Ellin Hare

In October 1987, the documentary film collective Amber Films from Newcastle became the first British film crew ever allowed to shoot in East Germany. They filmed the workers of the state-owned fishing concern in Warnemünde and a brigade of crane operators at the state Warnow dockyards. Just two years later, East Germany was history, including most of the jobs it once provided. Twenty-five years later, in 2014, the filmmakers returned to an utterly different Rostock. They visited the people they had filmed in 1987. Together, documentarians and subjects look at excerpts from the earlier film, and talk about the enormous changes the men and women experienced, how they dealt with them, and how they feel today.

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The last pits have closed, the redundancy money has been spent and a family is in crisis. 70 year old pigeon man Arthur Elliott is losing his allotment to the local authority’s coastal redevelopment scheme. Working as a trumpeter, teacher, club singer and club act agent, his son, 40 year old ex-miner Joe can just about scrape a living, but his marriage is breaking up. 10 year old Michael is left to grapple with his own realities as coalfield culture begins to disintegrate. Three generations struggle to come to terms with the past and find the ties that still bind them; three worlds unfold against the rich and extraordinary backdrop of East Durham.

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A magical realist feature drama exploring the lives of a women’s darts team on North Shields’ Meadow Well Estate.

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An experimental mix of thriller and documentary exploring the scandal centred on the one-time Newcastle Council Leader, aka The Mouth of the Tyne, who was sentenced to six years imprisonment in 1974 for corruption. A dynamic and visionary politician, Smith collaborated closely as Amber unpicked the story of a leftwing group of ex-war resisters who took control of the city council in 1960, the socialist and civic ambitions and the betrayals; the claims of MI5 involvement, of ministerial cover-ups and the unseen role of the Privy Council. With Smith appearing as himself and filmmakers Murray Martin and Steve Trafford as two journalists, the film interrogates the interviews and archive footage, weaving them together with a fictional scandal unfolding on the streets around them…

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A BBC film crew is interviewing a ‘typical Catholic family’ in the Divis Flats area of Belfast, when news comes in that a child, known to the family, has been hit by a stray plastic bullet fired by a British soldier – a version of events contested by the army. Back in London, editing the footage, the producer and researcher on the project wrestle with how to present the incident, and with their responsibility to the people in the film.

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