Amber Online

The gradual emergence of a ship at the end of the street and its sudden subsequent disappearance was part of the annual cycle in Wallsend.

To the unsuspecting visitor, the first encounter with a ship in its final stages, the awareness of its scale in relation to its minute builders who cling to its sides and move around its vast bulk, is breathtaking.

A few days before the launch the yard takes on a special atmosphere of anticipation and this film is a response to, and an attempt to capture that atmosphere.

When shown on Channel 4 in 1982, Chris Auty described the film in the Sunday times as “a tone poem on working life with a distinctive combination of loving nostalgia and political protest”.

Despite its short length and minuscule budget (£400) this film made in 1973 is a very important one in the development of Amber.

With a commitment to documenting working life in the North East, the shipyards which dominated the area were a natural early project, attracted as we were by the scale and visual drama of this industry.

The monumental imagery and poetic construction inevitably attracts criticism of “Romanticism” and indeed there is a discrepancy between an outsiders views of other peoples lives and their own perception and experience, which is recognised and addressed in various other work of the group – (i.e. Byker project and later film productions such as Seacoal).

Yet as well as aesthetic concerns, in the juxtaposition of images of workers and dignitaries there is the germ of social comment, which invariably was to develop in response to changing conditions in the North East.

As well as visual style and content, the film is also significant in that it established a way of working which was a departure from conventional documentary production. Largely unplanned, it was in the main the work of two people who directed and shot the film jointly, on what was a casual journey round the yard – seeing, reacting, filming, working on and trusting each other’s instinct and eye.

Although inevitably larger projects were to lead to a more disciplined organisation, a common sensibility to imagery and situation remains fundamental to the group, and perhaps is one reason for its relative stability over a long period of time.

An AMBER Production featuring
The launch of the tanker “World Unicorn”

1973
Running time: 10 mins
Colour
Optical
Documentary
Available in:
16 mm
VHS Tape

Made with financial assistance from Northern Arts.