Teens’ film work in line for award
STUDENTS TRACK DOWN PEOPLE FROM IMAGES BY ACCLAIMED TYNESIDE PHOTOGRAPHER
A GROUP of teenage North East filmmakers are in line for a top national award.
They have made a film called ‘Still Life’ based on the stunning pictures of working-class Tyneside taken by photographer Tish Murtha.
It has been nominated in the documentary category of the 2018 Into Film awards which take place at a star-studded red carpet event at BFI Southbank in London on Tuesday, March 13.
It was directed by Prudhoe Community High School pupil Amy Jobe, 17, who said the idea was inspired by her mum, Tara.
Amy said: “About two years ago my mum showed me one of Tish’s photos.
“My mum grew up in Elswick and lived there at the time the photos were taken.
“It was the first visual representation of what her life was like and how different it was from the environment I was brought up in.”
Amy, who lives with her mum and dad James Jobe in Ovington, Northumberland, said: “It opened my eyes to the poverty and deprivation which existed just 30 years ago.
“I wanted to find out more about the photos because they were stunning.”
After Amy joined the documentary academy at Tyneside Cinema, she put forward the idea of tracking down the people in the photos and Tyne Lives, 1980, photo by Tish Murtha last October the project began.
Using social media, she managed to contact some of the people Tish photographed with the help of her fellow young film makers, Rebecca Burgess, 18, and Freya Tarn Chapman and Rowan Hodgson, both aged 19.
The documentary, which lasts just short of seven minutes, was completed in December.
The awards are hosted by film education charity, Into Film, which counts Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Sheen and Naomie Harris among its Ambassadors.
They pay tribute to outstanding five to 19-year-olds who have shown exceptional achievements in filmmaking or film reviewing, and to educators who have demonstrated inspirational use of film in the classroom at the annual awards.
The judges included award-winning Billy Elliot star Jamie Bell from Billingham, film producer Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman Animations responsible for Wallace & Gromit, art director Lydia Fry, who worked on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 & 2, and founder of IMDb, Col Needham.
Amy said: “We’re absolutely ecstatic about being nominated and I hope it will spread Tisha’s message still further.”
Tish Murtha, whose real name was Patricia, studied documentary photography at the University of Wales in Newport but returned to her native North East with a view to documenting marginalised communities.
She lived in Newcastle’s West End in the early 1980s and her photos of children playing with defiant abandon in blighted streets have become well known and admired.
Tish died in 2013 of a brain aneurysm but her photos live on.