Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave

Join us for this screening of Jeremy Deller’s 2001 film, The Battle of Orgreave, which re-enacts the violent confrontation between picketers and the police during the miners’ strikes of 1984.

The dispute between the National Union of Mineworkers and the UK government lasted for over a year, and was the most bitterly fought since the general strike of 1926. On 18 June 1984, the Orgreave coking plant was the site of one of the most violent confrontations, which culminated in a police cavalry charge through the village.

The Battle of Orgreave, staged seventeen years later, was a spectacular re-enactment of what happened that day. Orchestrated by Howard Giles, a historical re-enactment expert, it involved more than 800 participants, including former miners and policemen, reliving the events that they themselves took part in.

Filmed by Mike Figgis for Artangel and Channel 4, The Battle of Orgreave first aired on 20 October 2002. The film intercuts dramatic photographs from the clashes in 1984 with footage of the re-enactment in 2001 and powerful testimonies to tease out the complexities of this bitter struggle. It is part of The Artangel Collection, an initiative to bring outstanding film and video works, commissioned and produced by Artangel, to galleries and museums across the UK.

This screening will be introduced by Dr Harry Meadley, an artist, researcher, and Senior Lecturer at Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University. Meadley’s recent projects have used festival-creation to explore and challenge issues of access and inclusion in public space, such as Civic Skateboarding for Leeds 2023 Year of Culture and Side-by-Side in collaboration with Touchstones, Rochdale.

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