Keeping Time

Synopsis

North Shields, a small town in Tyneside, with a once thriving fishing industry, now has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country. The dancing school becomes a symbol, a meeting place for dreams and aspirations, where years of intensely shared activity bond the young girls and their mothers in a tug of conflicting desires: an independent and exciting career out in the world - or marriage and happy family life in the home town? The outcome is often neither, as dreams flounder, or get shelved in the face of harsh economic reality.

Through a mixture of drama and documentary, the film follows a young dancer’s life from the age of seven to seventeen, and her personal story leads on to invite a wider examination of the influences which guide and control the dreams, choices and opportunities of women in our society.

The intention was originally to make a straight documentary film about the Connell-Brown Dancing School, but the team found themselves in a quandary as to what to say with the shot material, and shelved it. A photographic project and conversations with the mothers and daughters continued, and eventually formed a basis for a film script. Incorporating the early documentary material, and with carefully constructed dramatised tableaux scenes, the film takes young Lisa from her real life in the documentary part of the film to a fictional part as "Lisa" - a composite of all the girls at the dancing school - in the dramatised scenes. The film uses a mixture of drama and documentary to produce a continuous narrative. The method allows both the authenticity of real people in real life situations, and greater flexibility and control through the use of actors and actresses in reconstructed scenes from real life.

Language

English

Country

Great Britain

Year of release

1984

Year of production

1983

Subjects

Drama; Sociology

Keywords

communities; dance; dramatised documentary films; unemployment; women; North-eastern England

Distribution Formats

Type

VHS

Format

PAL

Price

£10.00 (+p&p)

Availability

Sale

Duration/Size

57 minutes

Year

2003

Production Company

Name

Amber Films

Web

http://www.amber-online.com External site opens in new window

Phone

0191 232 2000

Fax

0191 232 3217

Address

5 Side
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 3JE