Programme note first published on ScottishFilms.com (now defunct)
“The North Sea is a widow-maker”, says one of the Piper Alpha disaster’s survivors in Anthony Wonke’s documentary. It was a widow-maker before 6 July 1988 and it continues to be one still, although fortunately never again on the same scale as that night, when 167 men perished in the flames and explosions of the platform that was at the time responsible for a quarter of all UK oil production. The knowledge gathered from the disaster has since been incorporated within the required training for offshore workers; the case study films Spiral to Disaster: Piper Alpha and Piper Alpha: Human Price of Oil from the BBC Disaster Series are used in safety management workshops.
In January 2008, during an interview with Cineformation about his BBC documentary series The Tower: A Tale of Two Cities, Wonke said, “I’ve never shied away from difficult subjects to put on the screen.” Fire In The Night delivers blow after blow, yet the director’s strongest feat is his unobtrusiveness as we’re being confronted with the blackest page in oil industry history, 25 years after the event, listening to a number of survivors opening up for the very first time.
With limited footage of the night available, Wonke resorts to inventive ways to tie together the chronology of the events, based on heartbreaking interviews with survivors, animated blueprints of the platform illustrating the men’s movements and escape routes, and harrowing reconstruction scenes, alongside grainy archive footage – the blazing platform engulfed by darkness, the ‘hospital ward’ in one of the rescue vessels, camcorder recordings of the men in earlier days aboard the Piper Alpha as a lively group of colleagues and friends.
“No one knew what would happen… It was as much religion as engineering,” says one survivor. Wonke, by letting his subjects speak, implicitly foregrounds the question ‘did safety really come first?’
Occidental Petroleum, which operated Piper Alpha, did not immediately instruct to stop the oil flow when they had been informed something had gone wrong, likely because of the costs involved. In 1984, they had not responded to safety requests and proposals following an earlier explosion, because shutting off production for this purpose would mean a loss of profits. The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher at the time did not publish the safety report.
And as the documentary points out, Occidental did not get prosecuted for the 1988 disaster and the 167 lost lives (although the company did disappear off the radar). Wonke’s approach of framing the tragedy through the survivors’ personal stories makes it impossible to ignore the disparity between the billion-dollar oil industry and the thousands of men who spent day after day labouring in dangerous circumstances. It is impossible to ignore, still (and especially) today, the suffering and neglect of workers’ rights in favour of the advancement of massive corporations and profits.
And in today’s context, Fire In The Night does not only remember the Piper Alpha, highlighting the many regulations that have been put in place in the offshore industry since then, but due to its time of release it also looms darkly over current controversies surrounding the fracking industry and its many health and safety issues.
The disunion between workers and corporations is translated visually in the film’s portrayal of the dynamic and balance between humans and machinery, the necessary collaboration between the two, and the frightening illustration that the former are the weaker link. The Piper Alpha platform is represented as a dangerous, looming creature, stronger than the men that keep it running. One survivor, near the end, describes what was left of the platform as he saw it after the disaster: a strange, deformed crab, its claws reaching menacingly out into the air.
With the film’s emphasis being on the survivors’ individual experiences and the immense loss and trauma of the disaster, Wonke in contrast manages to create a personality for the platform itself, as a monstrous presence. Early on in the film, the beautiful, classical and vulnerable soundtrack by Andrew Phillips is paralleled with the rhythmic staccato sounds of machinery in action, representing a dissonance between two elements that yet need to work in harmony, although soon after, the music is guidance to the platform’s destruction.
With subtle reflections on specific concerns through the foregrounded and central personal stories, Wonke manages to bring to our attention broader themes and warnings of complacency in this industry, yet also tells this story in the most sensitive yet detailed way possible, creating a moving and humble portrayal of the Piper Alpha and its personal and global legacy.
“The North Sea is a widow-maker”, says one of the Piper Alpha disaster’s survivors in Anthony Wonke’s documentary. It was a widow-maker before 6 July 1988 and it continues to be one still, although fortunately never again on the same scale as that night, when 167 men perished in the flames and explosions of the platform that was at the time responsible for a quarter of all UK oil production. The knowledge gathered from the disaster has since been incorporated within the required training for offshore workers; the case study films Spiral to Disaster: Piper Alpha and Piper Alpha: Human Price of Oil from the BBC Disaster Series are used in safety management workshops.
In January 2008, during an interview with Cineformation about his BBC documentary series The Tower: A Tale of Two Cities, Wonke said, “I’ve never shied away from difficult subjects to put on the screen.” Fire In The Night delivers blow after blow, yet the director’s strongest feat is his unobtrusiveness as we’re being confronted with the blackest page in oil industry history, 25 years after the event, listening to a number of survivors opening up for the very first time.
With limited footage of the night available, Wonke resorts to inventive ways to tie together the chronology of the events, based on heartbreaking interviews with survivors, animated blueprints of the platform illustrating the men’s movements and escape routes, and harrowing reconstruction scenes, alongside grainy archive footage – the blazing platform engulfed by darkness, the ‘hospital ward’ in one of the rescue vessels, camcorder recordings of the men in earlier days aboard the Piper Alpha as a lively group of colleagues and friends.
“No one knew what would happen… It was as much religion as engineering,” says one survivor. Wonke, by letting his subjects speak, implicitly foregrounds the question ‘did safety really come first?’
Occidental Petroleum, which operated Piper Alpha, did not immediately instruct to stop the oil flow when they had been informed something had gone wrong, likely because of the costs involved. In 1984, they had not responded to safety requests and proposals following an earlier explosion, because shutting off production for this purpose would mean a loss of profits. The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher at the time did not publish the safety report.
And as the documentary points out, Occidental did not get prosecuted for the 1988 disaster and the 167 lost lives (although the company did disappear off the radar). Wonke’s approach of framing the tragedy through the survivors’ personal stories makes it impossible to ignore the disparity between the billion-dollar oil industry and the thousands of men who spent day after day labouring in dangerous circumstances. It is impossible to ignore, still (and especially) today, the suffering and neglect of workers’ rights in favour of the advancement of massive corporations and profits.
And in today’s context, Fire In The Night does not only remember the Piper Alpha, highlighting the many regulations that have been put in place in the offshore industry since then, but due to its time of release it also looms darkly over current controversies surrounding the fracking industry and its many health and safety issues.
The disunion between workers and corporations is translated visually in the film’s portrayal of the dynamic and balance between humans and machinery, the necessary collaboration between the two, and the frightening illustration that the former are the weaker link. The Piper Alpha platform is represented as a dangerous, looming creature, stronger than the men that keep it running. One survivor, near the end, describes what was left of the platform as he saw it after the disaster: a strange, deformed crab, its claws reaching menacingly out into the air.
With the film’s emphasis being on the survivors’ individual experiences and the immense loss and trauma of the disaster, Wonke in contrast manages to create a personality for the platform itself, as a monstrous presence. Early on in the film, the beautiful, classical and vulnerable soundtrack by Andrew Phillips is paralleled with the rhythmic staccato sounds of machinery in action, representing a dissonance between two elements that yet need to work in harmony, although soon after, the music is guidance to the platform’s destruction.
With subtle reflections on specific concerns through the foregrounded and central personal stories, Wonke manages to bring to our attention broader themes and warnings of complacency in this industry, yet also tells this story in the most sensitive yet detailed way possible, creating a moving and humble portrayal of the Piper Alpha and its personal and global legacy.