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This is a well-made and fascinating documentary about the construction of an oil refinery for BP in the agricultural land of the Isle of Grain in Kent's Medway River. Progress and modernity are set to destroy a way of life, and the film is unapologetic about compromises required by the need for oil, unsentimental about the unsustainability of the old way of life (a moribund hotel, which looks more like a prison camp, is all that is left of a previous role as a continental transport hub), and aware of the ubiquity of progress, even in the old farming community, where tractors have replaced horses. The film was sponsored by Anglo-Iranian Oil, BP's parent company. A collage of different voices express the effects of the coming changes, both on the locals and on those who will briefly stay to play their part in the construction.

As one might expect, the film is upbeat about the new construction, and honest in showing the extent of the disruption. But it still has an elegiac feel to it, nonetheless, as a community waits for annihilation.

I don't suppose it is now possible to verify, but it reminds me very strongly of the scenes in Winnerton Flats, in Nigel Kneale's TV serial Quatermass II (and the later film). The new housing for the incomers, the identification of the corporate interests with those of the community, the array of giant tanks to be built, and - most poignantly - the family driving in their car to a windswept beach for a picnic, looking eerily like the Quatermass II family who are shockingly machine-gunned in episode 3 of the serial - did this documentary provide some of Kneale's inspiration?