From Marks & Spencer to Marx and Engels (1988)
57 mins
A documentary about the East German shipbuilding and fishing town of Rostock made over five years, it grew out of a collaboration with East German documentary studio DEFA. Amber were the first and only British film crew to be invited to make a documentary inside the German Democratic Republic. What resulted was a unique portrait of life in Rostock that provoked uproar when released in the GDR, audiences responding enthusiastically to its unredacted style and authorities cancelling screenings.
From Us To Me (2016)
90 mins
A follow-up to From Marks & Spencer to Marx and Engels made when Amber returned to Rostock in 2004, this documentary insightfully explores the lives of ordinary citizens in the former GDR and how their lives and prospects have changed since reunification. Key characters from the original film - former members of the FPG fishing co-operative and of the Brigade of Women Crane Drivers - look back at themselves in 1987, at the experience of ‘Die Wende’ and the seismic changes that came with the collapse of the GDR as they recall their former lives in the "workers paradise".
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: 1988+1991
country: UK
total run-time: 57 mins + 90 mins
Doors 7.15pm
Films:
From Marks & Spencer to Marx and Engels - 7.45pm
From Us to Me - 8.55pm
Both films: £9
Single tickets: £6.00/£4.50 Concessions
“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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