A Documentary Film
BEYOND THE BREAKER
Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal History
Watch the Trailer
Beyond the Breaker is a 26-minute documentary film that tells the story of the Huber Breaker in Ashley, Pennsylvania — the last remaining anthracite coal breaker in the Northern Pennsylvania Coalfield, destroyed in August 2014 despite efforts by the local community to preserve it.
However, Beyond the Breaker is more than just the story of a building. It is also a film that seeks to understand what this building meant to all those miners who worked in it, to all those residents who had to live in its shadow, and to all those in the region whose very identity was shaped by their association with anthracite coal.
The film was made over several years in Northeastern Pennsylvania and premiered in 2019, showing at film festivals and community events in the region since then.
A Story About More Than Coal
The Huber Breaker towered 130 feet above the landscape, once processing over seven thousand tons of anthracite coal a day at its peak operation. By 2012, it had stood vacant for 36 years. By 2014, it was gone.
Beyond the Breaker poses the question: What remains when a community is left without a physical connection to the industry that formed it? Can memory carry history forward?
About the Filmmaker
Beyond the Breaker was directed and produced by John Welsh, a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The film was produced through Rare Light Media. Welsh's broader work as a photographer and filmmaker can be explored at John Welsh Photography.
