Please note: This was screened in July 2025
Set in the declining North Shields fishing industry, this drama came out of the Channel 4 supported workshop movement and clearly prefigures the localised work of contemporary filmmakers such as Mark Jenkin, with its focus on the realities of marginalised communities.
For over five decades, the Newcastle-based Amber Film and Photography Collective has been a critical (if often unheralded) force within British documentary filmmaking, producing a variety of innovative works focused on working-class society. In Fading Light provides a great entry point into their extraordinary output, which benefited from the Channel 4 supported workshop movement.
Set in the North Shields fishing community, it prefigured the localised work of say Mark Jenkin with its focus on the realities of marginalised communities. The film centres on the upheaval caused in a traditional fishing community by the unexpected arrival of Karen, a young woman whose pursuit of a worthwhile relationship with her father takes her aboard his fishing boat.
Comic, human and authentically detailed in its observation of life aboard a fishing boat, this is a remarkable achievement given the minuscule budget. As part of the making of this film, Amber Films bought and ran a 63′ anchor seine netter. Actors coming for auditions found themselves at sea for days, gutting fish. When the story required a storm sequence, cast, crew and fishermen set sail, into the teeth of a force 9 gale, tripods anchored to the deck; bringing a commitment to authenticity that was almost heroic.
With thanks to Amber Film and Photography Collective.