Projects matching: Amber Production Team

Synopsis

In the ex-colliery villages of East Durham, there is an abyss: falling down it is an easy thing. In a dangerous landscape, Barry, 40-year-old ex-youth worker, occasional labourer, wryly comic storyteller and single father, watches out for his 12-year-old son Callum. His eye is drawn to Emma, a 22-year-old with two children, Jade, 7 and Shannon, 4.  Barry likes to help, likes kids and likes Emma. But Emma has her own worries.
 
The film follows her personal journey as she single-mindedly tries to get her partner Darren off heroin: as she acquires the cocktail of drugs that will see him through his 'rattle' and takes him to 'The Breakies', a bleakly isolated collection of fishing huts, out beyond the steelworks, at the mouth of the Tees. And it follows Barry, Jade, Shannon and Callum in tow, picking up the pieces in a community that has moved further and further away from the economic mainstream. The abyss yawns and Barry negotiates the difficult terrain opening up from his own serious misjudgements. Watched by the disapproving Callum, his attempts to help Emma draw him ever closer to the edge.

Synopsis

Like Father portrays a family in crisis, focusing on the dislocations of grandfather, father and son.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Synopsis

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.





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.