Amber News

Step by Step back online

21st February 2008 By: Graeme Rigby

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's great exhibition Step by Step is back on the website. We took this 1980s documentation of a North Shields dance school offline, when we found that ...more »

Martin Stephenson Gig at Side Café

10th December 2007 By: Graeme Rigby

It's always a joy catching a Martin Stephenson gig, but an acoustic set in the intimacy of Side Café's upstairs lounge is going to be a rare treat. Clear away the excesses of Christmas, prepare...more »

Mondays with the NE Jazz Collective

10th December 2007 By: Graeme Rigby

In January, the North East Jazz Collective are programming some great Monday nights at Side Café. Jan 14: Ruth Lambert Quintet the brilliant jazz vocalist leads her quintet through numbers from the...more »

Amber Films

The Catalogue

Making films since 1968, there are 40 or so documentaries, dramas and feature films...

Even though the group insists there is no dominant creative individual there is evidently a real film genius at work here. The Times

Available on DVD from the Amber-Online shop or from Side Gallery, we have the new films, The Bamboozler and Shooting Magpies, as well as classics In Fading Light and The Tyne Documentaries, which brings together Launch, Bowes Line, Last Shift and Glassworks and Seacoal. We will be making more of the back catalogue available on DVD, so keep checking the website. Meanwhile, many are still available on VHS.

In March we're holding the first ever Amber Weekend School, looking at all aspects of our approach to filmmaking. A snip at £80, Click here for more information.

The Bamboozler (2007)

Amber Films (Producer)

A documentary about love, death and percussion; about Tyneside percussionist Bruce Arthur, the creation of the Rumba Palace on Newcastle's Ouseburn and the making of Bruce's last sound sculpture.

Available as a DVD

Shooting Magpies (2005)

Amber Films (Producer)

The third in Amber's coalfield trilogy of free-standing feature dramas exploring post-industrial experience in East Durham, Shooting Magpies looks at the impacts of heroin and the economically marginalised lives of a generation that emerged after coal. See the trailer

Fine performances and an unflinching gaze... New York Times

Available as a DVD

We Did It Together - So Why Do I Feel So Alone? (2003)

A documentary video made with members of Teen Talk, a teenage mothers' peer education group in East Durham. It's available as a VHS, together with an information pack for educational institutions - please contact Side Gallery.

Like Father

Amber Films (Producer)

The second film in Amber's coalfield trilogy, a feature drama exploring the lives of a grandfather, father and son, as they come to terms with the post-closure landscape of East Durham. See a video clip

Hope, humour and rugged beauty amid the bleakness... Independent on Sunday

Available as VHS

The Scar (1997)

Amber Films (Producer)

The first film in Amber's coalfield trilogy, exploring women's lives in East Durham in the aftermath of the last colliery closures and the failure of the coalfield campaign in which they had been activists. See a video clip

A drama of enormous importance... Tony Benn

Available as VHS