Screening of the film “Today I’m with You” by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

As part of the exhibition Home Sweet Home , the Institute is hosting the following event during its late-night opening on Thursday, December 5 Today I'm with you , a Finnish film directed by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, produced by Amber Films, and released in 2010.   Synopsis:   During the 1970s, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen documented the streets of Byker (an electoral ward in downtown Newcastle upon Tyne in the county of Tyne and Wear, England) that were demolished to make way for Ralph Erskine’s visionary development at the end of that decade.   In 2005, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen returned, having initially been invited a year or two earlier by community workers who were using her photographs to explain to asylum seekers the history of the place where the British government’s dispersal policies had sent them.   While planning a personalized tour through the new Byker, Sirkka invited people to imagine their lives in “a single image,” then developed those ideas during impromptu and sometimes chaotic sessions with the participants.   >> A 54-minute documentary film. >> TRAILER     Screening from 7:00 p. m. To 8:00 p. m. >> Free, by reservation  

*Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is of Finnish origin. She enrolled at the Regent Street Polytechnic Film School in London in the late 1960s, where she met Murray Martin (1943–2007, documentary filmmaker) and Graham Denman (filmmaker). The trio decided to form a collective, Amber, and settled in 1969 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, an industrial city in the northeast of England. Amber operated on the collective model of community photography. Its goal was to document the life and culture of working-class communities, both in a “spirit of social critique” and to preserve their memory as manufacturing jobs began to decline in the 1970s. During a series of retrospective exhibitions of her work, Amber reaffirmed this commitment in 1995:

« "Our original ambition, as filmmakers and photographers, to work together and document the lives of workers in the region by engaging in a long-term, ongoing relationship with local communities, has remained unchanged."

The group’s activities are diverse, ranging from documentary films and photography to archives, a film workshop, a movie theater, and an exhibition space—the Side Photographic Gallery—dedicated to both regional and international photography. Although committed and activist-oriented, the collective upholds an artistic and subjective vision in its work because, as Murray Martin puts it, “[…] the artist is the voice of the community […].” They approach documentary filmmaking according to the definition given by John Grierson (producer and director—1898–1972): “ […] I ask you to remember that working with reality does not mean reproducing it, but interpreting it. We must give it a creative form

[…] “It is always good if this interpretation is a true interpretation—that is, it must shed light on the facts, bring them to life, and clearly and thoroughly illustrate the human connection that binds us to them.”

The collective’s aesthetic draws on the British documentary tradition of the 1930s, from John Grierson to Mass Observation. Sometimes tinged with romanticism, the images are a constant celebration of the working class. Beginning in the mid-1970s, their goal was, on the one hand, to denounce “the impact of certain social and political decisions on people’s lives” and, on the other hand, to document a culture, a way of life, “before and during the process of what was inevitably a deliberate destruction.”

Amber Collective, unlike other community-based photographers such as Jo Spence, does not give the camera to the community so that they can portray themselves. Murray Martin explains that “often, people want us to say things about them or speak on their behalf, but they don’t necessarily have the skills or the desire to do it themselves.”

Forty years after they first set up shop, Amber and the affiliated Side Gallery are still in business and operating in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

  + All exhibitions as part of extraORDINAIRE are open and free to the public until 9:00 p. m.