Projects in categories: Fiction

Synopsis

An experimental film which looks afresh at landscape using the medium to explore its space and time in ways other than the 'eye-view'. A sensual meditation that sets out to challenge perceptual habits without being drawn into the seductive trap of the picturesque.

Synopsis

A very contemporary urban comedy thriller about a group of unemployed friends who never do much more than sweat the small stuff, arguing the merits of chocolate cake versus strawberry gateau and the correct name for a pork pie with an egg in the middle. The world barely exists outside the house they share. They have no money, just an empty fridge with labelled shelves. Then one night they are tempted by the golden opportunity to share £200,000 in exchange for a little hard graft and a touch of nerve, in a race against the clock. All they have to do is shut up for long enough to spring the cash from a safe that is fast sinking to a watery grave. What's more, they have to do it and get out before the hard men who own it arrive to claim their prize or wreak havoc if denied.

Synopsis

We are seeing life through the eyes of a boy growing up within his own personal craziness. In a strange but original surround-ing, where everything has become so completely mad that only an imaginary hero can help him out of the chaos and guide him through life.

Synopsis

Seventy years ago the 'new physics' began to affect the way people imagined the world. It is taught to thousands of students every day - though the film suggests that for most it remains a baffling mystery. For others it has proved impossible to spy into all of nature's secrets without paying attention to ourselves doing the spying. There is a sense that nature is watching us.

Synopsis

Three girls, wasting time at a bus stop. Four boys, loitering with intent...A teenage spaghetti western cracked on cheap wine and hand-me-down sportswear.

Synopsis

The plot of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels revolves around five likeable, rough diamond characters. When they take part in a serious card game, they believe that everything is under control and that they can only lose what they bring to the table. What they don't realise is that the table is rigged and consequently they find themselves owing twice the amount originally played for - to the infamous 'Hatchett Harry'. This is the catalyst for a series of scams in order to procure a substantial sum of money - quickly. At the same time, they are trying (unsuccessfully) not to break the law. Concurrently, a group of upper middle-class hippies have cultivated a potent strain of cannabis which is turning into a profitable business venture. When the hippies' stash of money is stolen by a violent gang, chaos ensues as it transpires that the dope growers are working for Rory Brecker a Jamacian crime lord. Rival forces collide and intertwine with riotous results as they frantically chase the money and attempt to exact revenge on each other.

Synopsis

Long Night's Journey into Day is a disturbing documentary about the poignant grief expressed by the youth of Israel, who, after all, will be the next generation of soldiers; of their love for Rabin, who they knew was determined to end all wars in the Middle East forever, and their creation of a secular Wailing Wall via graffiti, in Kikar Rabin - as well as a look at the furious shift in Israeli thinking after the four Hamas bombs in February to March (Jerusalem, Ashqelon and Tel Aviv), which Carol Gould experienced first-hand. By May the populace - even the youth - wanted all-out war, and some wanted the death of Shimon Peres.

Synopsis

A brutal mugging forces a homeless victimised teenager to meet his maker; refusing to pass on to the future world, he opts to return back to earth and set the records straight.

Synopsis

Rachel is pregnant. Before she has the chance to break the news to her boyfriend Bill, he dumps her. Hurt and confused, Rachel clears out their joint bank account and convinces Bill's best friend Jason, to drive them to her family in Bill's much loved sports car. A furious Bill discovers his car missing and the bank account empty. He sets off in hot pursuit, believing Rachel and Jason have become lovers. Rachel's childhood friend Jack pulls himself up from his alcoholic state, and follows close behind. That evening Rachel and Jason arrive at the family farmhouse. Her family is in a mess. The apparently crippled mother Olivia, lives apart from her husband Tom. Upon her arrival Rachel makes a naive attempt to reunite her mother and father which ends in chaos and confusion. By bringing her family together she aims to sort out her own life, and untangle the romantic mess developing around her. But Bill is on the warpath. And looking for revenge.

Synopsis

It is 1971 and Francis Bacon is in Paris on the occasion of the triumphant retrospective at the Grand Palais that is to confirm his status as one of the twentieth century's most important artists. At the same time that he is being acclaimed by officials and the press, George Dyer, his model and lover of seven years is in a nearby hotel room swallowing the last of the lethal cocktail of drugs and alcohol that will prove to be his final act in this world. As Dyer disappears into blackness he falls back in time to the moment in 1964 when, in attempting to burgle Bacon's studio, he first encountered the painter who was to absorb him into his life and work. This tragic love story is set among the bohemian demi-monde of London's Soho where Francis Bacon was a charismatic figure at the centre of a coterie of characters who frequented the infamous Colony Rooms. These include Muriel Belcher, who ran the club, Isabel Rawsthorne, Henrietta Moraes, photographer John Deakin and writer Daniel Farson. Love Is The Devil traces the development of Francis Bacon and George Dyer's ill-fated relationship and, in a series of extraordinary visual sequences, constructs a portrait of an artist that dramatically reveals the needs and desires that motivated his art.

Synopsis

Lucia is a film set in 1998 which uses the essential elements of Walter Scott's plot to present a drama about a beautiful young woman who indulges her love for a handsome singer despite her brother's cynical plans to marry her off to an alcoholic American tenor whose rich parents have promised to provide the money to save Hamish's magnificent but crumbling Scottish stately home (called Lammermoor!). Don Boyd, the film's writer and director, has interwoven into this contemporary tale two elements which allow him to draw on Donizetti's music and the historical context of the story. Kate Ashton is a very talented soprano and Hamish decides to present 'Lucia di Lammermoor' in celebration of his sister's wedding to Oliver. As the protagonists in the film rehearse and present the music, the principal contemporary characters (Kate and Sam) reinforce their passion for each other through the fantasies and dreams they experience as a natural extension of their work as performers. These are manifested dramatically in the historical imagery of Scott's novel. While the movie progresses, the audience is invited to shift seamlessly between reality and fantasy, real characters and performers, contemporary and historical situations. So much so that the distinctions become irrelevant. The audience is quite literally seduced into absorbing a contemporary drama which is outrageously laced with twentieth-century dance/house music, eighteenth-century situations, nineteenth-century Romantic classical music and witty modern cinematic imagery. In that sense, Lucia is like no other movie made before.

Synopsis

Every teenager has sat alone in their bedroom, dreaming about someone they hardly know. But what happens when you try and rope them into your private fantasy?