Amber came together as a film & photography collective in 1968 focussing on documenting working class and marginalised lives and landscapes in North East England. In 1977 we opened Side Gallery, which is committed to celebrating the best in the wider tradition of humanist documentary photography.
Due to cuts in critical finding Side Gallery has been closed since April 2023
Earlier this year, we received £236,615 support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for our project ‘Transforming Amber: Building a Resilient Future’. This support has secured our building for a year while we work on developing a new business model, income generation and becoming financially stable. Hopefully this work will lead to reopening of Side Gallery in the future.
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Side Gallery is dedicated to showing the best in documentary photography: rich, powerful and challenging work engaged with people’s lives and landscapes, telling stories that often get marginalised, whether they are from the North East of England or anywhere else in the world.
We’re not far from the Tyne Bridge on Newcastle’s Quayside.
As of 9th April 2023, Side Gallery is closed to the public due to critical funding cuts and the ‘cost of living crisis’.
Landscapes & lives of NE England, classic & contemporary documentary: a unique film & photographic collection growing from the work we’ve continued to produce, commission & collect since 1968.
Photographic exhibitions, videos, clips, trailers and each month’s Featured Film are free. For personal use Amber’s feature dramas, feature documentaries and film shorts are available as pay per view.
Classic and contemporary international film seasons, often linked to exhibitions at Side Gallery or to the wider work of AmberSide.
We have closed our cinema for re-development but we can still share films together digitally with our Doc North East programme.
Delivering distinctive projects with schools, colleges and the community – we use the AmberSide Collection and other resources as inspiration to develop creative, participative projects teaching documentary skills in photography and filmmaking to engage with local history and cultural heritage.
The best, and in many cases the only, place for DVD & Video from 40 years of Amber Filmmaking. Photography books linked to Amber’s production and Side Gallery’s exhibitions. Side Gallery’s classic photography Posters & Postcards. Plus high quality digital Prints and special editions.
