Caught in amber

The season, says Amber’s Graeme Rigby, is very much a tribute to Murray Martin, a founder member and its key visionary who died last year.

The tribute begins tonight with the feature- length documentary The Pursuit Of Happiness, which grew out a film being made with the Coulsons, a County Durham horsey family.

When Murray Martin died during filming that film became an exploration of a visionary film-maker and a 40-year journey – the story of a man who became part of the world he documented.

The collective came together in 1968 in London, moving to Tyneside the following year. Since then, Amber has been responsible for more than 40 films and 100 photographic exhibitions that have come from its links with communities in the North-East.

The founding tenets of the Amber collective were “integrate life and work and friendship. Don’t tie yourself to institutions.

Live cheaply and you’ll remain free.

And, then, do whatever it is that gets you up in the morning”.

For Martin over the past 20 years, what got him up in the morning was horsey culture after being drawn into the world of harness racing with Amber’s first feature film Seacoal in 1985.

This project developed out of the strikingly visual location and a developing relationship with the community in a blend of documentary and drama. With a script by Tom Hadaway, the film won the European Film Prize at Munich in 1985.

Escaping a violent relationship, Betty and her daughter Corinna are introduced to seacoaling by new boyfriend Ray while living in a caravan on a Northumberland beach. Betty’s struggle for survival is set against the wider problems of the Lynemouth seacoalers.

Two more horsey films followed. Eden Valley in 1995 finds Hoggy (Brian Hogg) living in a caravan and caring for his horses. His life is turned upside down when his teenage son turns up, with a prison sentence hanging over his head.

The film explores the relationship between father and son against the backdrop of County Durham’s harness racing community. It was shot mostly on the land where Martin and his partner and fellow Amber member Ellin Hare kept their horses at Quarrington Hill.

Then, in 2005, came Shooting Magpies, which receives its first TV showing in the More4 season.

The film is set in the former pit villages of East Durham. Emma, a mother at 15 and now in her early 20s, wants some kind of normality. Local gold dealer Ray tries to steer an addict son back towards an interest in harness racing. Barry keeps an eye on the streets, fearful for his son Callum.

The Coulson family helped out on scenes in the film, including a road race and a funeral. Then this horsey/traveller family in Craghead in County Durham became the subject of The Pursuit Of Happiness.

Rigby says that looking at Warren Coulson, the family’s larger-than-life patriarch, Martin was clearly thinking about himself, about his own family and the family he had constructed with Amber.

The film opens out to document the idiosyncrasies of Coulson family’s daily adventures, the family funerals, the bizarre and bureaucratic introduction of EU horse passporting and the annual traveller gathering at Appleby Horse Fair.

The film took on an extra resonance with Martin’s death. Ironically and improbably, says Rigby, his heart attack was brought on by streptococcus equi – the horse disease known as strangles.

Rigby feels Martin’s contribution to British film was unique. “He was a major figure in the film workshop movement that flourished in the opportunities for regional, cultural and political production with Channel 4 in the 1980s and early 1990s,” he says.

The collective’s work continues through Amber Films along with Side Gallery, Side Cinema and Side Café in Newcastle. “Amber defies gravity in surviving for 40 years,” Lord Puttnam said in a recent ITV Tyne Tees documentary Caught In Amber.

■ The Amber Collective: A Lost World In Film season on More4 features The Pursuit Of Happiness (tonight Sat, 10.35pm), Shooting Magpies (Dec 9, 11.55pm), Eden Valley (Dec 10, 11.05pm) and Seacoal (Dec 12, 11.45pm).