Projects in categories: Fiction

Synopsis

Set in England in 1977, The Week Elvis Died is an evocative and bittersweet look at life from a child's point of view. Karen aged 10 is bullied at school by Julie and her gang. Her dysfunctional family can't help her and she doesn't confide in them. All she has for comfort are her descant recorder, her pet rabbit Elvis and her adoration of top disc jockey Tony Blackburn.

Synopsis

When Agnes Conway has a chance encounter with wealthy Charles Farrier in her father's sweet shop on Christmas Eve 1913, little does she realise that romance is to blossom and her life is about to change. She also finds herself entangled with the notorious Felton family as she goes to the aid of her younger sister, Jessie. The Wingless Bird follows the fortunes of three very different families who are linked together by the strong-minded Agnes.

Synopsis

Henry James' multi-layered novel of tragic love is magnificently translated into a gorgeously realised, richly textured movie. Kate is a spirited but poor middle class girl in thrall to her wealthy Aunt and blocked from marrying Merton, her charismatic but equally penniless journalist boyfriend. Then into their lives comes Millie, a young, fabulously wealthy but lonely American heiress, who, harbouring a sad secret, is befriended by them. The scene is then set for an intensely moving drama that plays out its themes of love, loyalty, deceit and regret against the splendour and emptiness of high society.

Synopsis

Steven Griscz appears an enviable young man - successful in business, charming by nature and with an astonishing ability to ensnare women. He hides, however, a terrifying secret. The death of his girlfriend in a hideous car crash brings Steve together with Maria Vaughn. They fall in love. Maria's love for Steven is complete and this is precisely the moment he has been anticipating. At the height of Maria's passion, Steven, quite literally, feeds off her love. After disposing of Maria's body at sea, all Stephen is left with is a crystal, the concentrated essence of Maria's emotions at the moment of her death. He catalogues it, files it with a series of notebooks and adds it to his growing collection - Maria is number 6......

Synopsis

Normally, people who are dead stay dead, just as normally it is the criminals who are locked up rather than the victims. But then there was nothing normal about what happened to Marian Fairlie and her sister Laura. Except perhaps the beginning, and the arrival of a new drawing master, Mr Hartright.





Mr Hartright brings with him the tale of a mysterious encounter on the road with a ghostly figure: a woman dressed all in white. Great fans of Gothic tales, Laura and Marian are intrigued by this. When they spy this same woman themselves, wandering in the grounds of their home, Limmeridge House, late at night, they determine to find out all they can about her. But before much is learned, their idyllic summer is cut short by their friend Mr Hartright being forced to leave them in disgrace, and Laura's marriage to Sir Percival Clyde removing them from their home to the distant Blackwater Park.





Once there, the unhappy story of the woman in white unfolds, drawing the women into a vortex of secrets, crime and passion - and into a treacherous involvement with the fascinating but sinister Count Fosco.

Synopsis

It is the morning of Sarah's flight to see her parents in the States, whom she hasn't seen in years. All packed and ready to go, Sarah finds herself locked inside her apartment building. The main door of the building is locked and she has left her keys in her flat. Sarah has to count on the kindness of passers-by who see her in her ridiculous and helpless situations. It's just that some mornings there isn't much of that kindness around.

Synopsis

Thicker Than Water conveys a brief moment of intimacy between a young girl and her Aunt. The setting is a tenement in the less enlightened 1930's. The onset of puberty provokes alarm and confusion for the girl, causing the Aunt to reflect on her own younger days at a village dance during the First World War.

Synopsis

A young man in a pub tells a story so badly that his friends have lost interest before he's reached the punch-line. Elsewhere the same story is told well. It comes to life: in a tube station a drunk attaches himself to a commuter pursuing him all the way to work. Eventually the commuter cracks and hits out...

Synopsis

Maggie, a struggling singer, is desperate to make something of her life. Is motherhood the answer? Can she find anyone to have a baby with by next Thursday?

Synopsis

Titanic Town, set in the 70's Belfast of bombs, bellbottoms, Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen, is a sometimes raucous, poignant and comic tale of one woman's crusade to stop the war. Bernie McPhelimy, feisty, hot-headed and fierce tempered, becomes an unlikely heroine for peace but her innocence brings the battle to the centre of her own home and into the heart of her daughter's first great love affair.

Synopsis

In a Kansas City motel, an independent film crew is shooting a sequence on closed-circuit TV which explores the thin divide between intimacy and violence. All day long, the motel's boss stares drunkenly at surveillance monitors showing all the activity in the building. The film scene sparks off very different reactions in the boss and in a young woman who works at the motel.





Later, confusion over real and 'fabricated' surveillance tapes exposes an unspeakable threat to the young woman. Ted, the film's director, realises too late the reality of the danger she is in.





Reality and fiction come into conflict, and the characters are forced to test their abilities to deal with the complexities of emotional crisis.





The film explores the notion that all forms of surveillance used in contemporary society fracture people's identities, creating electronic and dislocated personalities that exist and operate autonomously from the individual.





The film examines the consequences of our increasing obsession with the 'need to know', and explores how effortlessly technology and surveillance have become accepted as an invisible presence that provides us with a vision of reality or 'technological truth'.





How far removed are we from being able to communicate innocently and emotionally, from being able simply to 'touch' or connect with one another, without the pervasive need to dissect and evaluate?

Synopsis

Trautonium rediscovers a virtually forgotten pioneer of electronic music, Oskar Sala, and his invention, the Mixturtrautonium. Aged 87, Sala is the only living soul able to play the last surviving model of this most complex of all early electronic musical instruments. His career saw collaborations with some of the biggest names in contemporary music.