A film about death, legacy, keeping going, the Tyneside percussionist Bruce Arthur and the Aladdin's Cave of instruments he left when he died in 2002.
A short film about Swan Hunter's Brass Band and The Rising Sun Legionnaires juvenile jazz band, culminating in performances as part of Wallsend Festival in 1972.
Starting with the workers' discussion of the future of factory horse, the documentary records a handmade brickworks in Swalwell on the south bank of the Tyne. Adamsez, the well known bathroom ware manufacturers, went out of business in 1975. One of the casualties of the closure was a small self-contained…
Alienation, isolation and desolate industrial landscapes in an animation brought to Amber by Peter Roberts when he joined the collective in 1971.
A day in the life of Newcastle upon Tyne... The Grainger Market is at the beating heart of this film, that was recently rescued from the Amber archive. The council wanted a film about what was going on in the city; the Amber the collective thought they could maybe take the opportunity to make the film…
Brainstorm: Between the Shores is a story of a cult Latvian band that have been together since childhood and as a band grown over 25 years alongside the country's history. The documentary reveals how the music group was and is influenced by the changing political and economical environment. Brainstorm…
“The story of night” is a sixty-minute black-and-white film made by a small camera-crew over 150 nights in many different parts of Europe, when the cities were empty and devoid of life. The film is composed of a collection of quiet, meditative pictures and sounds which my collaborators and…
The PAPER TRAIL, which begins in the forests of Australia, travels to Japan's industrial centres and leads to factories, department stores and rubbish dumps from Melbourne to Tokyo. The first paper was produced some 5,000 years ago; since then its uses have multiplied at a staggering rate. We…
In 1937 Yosl, a 17-year-old Polish Jew, arrived in Melbourne where he joined his sister Ruth, a dancer, and his father Melech Ravich. A leading Yiddish writer, Ravich had journeyed to Australia to search for a new homeland for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism and fascism in Europe. But Australia in the…
Algeria/France - Documentary - 130' - 2010 November 1st, 1954, near Ghassira, a small village lost in the Aures, a couple of French teachers and an Algerian mob boss are the first civil victims of a seven years war leading to the independence of Algeria. Over fifty years later, Malek Bensmaïl…
Algérie/France - Documentaire - 130' - 2010 Le 1er novembre 1954, près de Ghassira, petit village perdu dans les Aurès, un couple d’instituteurs français et un caïd algérien sont les premières victimes civiles d’une guerre de sept ans…
Algeria/France - Documentary - 105’ - 2004 This 2003 documentary about an Algerian psychiatric ward has no overriding thesis, but the interactions between patients, doctors, and family members are often fascinating. Some situations are familiar (patients who resist taking their medication),…
