browseThe Filleting Machine (1981)
Amber Films (Producer)
41 mins, 16mm
Colour/optical
Drama
Available as VHS
An Outstanding Film of the Year, London, 1982
Tom Hadaway’s fishing industry screenplay was written for Amber in the early 1970s, along with The Pigeon Man. Both were adapted for the stage, Murray Martin producing and directing tours of working men’s clubs with Live Theatre, the Newcastle-based company that was associated with Amber at the time.
Based on North Shields’ Ridges estate (later renamed Meadow Well), the film explores family tension, ambition and economic change. Amber’s first wholly fictional film, it represented a milestone in the group’s development, the first time it had worked in close liaison with a writer, and actors. Tom Hadaway, who died in 2005, spent a working life on the fish quay. His writings include the television script God Bless Thee, Jacky Maddison and episodes of When the Boat Comes In for the BBC and stage plays such as The Long Line for Live Theatre. His close relationship with Amber saw him writing the screenplays for Seacoal (1985) and In Fading Light (1989).
The film was one of a number of Amber's productions purchased by Channel Four, and in 1983, the Channel commissioned the group to produce a programme which would contextualise the film, and demonstrate the notion of integrated practice. The programme opened with a series of images of the estate where the film was set, over which were laid voices setting out factors relation to unemployment, and bias against women. The concluding section of the programme showed the film being screened and discussed by pupils in a local school with the actors present, followed by a number of filmed discussions on the estate during which a group of housewives debated the accuracy of the film, and unemployed teenagers talked about the woman's attitude towards her husband. The British Film Institute described the programme as an exemplary example of contextualisation.
AMBER FILMS
Made with financial assistance from Northern Arts.
Cast includes: Lynn Crosland; David Heads; Betty Hepple; Tom Hadaway