Northern Film School students explore miners' strike era in a short film about 'Yorkshire pain'

However, the story is about a farmer and his family who are struggling to eat as their crops die, and his “unyielding pride” spells doom.

Luke’s late grandfather, Raymond Couch, was a miner and he grew up being told about that time period, so he wanted write a story about it, but in an indirect way.

"Our protagonist, Martin, is a farmer,” he says the Northern Film School student. “It developed into a story about a family just outside of a mining town, how they deal with everything, how there’s almost a similar struggle going on but Martin sees it as a different struggle – he doesn’t realise that they’re two sides of the same coin, really.”

Charlie, 21, originally from London, adds: “Coming on to the project as producer, I did a lot of research into the whole time period and I think there’s so much knowledge and information around it that (people), especially our generation and younger generations, don’t know about.

He adds: “We were thinking this is a story that doesn’t get told enough and needs to be told.”

It’s not lost on the filmmakers that strikes have become widespread again, events which have developed since they first starting writing at the beginning of 2022.

Luke, 20, says: “It’s interesting that when we started writing it, none of this was going on. History’s repeating itself in a way and it’s worked out to be even more topical every single day. It’s heartbreaking, really, but I guess it’s making the film more powerful the more we work on it.”

There are about 20 people involved in the project, including five actors, and they intend to shoot in the coming weeks in North Yorkshire. They have raised more than half of their £2,500 target and have produced a ‘concept trailer’ which gives people an idea of what the film would look and feel like, using other productions.

The short is being made as a project at the Northern Film School, part of Leeds Beckett University and where Luke and Charlie are in their third year, but they hope to expand the idea to feature-length in the future.

Ambition is certainly in evidence here, as when introducing viewers to the concept trailer, Luke tells them: “The Dalesman’s Litany is a dramatic tragedy. Yet, rather than taking place in 15th century Verona, it occurs in 1980s Yorkshire.”

Visit their fundraising page at https://gofund.me/bc0046a8 or search for The Dalesman's Litany on YouTube to view the concept trailer.