April 2003, three weeks after the fall of Saddam. A journey through Iraq, a troubled land where no one knows what lies ahead. On hearing the news that prisoners of war have been found alive in the South, a curious young boy Ahmed and his obstinate grandmother set out to uncover the fate of the boy's missing father, one of the many soldiers who never came home since the gulf war 1991.
From the mountains of the North to the sands of Babylon, the pair hitch rides with strangers and cross paths with fellow pilgrims on an all too similar quest. As a grandmother struggles to accept an awful truth, Ahmed retraces the footsteps of a father he never knew. This is a journey that will not only connect them to the past, but will determine their lives forever.
A story inspired by a set of wardrobe photographs Kubrick took for a movie he never made creates the backdrop for a relationship between two women to develop and be explored. Kristina is an actress. Esma is the costume designer. Kristina and Esma have a lot in common first and second-generation refugees from war torn areas of Europe. As we delve into their pasts, through a series of flashbacks, we unravel the hardship they have been through, the difficulty they have in connecting with their current environments and the similarities between them.
A cochlea implant is a surgically implanted electronic device which can make it possible for the profoundly deaf to hear sound. However, the use of cochlea implants is controversial. Two families both with deaf children, one has decided to have an implant for their son, the other has not, Why?
What made more money than the entire American movie industry through the 50s and 60s? Pinball.
Special When Lit rediscovers the lure of a lost pop icon. A product of the mechanical and electrical age, the American invention swept the world and defined cool.
Now it is relegated to a nostaglic footnote deserving a better fate. This feature length documentary joins the fans, collectors, designers and champion players from across the globe who share a world many of us didn’t know still existed.
A family of six sits down for a microwave meal. They communicate using technology but one of them is determined for a return to a traditional supper; good food and real conversation.
SSDD: Same Sh*t Different Day is a slice of life in the east end of London following Lee (Samuel Anokye), recently released from prison, and Phil (Richard Oldham), a squatter and former rioter, who both work night shift together.
Retaining both a social realist approach and a comedy delivery, the film is set to the backdrop of the recession in contemporary Britain, executed on a shoestring budget and marking a mature step forward for critically acclaimed auteur Greg Hall (The Plague, Kapital).
Star Games is a visual narrative of a surreal galactic ballet that explains the origins of stars. The inhabitants of a futuristic metropolis train in their hundreds to contest in the Star Games. Patrolling zeppelins select individual gymnasts with a UFO-styled light beam. The gymnasts are pulled up towards the sky to perform a beautifully organic ballet before they dissolve into starlights.
The film’s emotive meaning is that each star symbolizes a past human life. Its message is that human beings are never alone but embedded, just like stars, in a community of others celebrating life with each other.
This is entertaining and controversial film about something that fascinates us all - even if some of us are loath to admit it – Fame. This film explores the psychological reasons behind the unstoppable rise of the power of celebrity, the media’s need to capitalise on it, and reveals its impact on the world as we know it.
Celebrity has reached into every corner of our world. It has come to dominate the media and many of the choices that we make in our lives. We are watching a generation of children growing up captivated by the world of celebrity and the desire for fame, and this documentary asks the question of what the consequence of that may be.
In this film it is the stars who are the extras, we glimpse Jude Law and Mick Jagger, but it is the faces in the crowd whose stories we follow, the focus being on the ordinary people who have been swept up in the celebrity machine and the deep psychological reasons behind their obsession. Crucially, the film examines how the media is enhancing the spell of celebrity, and it explains how vast media corporations are profiting from manipulating our inescapable human instincts.
Storage is the story of an autistic 19-year-old and the relationship with his father.
Jason is isolated by his autism; his father loves him but is unable to break through Jason's defences to communicate this or anything else.
Jason, meanwhile, boxes up everyday objects each box representing certain experiences he needs to control. When items suddenly go missing from the storage boxes, Jason's autistic world is forced to rub up against a more alien one, ours.
On a winter's night in 1980, American servicemen stationed at an RAF base, witnessed some 'unexplained lights' in Rendlesham Forest. The incident has since become Britain's most famous UFO mystery with abounding rumours of conspiracies and cover-ups. Some argue that the incident was a hoax whilst others believe that the forest is a doorway to another dimension.
Maintaining a balance between celebration and criticality, this film revisits the forest, thirty years later, in search of similarly 'inexplicable' events.
