About Us
Current Activity
Film & photography production we're involved in at the moment... For current gallery and cinema activity, click on the links above.
Craghead
Sanchez Coulson took on the role of Deano in Shooting Magpies, his family taking part in the scenes around the road race, the boxing and the funeral. They generously allowed Amber to film and use a sequence from a family funeral that took place at the time. Since the summer of 2005, we have been documenting the family on the farm they recently bought in Craghead, half a mile from the piece of land where the preparations for the road race were filmed, which they sold to the developers Bellway. Warren Coulson is a coal merchant and the family are involved in building the horse business on the new farm. In some ways the film is an extension from the territory explored in Seacoal (Warren himself worked on Lynemouth Beach as a seacoaler, at the age of 12) and in Eden Valley. It is also an extension of Coalfield Stories and the coalfield trilogy, The Scar, Like Father and Shooting Magpies.
Byker Revisited
Byker Revisited
In the 1970s Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen documented the old working class terraced community of Byker, which was demolished to make way for the Byker Wall Estate. The exhibition, book and Amber film of Byker came out in 1983. In 2002, when we were borrowing the original exhibition from the community centre where it is on permanent display, Sirkka was asked to return and document the new community. She began to develop Byker Revisited, a new portrait and landscape project, the following year. Parts of the late 1970's estate have become popular with artists and professionals, and other parts house a more-or-less traditional working class population, including a number of old Byker families. Some parts, which have faired less well structurally over the years, have tended to be used to house a more transient population, including a large number of refugee families. These parts of the estate are also the main focus of new regeneration/redevelopment plans. Sirkka is creating a portrait across the whole estate, and Amber has made a film-making commitment to the territory, documenting narratives that might feature in the exhibition, and making a new documentary about Byker.
The Bamboozler
Now released as a DVD, this new film is about love, legacy and percussion. It was originally an offshoot from the work on Byker Revisited, looking at the Rumba Palace, a percussion workshop and rehearsal space in Newcastle's Ouseburn, which was being set up by Brendan Murphy, one of the subjects in Sirkka's portrait project. It's an Aladdin’s Cave of instruments, mostly inherited from the Tyneside musician Bruce Arthur, who died in 2003, and is now run by his former student Brendan Murphy and fellow percussionist Keith Hill. The film came to be as much about Bruce, partly because he had been a good friend of Amber member Graeme Rigby. In the process of making the film, Adrian Sander, who Bruce had 'commissioned' to make a series of sound sculptures, decided to make the Bamboozler, Bruce's last commission, named after his love of bamboozling people and the fact that it was to be constructed from brass and bamboo. The almost-completed film was screened at Gateshead International Jazz Festival in March, followed by a performance on Bruce's sound sculptures, which was filmed for inclusion in the final version.
Re-engaging with Urban Tyneside
The group is looking at the broader territory of regeneration, and in conjunction with others, is aiming at further film production and a series of exhibitions, screenings, publications and events in 2009/10, both as a context for the work in Byker and a way of examining both the history and the contemporary experience of Tyneside’s reinventions.
People of the Hills
Weardale Castings, 2006
Over the current year Richard Grassick has been moving away from day to day involvement in the collective and is working more extensively on his long-term People of the Hills project, documenting Weardale and Teesdale in rural South West Durham. Recent narratives have included the dales' traces of quarrying and Weardale Castings in Wolsingham, where Polish steelworkers are being increasingly brought in to fill skills gaps.
Digitisation & DVD Production
You can do more-or-less everything in-house these days, so you end up having to do more-or-less everything in house these days. We’re committed to a programme of digitization in both the film and photography collections. We’re developing contextual videos, texts, and - who knows - perhaps even podcasts, as we go. We’ve bought the equipment for short-run DVD production, and we’re exploring how we can present all this material on the web. It’s a constant joy learning the idiosyncrasies of the different softwares and bits of kit. Watch this space.
Funding Production Work
Amber's film production work is funded by Northern Rock Foundation. The work in Byker and in Craghead is being supported by Northern Film + Media. The work in Byker by Arts Council England and The Millfield House Foundation.