Preceded by short:Anthrakitis (Sara Sugarman, U.K., 1998). An idiosyncratic portrait of an elderly Welsh eccentric (Liz Smith of High Hopes) living in a world of her own amidst ramshackle decay. (14 mins, Color, 16mm)The Amber Films Collective has been exploring the realities of British working-class life for thirty years now. The Scar is a pinnacle of their artistic talents, smartly scripted and shot, with acting that benefits from its basis in real lives ruled by politics (reminding us of the films of Mike Leigh). The film is set in a mining town in County Durham, where the desolation of work in the mines has for a decade been replaced by the desolation of no work. Mae (Charlie Hardwick), a hero of the 1984-85 national miner's strike that galvanized the community, has shed the glow of that defining moment and now finds herself facing middle age, strip-mined. The Scar is her story, and that of her two disaffected teenagers, and how they each seek renewal in some surprising and dangerous places. But it is also the story of a community-members of which portray themselves-who have lost everything but their humanity, which comes across so beautifully in this film. "Nowhere more than in The Scar...are the country's growing pains portrayed with (such) excruciating exactitude....A high point of the series."-N.Y. Times (JB)