Based on the real events following the 1992 strike vote at Giant Mine, a Yellowknife
gold mine in Canada's North West Territories, where miners make big money working
in challenging conditions. Rather than back down to union demands, American
mining magnate Peggy Witte hires strike breakers, contracts Pinkerton security
forces to patrol the mine gates and then sits back to watch union members turn
on each other and the town tear itself apart. After numerous valient attempts
by the idealist protagonist Jim O'Neil to bring the two sides together, an
explosion claims the lives of nine miners who crossed the picket line set up
by members of CASAW (Canadian association of Smelter and Allied Workers). The
angry striker, Roger Warren, is eventually convicted of second-degree murder
for setting the bomb and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole
for 20 years. GIANT MINE presents the age-old dilemna: whether to swallow your
pride and pay the bills or stand by your co-workers, even if it cost you your
job. But it not the age-old story of oppressed worker and the nasty owner but
a contemporary tragedy about greed and the inability two warring factions to
see the perspective of the other. Nominated for a Gemini for best film, GIANT
MINE received critical acclaim in both Canada and the UK.
"I was hired as the leftie who would inject a balance into the
film between the Union's leftist demands and the owner's right-wing actions
and thus reveal the guilt of both sides under pressure from a relentless
market economy.
As
a filmmaker engaging in political narrative, the question of
how to integrate politics artistically is constantly posed. Awareness
of the present disinterest and cynicism demands story telling
innovation.
Having worked with national public television in both Canada
with the CBC, and in Germany with ZDF, where the cultural mandate is
supposed to out weigh purely commercial intent, the challenge
of representing political concepts in digestable narrative is ongoing."
Penelope
Buitenhuis
"Produced
by the CBC, GIANT MINE is a superbly crafted, character driven
thriller in which capitalism at its most elementary and most
brutal is pitted against an equally repugnant form of trade unionism."
