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.
This film is part of Free
Flowers for Peter
Low life, rhythm and reefers in the East End of Newcastle.
From the collection of:
Overview
This stylish crime thriller exposes the dark underbelly of post-war Newcastle as a dope gang haunts the night streets and smoky jazz-hot dance halls. Too sweet for a hard-boiled label – a school boy botanist helps blow the gang’s cover - the film still revels in touches of noir. Stakeouts and a bravura final chase sequence amid the industrial decay of the Ouseburn waterfront and on the River Tyne provide a remarkable amateur portrait of the city in the 1950s, ugly at the edges.
This is superb cinema on a shoestring budget by filmmakers of the Newcastle and District Amateur Cinematographers’ Association, rightly celebrated at the 1953 Scottish Amateur Film Festival, a prestigious event that counted John Grierson and Michael Powell as adjudicators in the past. Flowers for Peter was produced for the cine club’s Silver Jubilee by Gordon Hetherington, who also wrote the original screenplay. The film is nothing if not topical. A moral panic about drugs had re-emerged in newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph in the early 1950s, the articles barely concealing racist overtones and a fear of rebellious teenagers mingling in the burgeoning underground jazz club scene.
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