Curator tour through the exhibition

A partly dramatised documentary built around Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s photographs of the Newcastle terraced community, demolished to make way for the Byker Wall.
Konttinen, a founder member of the Amber collective moved to Byker when the group came to NE England in 1969. She lived there until 1976, when her own flat was demolished. The film reconstructed some of the contexts, which had already gone, creating a celebration of traditional working class culture that has been widely shown to community and general audiences, as well as in planning and architecture forums. Together with Keeping Time, the film was one of Amber’s early photo films. Others created around Konttinen’s photographs include The Writing in the Sand (1991), Letters to Katja (1994), Today I’m With You (2010) and Song for Billy (2016).
The film will be shown within a retrospective show of the AMBER film and photo collective, of which the photographer is a founding member. Further short films and documentaries will be shown.

After the film screening an artist's talk will take place with the photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen and the DoP Peter Roberts.
In cooperation with dok2media.
Photo Film, UK 1983, 53 min.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/byker1983/177209245

The film evokes the magic of an urban family’s day out on the windswept beaches of north East England. It is packed with action, invention and surprise: bodiless heads sticking out of the sand; teenagers jumping in the sea fully clothed; family picnicking under a blanket. Memory and fantasy intermingle with expressions of intoxicating freedom and quizzical encounters with nature. Deeply experimental, the film was a labour of love, involving 400 photographs taken by Konttinen over 17 years. It was filmed with free camera movements and married to a complex soundtrack of beach recordings, music and poetry.
The film will be shown within a retrospective show of the AMBER film and photo collective, of which the photographer is a founding member. Further short films and documentaries will be shown.

After the film screening an artist's talk will take place with the photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen and the DoP Peter Roberts.
In cooperation with dok2media and AMBER Films.
Amber Films, 45 mins, 1991