Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Dummy Jim is playfully adapted from the little-known journal 'I Cycled Into The Arctic Circle' (1951) by profoundly deaf cyclist James Duthie, who one day set off alone on his bicycle from a village in Scotland, bound for Morocco. How did he end up in the Arctic Circle?

Led by deaf actor Samuel Dore on an increasingly bizarre 6000 mile journey, this eccentric road movie mixes documentary, fiction and animation. Killed on the road in '65, the film memorializes a quiet, determined maverick whilst offering an honest insight into his community, with village inhabitants emerging as creative participants and performers.

Synopsis

This is the story of the most ambitious project ever conceived on the Internet. In 2002 Google began to scan millions of books in an effort to create a giant global library, containing every book in existence. They had an even greater purpose – to create a higher form of intelligence, (similar to what HG Wells had predicted in his essay "World Brain" as early as in 1937). But over half the books Google scanned were in copyright, and authors across the world launched a campaign to stop Google, which climaxed in a New York courtroom in 2011. A film about the dreams, dilemmas and dangers of the Internet.

Synopsis

How We Used To Live is effectively a prequel to Finisterre, a meditation on London life today and a glance back at a receding Britain. Using colour footage from the 1950s to the 1980s, taken from the BFI National Archive, the film covers the ‘New Elizabethan’ age from the optimism of the post-war era to the dawn of Thatcherism. Soundtracked by Saint Etienne’s Pete Wiggs and scripted by the band’s Bob Stanley with Travis Elborough, the film is for anyone who has ever tried to understand their city. Alluringly impressionistic, poetic and political, this is the most joyful and entertaining offering yet from a unique filmmaking collective.

Synopsis

"I believe there is such a thing as a search for beauty"

Saul Leiter could have been lauded as the great pioneer of colour photography, but was never driven by the lure of success. Instead he preferred to drink coffee and photograph in his own way, amassing an archive of beautiful work that is piled high in his New York apartment.

In a funny, intimate and moving film, In No Great Hurry follows Saul as he deals with the triple burden of cleaning an apartment full of memories, becoming world famous in his 80's and fending off a pesky film maker.

Synopsis

In a short span of time, our lives have been transformed by mobile phones and internet technologies — what does this mean, particularly for a generation who’s never known anything else? Beeban Kidron’s timely and insightful documentary encourages us to think critically about our adoption of technology.

Synopsis

This fascinating documentary tracks the evolution of the biggest participatory art project in the world, the wildly popular 'Inside Out'. Travel the globe with French artist JR as he motivates entire communities to define their most important causes with incredibly passionate displays of giant black and white portraits pasted in the street. We witness young and old taking ownership of walls that were previously restricted and in doing so testing the limits of what they thought was possible. In capturing the process, Alastair Siddons creates a glowing testament to the power of image and the role that art can play in transforming communities.

Synopsis

This film tells the story of a group of men and women from a town in Wiltshire during the Great War of 1914- 1918 .
Using original letters and archive film footage, these are ordinary words which tell of extraordinary lives and were written by regular and volunteer soldiers, conscripts, white feather recruiting girls, Land Girls, civilians and nurses.
The film covers propaganda, food shortages, air raids on the Home Front and battles at Mons and Gallipoli and as well as taking part in the Christmas truce in 1914 in Flanders.

Winner of a Platinum Remi-award at the Houston Film Festival

Synopsis

For the past four months John has been living in total blindness - restricted to the confines of his body. The rain brings depth, detail and contour to his environment - for the first time since losing his sight, he is addressed by the world.

Synopsis

Three young women face seven years in a Russian prison for a satirical performance in a Moscow cathedral. But who is really on trial in a case that has gripped the nation and the world beyond, three young artists or the society they live in?

Synopsis

When Salma, a young girl in South India, reached puberty, her parents locked her away. Millions of girls all over the world share the same fate. Twenty-five years later, Salma has fought her way back to the outside world to become the most famous female poet in South India.

Synopsis

Takafa is a documentary essay, a film about memory and the most necessary forms of belonging, through a search for the role played in the city by Istanbul´s street dogs and their relationship to its human populations. Despite several major attempts by Istanbul´s rulers, politicians and planners over the last 400 years to exterminate them, the city´s street dogs have persisted thanks to an enduring alliance with widespread civilian communities, which recognize and defend their right to co-exist. Takafa is structured around readings by internationally acclaimed storyteller, essayist, and critic John Berger. The film opens a window on the contested relationships between power and the public, community and categorisation (in location and identity), and the ongoing struggle / resistance against a single way of seeing and being.

Synopsis

The Crash Reel tells the story of a sport and the risks that athletes face in reaching the pinnacle of their profession. This is Kevin Pearce’s story, a celebrated snowboarder who sustained a brain injury in a trick gone wrong and who now aims, against all the odds, to get back on the snow.