The North East Film Archive is one of a network of regional film archives established to collect, preserve and show film made in, or about the North East of England. Our collections are non-fiction, and date from the early 1900s to the present day, providing a rich record of life in the region over the 20th century. Many of our films are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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End of the Pier
In the dark days of the 1980s a lyrical documentary captures the poignancy of piers and changing fortunes in Saltburn-by-the-Sea.
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Overview
A melancholy documentary captures down and out-of-season pleasures and subdued gentility at a select seaside town on the wintry North East coast. Lulled by a soundtrack of waves, time passes slowly for the men who bait and fish from the Victorian pier, scan the barren beach with metal detectors, and harvest sea coal in the cruel shadow of the distant steel works. The Realpolitik of Thatchers Britain is just beneath the surface of this lyrical 1980s portrait of Saltburn.
This independent film was produced and directed by David Eadington together with the Newcastle-based Amber Film Collective during the economic recession of the early 1980s. It was made under the auspices of the 1982 ACTT Workshop Declaration with funding from the newly created Channel 4 Television, which supported many groups working on politically and socially engaged film-making. As a student of Teesside College of Art, Eadington was influenced by the documentary work of his lecturers, Murray Martin and Graham Denman, founder members of Amber Films in 1969, with its commitment to record working-class life in the North of England.
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