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July 18, 2025
We will be celebrating Pride season with our July movie. We're showing the 2014 British film _Pride_, which combines comedy and drama to reenact the true story of the solidarity forged between London gays and lesbians and striking Welsh coal miners during the mid-1980s. Gay activists Mark Ashton and Mike Jackson founded Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners in 1984, which became one of the leading fundraisers on behalf of coal-mining towns in South Wales. The money raised was desperately needed in those communities, as the miners were organized in the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which waged a nearly yearlong strike in 1984-85 in response to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's governmental efforts to undermine the UK's trade unions. While the strike was ultimately broken, and NUM suffered great losses, the legacy of this solidarity campaign lives on in the strengthened bonds between the LGBT community and the labor movement in the UK.
This movie was produced to commemorate the 30th anniversary of this campaign. Director Matthew Warchus enjoyed the services of a tremendous ensemble cast in recreating the personalities of these activists. The film stars Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Paddy Considine, Andrew Scott, George MacKay, Joseph Gilgun, and Ben Schnetzer. Many of the surviving activists were hired to serve as on-set consultants and advised the actors who portrayed them on-screen. The friendship developed between the gay Londoner Mark Ashton (Schnetzer) and the Welsh labor organizer Dai Donovan (Considine) is particularly poignant.
Discussion will follow the film.
As always, this event is free and open to the public. The Black Cat House welcomes all ages, and is a drug and alcohol-free venue. To help keep everyone safe and healthy, we ask that all guests wear face masks in our space. We are wheelchair accessible.