infoKeeping Time (1983)
Amber Films (Producer)
57 mins, 16mm
Colour/optical
Drama/documentary
Available as VHS
An early experiment for Amber, blending drama and documentary in a continuous narrative, Keeping Time explores a dancing school in North Shields, both following and fictionalising a young dancer’s life from the age of seven to seventeen. It led to Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s book and exhibition Step by Step (1989).
With one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at the time, North Shields children would get asked by their teachers: ‘You will never work, so what will you do?’ The dancing school became a place for aspiration; a bond between mothers and daughters; a meeting ground for the conflicting desires surrounding the dreams and realities of career and marriage ‘It's part of her, I think it always will be,’ reflects the mother in the film, after her daughter has given up dancing lessons and left home.
While researching material for Tyne Lives (1980), Amber were introduced to the Connell-Brown dancing school in North Shields. A team set out to make a straight documentary film about the dancing school, found themselves in a quandary as to what to say with the shot material, and shelved it. Sirkka continued with the photographic project that was to become Step by Step. Her images and her conversations with the mothers and daughters eventually formed a basis for the film script.
AMBER FILMS
Made under the auspices of the ACTT Workshop Declaration with financial assistance from Northern Arts and Channel Four Television.
Cast includes: Jill Ainsley, Art Davies, Lisa Hynes, Amber Styles
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