Projects in categories: Fiction

Synopsis

In 1963, Yale University placed an advert in the local newspaper calling for volunteers to participate in a memory experiment. Obedience is the story of one man who, having volunteered for the experiment, finds himself in a struggle between his moral conscience and a malevolent authority.

Synopsis

Set in a French château and famous concert halls around the world, Off Key is a tale of swollen egos, raging libidos and enough dysfunction to keep New York's psychiatric community in the money for all time. Ricardo (Joe Mantegna), the group's charming philanderer, is caught off guard by the announcement that his estranged daughter will shortly marry Armand (George Hamilton), the trio's pompous Frenchman. As distasteful as he finds the prospect, he is not one to pass up an opportunity to reunite the three tenors, who split ten years prior following some inexpert gunplay and a drawn-out court battle. Fabrizio (Danny Aiello), who has a classic case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, completes the picture. As the three men, children legitimate and otherwise, past and future wives, and a streetwise New York prostitute flock to the wedding, the world's press gather to record the events, little knowing that the three tenors are about to put on the show of their lives.

Off Key is directed by Manuel Gómez Pereira who is acclaimed for his phenomenally successful comedies, and produced by Andrés Vicente Gómez, whose credits include over 90 feature films in 30 years of production. Among these are the 1993 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film Belle Epoque, The Girl of Your Dreams with Penelope Cruz; and Carlos Saura's Goya in Bordeaux, five-time winner at the 1999 Spanish Academy Awards.

Synopsis

How would you cope if you were suddenly confronted by your very own Guardian Angel, who could read your mind and would be there to help you sort out your life? This is the question Baggy and Sam have to answer one Summers' day, after yet another night on the town.

'Sam' (Andrew Lincoln - Boston Kickout, Gangster No.1) and Baggy (Andrew Rajan - Loved Up, Savage Hearts) are true mates, intent on having a good time all of the time. All this changes when their respective Guardian Angels, 'Zeke' (Shaun Parkes - Human Traffic, Rage) and 'Paris' (Susannah Harker - White Mischief, Surviving Picasso) turn up. Before being incarnated as humans, Zeke used to be a squirrel and Paris a dolphin. Hardly the best of credentials - All this leaves 'Alison' Sam's platonic best friend, in the dark.

They are all on a journey, overseen by the Angels' Mentors, there to help them succeed. Paris needs to get Sam to rediscover his voice. Zeke has to help Baggy mend a broken heart. But Paris is falling in love with Baggy and Baggy isn't helping matters. Sam feels Baggy is ruining things, Alison thinks Sam wants Paris and in doing so, realises she wants him herself.

Zeke wants to help Baggy and Paris get together, but can't work out the right way. Paris is an Angel and must not fall for Baggy - Or can she? Paris has a choice between this world and the next. Sam has a song to sing to his true love. Alison has only to wait. Baggy must understand what love means and Zeke has to find the right way.

The Mentors look on: 'All will become clear'.

Synopsis

Brendan, a porter at the Dublin Medical College, is plagued with financial strains and a gamblers' sordid past. Not only has he let down his wife, but also his daughter who desperately wants to go to university. However, never one to crumble, Brendon has a plan. He has found a 'golden goose' - an object with a hidden talent sequestered deep within the archives of the college which may provide the Midas touch Brendon so needs. This source has an uncanny knack for picking the winning horse at the local races.

Needless to say, Brendan and his colleagues intend to exploit this 'talent' to its fullest - risking everything on their ability to outwit the local bookies and other, rather more unexpected, obstacles. They are, quite literally, betting their futures 'On The Nose'. In a race against time they need just one last win to set themselves up - before the inevitable happens and their chance of happiness is snatched away from them forever.

Synopsis

Set in the United States at the height of the Cold War in the fifties, One Of The Hollywood Ten examines the personal struggle and triumph of Herbert Biberman, a film director, in his crusade to continue his filmmaking career in the face of the McCarthy-led Blacklist. At its most personal, Biberman's story is a compelling drama of individual perseverance and familial sacrifice and, at its most political, a conspiracy thriller and ever-relevant testament to societal paranoia and hate-mongering.

The film opens by establishing the historical climate - anticommunist paranoia, Congressional persecution of 'unAmerican activities' and friends informing on friends - that pervaded the early years of the Cold War in Hollywood and beyond. In detail, the various reactions of members of the film community to persecution is explored, from the high-profile trip to Washington, D.C. by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in support of those persecuted that ended in his famous recantment, to the varying tactics of those not so readily remembered in pleading either the fifth or first amendments, or merely pleading to not be asked to speak at all. At the centre of this maelstrom is Herbert Biberman and his wife, Academy Award-winning actress Gale Sondergaard, who refused to name names and who stood by their acknowledged communist beliefs. For this, Biberman was cited for contempt of Congress, becoming in the process one of the 'Hollywood Ten', and was sentenced to serve jail time in a federal prison in Arkansas.

Act two evolves from the more familiar contextual elements of the Blacklist in the first act, to follow Herbert and Gale's attempts to restart their film-making careers on Herbert's release from prison. Herbert, unable to be re-instated to the Director's Guild of America, an organisation he co-founded in the thirties, resolved to strike back in the only way he knew possible: by making a film: The Salt of the Earth.

Synopsis

If control is not strengthened, it is estimated that between now and 2020, nearly one billion more people around the world will be newly infected with Tuberculosis. This short film demonstrates how poor living conditions are contributing to a new outbreak in Romania, Eastern Europe.

Synopsis

Although set in the past, Pandaemonium is a film about contemporary themes of friendship, creativity, addiction and betrayal. It is also the story of a love that outlasts all these things. When they wrote, the depth of feeling and experience conveyed in Coleridge and Wordsworth's poetry had as immediate and visceral an impact on their audience as great movies or popular music do today. Together they revolutionised writing in English and changed the direction of 19th century thought.

Both were clearly men of genius, but both were also flawed. It is these faults within each of them and their intense relationship with each other which makes this story not a literary biopic but an immediate human drama connecting directly with our own experience. I see the young Coleridge and Wordsworth as figures with great resonance for today. The 1790s, like the 1990s, were a time of profound political and technological change. The French Revolution, the social upheaval of industrialisation, the first exploration of flight, electricity and photography, all announced the beginning of the modern world. Like us at the end of the twentieth century, Coleridge and his friends were excited by these breakthroughs, yet questioned what the future of industry and technology might bring. Their deep trust in nature prefigures our own ecological concerns. Their status as celebrities, pre-dating Byron, Shelley and Keats, made them the 'pop stars' of their day, drawing sell-out crowds to their lectures and public appearances. Many in today's audience will sympathise with Coleridge's desperate struggle with his own insecurities and addiction, something that had never occurred in such a public context before. I hope to emphasise these important parallels and convey the emotional power of the story to a wide audience by shooting the film in a thoroughly contempory style. A mobile and often hand-held camera will be employed to give the film a raw and realistic edge, capturing the sense of young people doing things that had not been done before, and accentuating the spirit rather than the letter of the time. - Julien Temple.

Synopsis

Mickey and Joe, two impoverished actors, live in Glasgow. They have serious debts and they can't get any acting work because of their attitude - they want David Mamet plays but they only get offered pantomime. On an impulse they decide to flee the city and get on a plane to Los Angeles - after all their best mate Steve assures them they will find fame, fortune and women.

Upon arriving in LA they instantly look out of place and Steve is not doing as well in Hollywood as he pretended: he works for a studio but as a cleaner. The 'luxury pad' in Hollywood Hills turns out to be a battered old roadie bus.

Undeterred, they begin to audition for no-hope films and so begin their desperate escapades through LA, which eventually lead them to Las Vegas in the hope of earning enough money to fulfil their dreams.

Synopsis

A dream within a dream within a dream within a crash.

Synopsis

Live action characters venture into a neo-futuristic shopping mall and are then corrupted and distorted by their own desire for consumerism. The animation breaks through the live action shell and reveals savage desires then reconstructs itself - the world is never the same again.

Synopsis

Dramatised documentary about Rachel Gunzig, Resistance heroine and Communist spy. Rachel worked for the Red Orchestra, the WW2 spy network betrayed by West and East in the Cold War. A tale of adventure and ideological conflict, and the poignant story of a mother and the son who was the victim of her idealism.

Synopsis

One Thursday morning Randall, one of life's natural wasters, awakes to find the door to his flat jammed shut and that his ex-girlfriend, Tabby, wants to buy a kilo of coke, price no object. Enter Phil, Randall's best mate. Dangerous and psychotic some say, unless you live in a permanent drug induced haze and don't notice, as Randall does. Through Tommy, their schizophrenic dealer, they acquire the necessary amount of coke and set things up to sell it on at double the price. A fact they quite sensibly conceal from Tommy and his boss. Randall and Phil wait at the bar for the courier to show up with the gear.

The next morning Randall is wakened by Phil discovering a bloody corpse on the living room floor. This triggers a seemingly incomprehensible descent into confusion and death for them both. Threatened by an American drugs baron, fuelled with a cocktail of drink and drugs and spurred on by the promise of a £20,000 reward they struggle to discover the truth behind this bizarre turn of events.