Byker (1983)
53 mins
An inventive hybrid of photography, interviews, documentary and dramatised sequences, Byker is a film on a terraced community in Newcastle, demolished to make way for the Byker Wall. Made by Finnish-born Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, a founder member of Amber who was a resident in Byker from 1969 to 1976, when her own flat was demolished, the film is a celebration of the area's working class culture.
Today I’m With You (2010)
54 mins
A portrait of the various communities that now live on the Byker Wall Estate, this follow-up film to Byker sees Konttinen return to negotiate a journey through the new Byker. She invites residents to imagine their lives in ‘just one picture’, then develops the ideas in improvised and occasionally chaotic sessions with the participants.
Part of a season on Amber Film Collective’s documentaries
Showing as part of this season: Early Shorts (1969-1974), Byker (1983) + Today I’m With You (2010), T Dan Smith (1987) + Shorts, From Marks & Spencer to Marx and Engels (1988) + From Us to Me (2016), Writing in the Sand (1991) + Shorts
Presented by Wavelength
F: facebook.com/wavelengthdocs
T: @wavelengthdocs
dir. Amber
year: 1983+2010
country: UK
total run-time: 107 minutes
Doors 6.45pm
Film 7.15pm
£6.00/Concessions (Pay What You Can)
“Alongside Ken Loach, Amber are the last great (working) class warriors of British film... They make movies in the north-east about a way of life that is rapidly disappearing, and one that is rarely represented on screen: sea coalers, fishermen, harness racers are just a few of the subjects they have tackled over the past 30 years. But there is more to their movies than history. They are funny and moving, political and challenging, and as real as it gets.”
“Part-art cinema, part-documentary, Amber’s evolving humanist aesthetic has produced a body of work that in its integrity, honesty and commitment, remains one of the great unsung achievements of British cinema.”
“The often strikingly unreconstructed and old-school north-east working-class culture is one which Amber’s films and photography has documented, chronicled, celebrated and dramatised over the past 47 years”
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