. The camera team and Bert walk around the streets of South Bank as Bert describes the merits or shortcomings of the work, which is drastically altering his home town.
Back in the house where he's still sweeping the chimney, he describes how youngsters are ignoring a new playing field to play football, and causing nuisance elsewhere.
Out on the street, Bert chats to a passer-by about the state of the playing field and complains to another two men about the council's lack of action to complete some roadworks. Bert also reiterates his strong feelings about the number of houses being demolished. The men are generally in agreement with Bert, and point out that local rates have also increased. Bert continues his walk along another street, walking where houses once stood. A couple of young teenagers join him, one saying that he used to live in one of the boarded -up houses they are approaching. Bert complains that local people are tired of the piece-meal way the work is being carried out and the mess that is left afterwards.
Back in the house Bert is asked how many chimneys he can sweep in a week.
Back on the South Bank streets a number of condemned houses have padlocks on their doors. Further up the street a couple of youths smash one of the windows, to Bert's disgust.
Working on cleaning his client's chimney, Bert complains of broken glass in the street from smashed bottles. He says he was going to get the local newspaper, the Evening Gazette involved in his campaign for tidier streets.
A graphic image shows the chimney brush appearing out of the top of the chimney on his client's house .
Credits: Made by Brian Byrne, Roger Schindler, David Eadington
Back on the South Bank streets, Bert points out an old school now boarded up that will be used by cadets for training, and the film ends as Bert argues that all the empty buildings nearby should be cleared at the same time.
Context
No Grass Under My Feet was produced by Cumulus Film Productions, set up by three students at the Teesside College of Art, Brian Byrne, David Eadington and Roger Schindler. The trio also worked together on films about Saltburn Pier, the early days of the North Yorkshire Moors railway, and documented the working life on the River Tees in Estuary and River Work. The students were influenced by the documentary work of their lecturers, Murray Martin and Graham Denman, founder members of the Amber...
No Grass Under My Feet was produced by Cumulus Film Productions, set up by three students at the Teesside College of Art, Brian Byrne, David Eadington and Roger Schindler. The trio also worked together on films about Saltburn Pier, the early days of the North Yorkshire Moors railway, and documented the working life on the River Tees in Estuary and River Work. The students were influenced by the documentary work of their lecturers, Murray Martin and Graham Denman, founder members of the Amber Film Collective in 1969, with its commitment to record working-class life in the North of England. Eadington would later work on Amber films such as In Fading Light (1989) and the drama-documentary T Dan Smith (1987). The Teesside College of Art became part of Teesside University in the 1970s and still offers a degree in film and television production.
No Grass Under My Feet revolves around Bert Earl, a steel plater and part time chimney sweep from Middlesbrough, who passionately expresses his opinions about the state of his home town, and particularly the industrial suburb of South Bank, once a market town known as Tees Tilery. Amateur documentaries such as these often provide a great insight into how everyday people viewed aspects of society at the time as well as showing how the region’s towns and cities changed over time, a social history frequently neglected in mainstream filmmaking. In the year this film was made, 1975, the United Kingdom held a referendum on the possibility of leaving the European Economic Community (EEC). However, 67% of voters chose to remain in the EEC, which would later become the European Union. Between the years of 1973 to 1975, an economic recession plagued the country. In March of 1975, over one million people were unemployed across the country, as inflation continued to rise. By the end of August, the figure would be at 1,250,000 unemployed. In February 1975, Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party, who at the time were the opposition to Harold Wilson’s Labour party. During the 70s, the traditional heavy industry jobs in the North East were in a general decline, caused by high inflation. In Tyneside, there had been a general move away from these heavy industry jobs. In 1971 it was revealed that around 53% of employment in the area was in the service sector, a sharp move away from heavy industry and manufacturing. In 1974, Middlesbrough was absorbed into the county of Cleveland, having previously been part of the County Borough of Teesside. Middlesbrough’s South Bank was once famous for its steel making (Dorman Long). Huge slag heaps created from the steel industry’s waste earned the town its notorious nickname, ‘Slaggy Island’. South Bank also had a prominent shipbuilding tradition with Smith’s Dock Company establishing a shipyard there in 1907, and becoming one of the largest employers for people in the area. During the Second World War, South Bank shipbuilders helped the war effort by building ships for the Royal Navy, as well as converting trawlers into Navy patrol boats. In 1966 Smiths Dock became part of the Swan Hunter Group. In 1968, Britain’s first built and owned container ship was constructed on South Bank for the company Manchester Liners. The ship was used to transport goods to and from Canada. However, as with much of the North East’s heavy industry in the 1980s, shipbuilding at South Bank came to an end with the closure of the old family firm of Smiths Dock, its last ship launched on October 15, 1986. The shipyard would re-open for repairing ships but was finally closed in 2001. The playing fields shown in the film, next to Harcourt Road, are still existent today, although they now look a lot more presentable than in the film. South Bank itself saw many more houses demolished throughout the 70s and the area is now more spacious, with walkthroughs between the large terraced streets (the logic of which escapes Bert Earl) and more green spaces than could be seen in the film. It currently has a population of just over 6,500 according to the 2011 census. It is also worth pointing out that Bert’s two jobs, steel plater and chimney sweep, have all but vanished from today’s society. Such professions are very rare to find when compared to the 1970s, where steel work was almost the norm for men on Teesside. References: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4553464.stm https://englandsnortheast.co.uk/1970to1989.html |
