Shooting Magpies

Director: Amber Production Team

Year: 2001

Like Father portrays a family in crisis, focusing on the dislocations of grandfather, father and son. <br /> <br /> Pigeon man Arthur Elliott, a seventy-year-old whose working life in the pit gave him a strong sense of identity and pride, is losing his allotment to the local authority's coastal redevelopment scheme. <br /> <br /> Working as a trumpet player, a teacher and a club singer, running an agency for club acts, Joe Elliott, forty-years old, an ex-miner, can just about scrape a living out of his music, but he is losing his wife.<br /> <br /> Ten year old Michael Elliott, living with the pit village folklore and the wreckage of the coal industry is left to grapple with his own realities. Each of the three generations is struggling to come to terms with the past and find the ties that bind them.<br /> <br /> The three separate, but essentially integrated worlds unfold against the rich and extraordinary backdrop of East Durham landscapes and locations. Development of the film began in 1998, its dramatic content originating from actual lives and the unfolding of real events. Incorporating documentary situations, the film features strong performances from both professional and non-professional actors alike. Strongly committed to nurturing latent natural talent, Amber took the bold step of casting local people with no previous acting experience in each of the three main roles: Ned Kelly as Arthur, Joe Armstrong as Joe and Jonathan Dent as Michael. Joe Armstrong, himself an ex-miner, wrote the brass band suite which features in the film as a commission for his character Joe Elliott.

Director: Amber Production Team

Year: 1998

The Scar is about a community in crisis. Twelve years after the miners' strike, the developers are moving in and history is being erased by the bulldozers. But the scars of the past run deep and the bitterness of the men and women whose lives have been destroyed survives beneath the cosmetic cover.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> The film's catalyst is May Murton. The onset of the menopause, the failure of her marriage and the disintegration of her community have shattered both her personal and political beliefs. Like many women who were active during the strike, it is May who has been left to clean up the mess. But time has taken its toll. Her teenage children Dale and Becky are increasingly out of control, and her estranged husband Tony has flown the nest to take up residence in the allotments perched high above town. Tony views the town from above, realising what has been lost but, like many former miners stripped of the capacity to re-engage with a society which has treated him so cruelly. When May falls in love with Roy, who manages a nearby open-cast mine, she must cross the political divide between them - changing their lives forever.

Director: Philip James McGoldrick

Year: 2025

An emotionally charged sports drama following Grazyna "The Tramp" Jarzynowska, a British-Polish MMA fighter whose meteoric rise is abruptly halted by an unexpected pregnancy.