Side Cinema
Calendar
Amber at 40 Season
Amber film & photography collective came together in 1968. "So when did it actually start in 1968?" I once asked founder member Murray Martin. "When was the Grosvenor Square riot?" he asked back, thinking of the footage in the proto-Amber film All You Need is Dynamite. "It was May 68, wasn't it?" So that's why we're kicking off a 40th anniversary season of Amber in May. The Grosvenor Square riot was, of course, in March, but the founding of Amber is a moveable feast, anyway - somewhere between March 1968 and September 1969 when the collective arrived on Tyneside. So, between now and September 2009 we're going to try to show all of Amber's films. We're fitting in a couple more in the For Murray season, but to get things going we're featuring five screenings here with rarely shown films from all five decades of the group's existence.
Amber at 40 Season runs from 29th May 2008 until 26th June 2008
29th May 2008 ( 7:00PM – 9:00PM )
All You Need Is Dynamite + Maybe + Mai
All You Need Is Dynamite (1968, 40 mins) and Maybe (1969, 10 mins) were the two films made at Regents Street Polytechnic by some of the students who formed Amber. The former has the distinction of
5th June 2008 ( 7:00PM – 9:00PM )
Laurie + Glassworks
From the 1970s, Laurie (1978, 25 mins) is a portrait of the South Shields working class artist, sculptor and photographer Laurie Wheatley, an early Amber hero. His sculpture of a welder, which the
12th June 2008 ( 7:00PM – 9:00PM )
Double Vision + Ray Gets A Job
The great Tyneside bluesman Ray Stubbs has a long association with Amber and is one of the regular actors in the films. Made shortly after Seacoal, Double Vision: Boxing for Hartlepool (1986, 60
19th June 2008 ( 7:00PM – 9:00PM )
The Writing in the Sand + Letters to Katja
Amber has constantly experimented around the use of still images in film. The Writing in the Sand (1991, 45 mins) is a celebration of a working class day out on a north eastern beach and is
26th June 2008 ( 7:00PM – 9:00PM )
Like Father
2001, 95 mins
The second film in Amber's coalfield trilogy (with The Scar from 1997 and Shooting Magpies from 2005), it explores three male generations coming to terms with each other and