DVDs
Title: Greater Manchester Buses – City & Heritage
Producer: Independent Transport videos
Running time: 72min
Price: £16 UK, £18 rest of world
Title: Greater Manchester Buses – Around Manchester
Producer: Independent Transport videos
Running time: 110min
Price: £16 UK, £18 rest of world
These two videos —one shot within the city, the other across its surrounding population centres —are a record of Greater Manchester’s buses before franchising which, depending on your point of view, either brought order in place of chaos or bland uniformity in place of colourful variety.
Denis Strange’s productions offer no judgment of whether the Bee Network is to be welcomed or mourned. They come without any commentary, leaving viewers to savour the sounds of buses’ engines, gearboxes, air brakes, starter motors, horns and reverse alarms. These are interspersed with the different tone of Metrolink trams’ horns and the grinding of their steel wheels on steel rails, a public clock chiming the hour, the chirping of birds and occasional snatches of fragmented spoken words, like the off-camera voice of a man in Wigan saying something about “different buses”. The absence of commentary requires viewers to identify…
