Eden Valley (1995)
A feature drama set in a harness racing fraternity, that grew out of Amber’s long term engagement with it after the making of Seacoal in the mid 1980s.
The film explores horse culture, conflicts between urban and rural values and an evolving relationship between an inner city teenager and the father who abandoned him and his mother ten years earlier to live in a caravan and care for his horses. It draws heavily on the participation of the Laidler family who also featured strongly in Seacoal and talked the Amber collective into buying its first horse. Murray Martin, Amber’s founding visionary, became very much a part of the harness racing world in NE England: The Pursuit of Happiness, made after he died in 2007, explores his relationship with it.
Amber Films, 95 mins, 1995