Amber Online

Amber is a film & photography collective based in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North of England. Amber Films, Side Gallery and Cinema are all part of it. This website brings together a full sense of the activity, history and collections for the first time...

Current Activity and Amber Films are self-explanatory - both come with clips. The Side Photographic Collection is in Photography. Check out what's on at Side Gallery and Side Cinema. Find out about Amber History - we're 40 next May; buy our films, books, prints & posters at the Online Shop; register if you want comment on any of the work. Join the Amber Forum (you need to register separately for this) and keep in contact by signing up for our RSS feeds.

March on SideTV

Double Vision Boxing for Hartlepool on Channel 1
Boxing has always been one of the territories that has interested Amber in its documentation of the North of England and in 1986, with the help of George Bowes’ gym it made the film Double Vision: Boxing for Hartlepool (Amber, 1986, 60min). With Ray Stubbs as a journalist who is cynical about the sport and Sammy Johnson an ex-boxer challenging his assumptions, the blend of drama and documentary explores the motives for going into the ring and the contradictions that exist within the sport. Double Vision

It’s Not All Peachy on Channel 2
Emer McCourt’s documentary follows the trials of Rosie, a young homeless woman on Tyneside, as she tries to find somewhere to stay. Made as part of Northern Film & Media’s Capture scheme, it’s a moving and illuminating film, drawing an energy from the sheer difficulty of its subject’s life. (Emer McCourt, 2009, 13min) It's Not All Peachy

Ship Hotel – Tyne Main on Channel 3
Philip Trevelyan’s 1967 documentary about the Gateshead pub remains one of the best films ever made on Tyneside. Philip was friend of Amber’s Murray Martin and the film was a major influence on Amber, along with Philip’s cult classic The Moon & The Sledgehammer made in 1971 about a family living in a wood in Sussex. Also known simply as Ship Tyne Main, the film captures the sheer cultural richness of a Sunday lunchtime at the pub, the extraordinary singing, the dominoes, the crack, the carryings-on. Using minimal drama alongside the documentary, the film sees young Tyneside poets Tom and Connie Pickard in the mix of customers. (Philip Trevelyan, 1967, 30min) Ship Hotel

News From Durham on Channel 4
This ten minute discussion ‘trigger tape’ from the build-up to the 1984 Miners’ Strike combines footage of the 100th Durham Miners’ Gala, held in 1983, with extracts from an NUM weekend school that came together to discuss the issues that were facing the union and the mining communities. The video was a forerunner of the celebrated Miners’ Campaign Tapes that were developed by the Film Workshop Movement during the strike. (Amber, 1983, 10min) News From Durham

Laurie on Channel 5
Another one of Amber’s major early influences was the South Shields artist, photographer, modelmaker and general sage Laurie Wheatley. This gentle portrait of the man follows him as he fulfills a lifetime’s ambition to make a life size sculpture, dispensing wisdom and self-deprecating comments in the process. The sculpture of a welder still stands above the stairs in Side Gallery. (Amber, 1978, 25min) Laurie

Mouth of the Tyne: Episode 6 on Channel 6
When Amber made T Dan Smith in the 1980s, it videoed hours of interviews with the enigmatic, powerful and flawed visionary who drove forward so many of the changes in the North East during the 1960s. It also developed interviews with three other leftwing Newcastle councillors from that era. Episode 6, A Capacity to Visualise, sees the development of the City Plan in the early 60s. You can still see episodes 1 to 5 on this channel. The 12 part serialisation continues next month. (Amber, 2009, 16min) Mouth of the Tyne

SideTalks: Weegee the Famous on Channel 7
Amber holds one of the largest collections of Weegee’s photographs outside New York. Side Gallery organised the first UK tour of work by the great street photographer, whose images defined the mythology of New York in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. This month Amber is putting a selection of Weegee prints for sale on its website. To mark the launch of the Weegee Print Sales section at amber-online, SideTV is screening a new documentary bringing together interviews with Wilma and with the legendary New York printer Sid Kaplan, who knew Weegee, printed for him on one occasion and made most of the prints in the Amber collection. (Amber, 2010, 27min) Weegee

The Sausage Maker’s Kitchen on Channel 8
In the five episodes of Bosnian Kitchen that have gone out on SideTV, Amber’s Graeme Rigby has been watching Irena Carlton prepare the delights of corn bread, chickpeas & leeks and squid in red wine. This month Irena visits his kitchen to find out about home sausage making. How many facts do you know about sage, mace and the other ingredients of an ‘English-flavoured’ sausage? Is there something offensive about the meat as it is squeezed into the pig’s intestines? Why are sausages so beautiful? Find out in The Sausage Maker’s Kitchen (Amber, 2010, 19min) Sausages

Side TV

Byker Revisited

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's Byker Revsited: Portrait of a Community, published by Northumbria Press (£30) is now available from our online shop and from the gallery. Sirkka created her seminal documentation of Byker in the 1970s, photographing the community into which she had move when Amber came to Tyneside in 1969. It became an exhibition, a book and an Amber film. From 2003 to 2009 she returned to the Byker Wall Estate that replaced it, developing portraits in collaboration with the new communities. The book brings both bodies of work together in a unique document of change. If you need convincing, you can look at the old photographs here and some of the new ones here.

Brian Hogg

Brian Hogg in Eden Valley
Hoggy, one of Amber's favourite actors, one of Amber's favourite people and a real friend of the collective died on Monday 19 October. Over the last fifteen or so years you could make a good argument for him being the face of Amber films. He'd been dealing with cancer for some time but, although weak and no longer able to speak, he came down to the gallery to see Sirkka's Byker Revisited exhibition just before he died, still able to share a joke even if it was scribbled on paper. It meant a huge amount to us. He first got involved with Amber as a driver and actor for Live Theatre, when Murray Martin and Sirkka were involved in touring their work. One of his great talents as a film actor was to merge with the terrtitories Amber was filming, whether it was working a fishing boat or being part of the trotting world. He was so good that after working on In Fading Light the fishermen actually offered him a job! In a change of programme, Amber is screening a tribute in November's SideTV season. As well as In Fading Light, Hoggy appeared in Dream On, Eden Valley, The Scar, Like Father and Shooting Magpies. He had bit parts in several other films. After Murray Martin died in 2007, Brian contributed to The Pursuit of Happiness, fondly reminiscing about his involvement in Amber's horsey films. Anyone wishing to leave a message can visit the Amber Forum.

Amber's Ellin Hare was one of the many who paid tribute to Brian at the funeral. Her address can be read here.