Videos

Trilith has been producing videos since 1984 and most of these productions are offered for purchase. We are not available to hold stocks of all titles so some titles are only available as special, 'one-off' copies. Please contact us to confirm availability. Currently we can supply on VHS (PAL) but DVDs will be available in due course.

'A Famous Skill'

These films say it all: men covering miles a day up and down dusty rope walks; women tending immensely complex net-making machines so noisy that they drowned out speech; outworkers in many villages hand-braiding the most delicate work on the back of a kitchen chair.

Bridport is forever identified with the manufacture of ropes and nets. It is difficult to know quite when it began but by the time of King John the town was already a vital supplier of rigging to the navy. As the centuries went by, its products multiplied and were exported throughout the world. They ranged from tennis nets to shipsí hawsers, billiard table products to aircraft cargo nets, military camouflage to fishing lines.

The industry grew and changed. Gradually many small family firms amalgamated into one: Bridport Gundry. More recently this was taken over by American-owned Bridport Aviation, specialising in aircraft and military applications even including an arrester for the space shuttle. Hemp, flax and cotton gave way to artificial fibres and the modern knotless net.

As Bridport Aviation shed many of its former products so new small companies arose to take them on. In a way history repeats.

At the root of it all was, and is, the skill of local people. Generations of Bridport families have worked in the trade and handed on their accumulated knowledge.

This documentary traces the history of the industry, using a wide variety of archive film. Three very experience workers in the trade, Ron Pinkett, Frances Williams and Elizabeth Wright, explain their skills and what it was like to be part of such a tradition. There is even a demonstration of hand-braiding.

'A Famous Skill' has been produced in close collaboration with:

The Museum of Net Manufacture, Loders

Somerset and Dorset Family History Society

Bridport Museum

Bridport Aviation

Duration: 29 mins. Price: £10

Supported by:

'The Wheel Stops Turning'

Found in a cinema in Derbyshire, a can of film, labelled 'A Primitive Pottery in Dorset', has found its way home. Collaborating with Penny Copland-Griffiths, who presents this production, and her colleagues from the Verwood and District Potteries Trust, Trilith has produced the 1917 film of Crossroads Pottery, Verwood, together with interviews with Fred Thorne, the last 'boy' to be taken on and John Leach, whose grandfather, Bernard, enjoyed inspirational visits to the pottey in the 1930s. The archaeological dig in 2000, prior to the last traces of the pottery site being covered, is also featured. Penny Copland-Griffiths brings the fruits of thirty years of research to the production.

'Purbeck on Film'

TRILITH presents films from three favourite collections:

SECOND WORLD WAR FARMING at Church Knowle, showing the transition from horses to machines. Shot, amazingly, on German colour film as explained by the farmers Nancy and Howard Stevens.

FILMS OF CORFE CASTLE and its people shot in 1937 including vignettes of the artistic community. We include the story of the film’s makers – singers David Brynley and Norman Notley.

SEASIDE HOLIDAYS in the early 1930’s and Sheila Clarke’s childhood memories of Purbeck.

Price £12.50

Supported by:

'Purbeck Underground'

'They were princes amongst men, without a doubt', Kevin Keates

Stone quarrying has been part of life in Purbeck for many centuries and continues today. Its products can be found in cathedrals and the simplest buildings; in pavement kerbs, garden ornaments and sculpture.

The industry has always been a small scale family affair, each quarry worked by a handful of people. Today stone is extracted entirely from open quarries but, within liing memory, men worked underground by candlelight with hadnd tools. Each 'underground' was a kind of personal mine, visible on the surface only as a couple of small stone sheds, a pony or donkey-worked capstan and hole in the ground.

In the 1960s a short film was made in which two old stoneworkers, Jimmy Chinchen and Tommy Collins, explored a disused underground working. It was one of the few occasions when a cine camera was taken beneath the surface. Some scenes were shot at Keates quarry nearby, where Jimmy and Tommy worked. In this new documentary the present proprietor, Kevin Keates, brings to life the history of the Purbeck stone trade.

Himself a thirteenth generation quarryman, Kevin adds his commentary to the old film and, in new footage, explores the intricate nature of the stone they work, the traditional terms used by quarrymen, the nature of the modern industry and the problems of the future.

The old film is incorporated, including some revived fragments of sound-track in which Jimmy and Tommy make their own comments, together with historic photographs from the time when quarrymen worked beneath the earth.

Duration: mins.

Price: £10

Supported by:

'Mother of All Pageants'

The great Sherborne Folk Play of 1905 - presented by Gerald Pitman.

Imagine a massive theatrical event with 900 cast and organisers, an audience of 30,000, with lavish costumes, orchestra, band, choruses and 60 horses. it is staged in the ruins of Sherborne Old Castle and enacts centuries of local history and brought together by Louis Napolean Parker.

This documentary tells the story and also features the 1905 cine film of the pageant itself. Some of the Pageants specially written music has been revived and the old film has been given a new piano accompaniment.The full tale of this local wonder, unlikely to be equalled, is told.

Price £12.50

Supported by: