Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Compiled with artistry and love from Scottish Screen film archives, Director Virginia Heath’s film is a journey into our collective past. From Scotland with Love explores universal themes of love, loss, resistance, migration, work and play. Ordinary people, some long since dead, their names and identities largely forgotten, powerfully evoke Scotland’s story with an acclaimed soundtrack by King Creosote.

Synopsis

Peter (Dir. Jane Topping, 2014) seeks to re-frame what is considered a classic of dystopian cinema (Blade Runner, 1982, dir. Ridley Scott) with the intention of positioning the artist within the text. Peter manipulates found footage and narrative voice in order to reveal difficulties of viewer identification when watching Blade Runner.

Synopsis

Rio 50 Degrees is the story of how a city, with the help of its musicians and their music, discovered its liberty, its voice and its soul. It is the story of Rio de Janeiro and the part the music played in its re-democratisation and recovery, as it positions itself as a city fit for the 21st century.

Synopsis

This short documentary meditates on the last remaining farmer from a once thriving agricultural hillside in Yorkshire. With none of his three children wanting to take over the business, Carson Lee ruminates on his commitment to his working life during difficult times and the fast changing landscape around him.

Synopsis

A forensic examination of memory and place. The hidden history of the Roma Holocaust told through the testimony of five witnesses and survivors. Seventy years after the event they are still living next-door to the mass graves…some marked, but others long forgotten amongst the forests and wheat fields of Poland.

Synopsis

A creative documentary exploring the work of fringe scientists, mycologists and artists, and their relationship with the extraordinary plasmodial slime mould. The slime mould is being used to explore biological-inspired design, emergence theory, unconventional computing and robot controllers, much of which borders on the world of science fiction. Fantasia International Festival 2014 - World premiere

Synopsis

A vivid portrait of a man whose career transcended politics. Tony Benn reviews the triumphs and the upsets of his personal and his private life. Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014 - World premiere

Synopsis

New Model Army have been one of the biggest underground music artists for over quarter of a century. To their global community of fans they mean everything. Yet mainstream success has so far eluded them. This film is the story of the band and in particular their charismatic and unconventional lead singer songwriter and founder Justin Sullivan

Synopsis

The Enemy Within is a unique insight into one of history’s most dramatic events: the 1984-85 British Miners’ Strike. No experts. No politicians. Thirty years on, this is the raw first-hand experience of those who lived through Britain’s longest strike. Follow the highs and lows of that life-changing year.

Synopsis

As editor of The Sunday Times for fourteen years, Sir Harold Evans proved to be the right man in the right place at the right time. In an investigative climate all too rare by today's standards, Evans had the freedom and resources to allow teams of journalists to work on long-term projects, including the exposure of Kim Philby as a Soviet spy. Evans' longest and most hard fought campaign was for the victims of Thalidomide. Originally developed by the Germans in World War II to counter effect sarin gas, post-war the drug was blithely prescribed by British doctors as an antidote to morning sickness, unwittingly leading to tens of thousands of children being born with serious defects. The Sunday Times' fight to win compensation for their struggling families would take more than a decade, as Evans tenaciously pursued the drug companies through the English courts and beyond. Sheffield Doc/Fest 2014 - World premiere

Synopsis

In a pre-doping cycling era, years before the emergence of Lance Armstrong, the American Greg LeMond was recruited as a teenager to the French Renault team, where he developed a close friendship with Bernard "The Badger" Hinault. They traveled the world together, but their camaraderie was soon to turn to enmity. In "an individual sport practiced by teams", LeMond was forced to play loyal lieutenant to the leader Hinault in 1985, despite being the more capable rider that summer. Hinault promised to repay him the following year – his brazen retraction of that promise still astonishes LeMond and his wife nearly thirty years on. Speaking to all the major players, where emotions still run high, 'Slaying the Badger' dissects the fascinating complexities of professional cycling.

Synopsis

When Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan stepped off the moon in December 1972 he left his footprints and his daughter’s initials in the lunar dust. Only now, over forty years later, is he ready to share his epic but deeply personal story of fulfillment, love and loss. Cernan’s burning ambition carried him from a quiet Chicago suburb to the spectacular and hazardous environment of space, and ultimately, to the moon. But there was a heavy price to be paid along the way. As Cernan's wife Barbara famously remarked, "If you think going to the moon is hard, try staying at home." Using a wealth of rare archive, home movies, scrapbooks and intimate moments with his closest friends and family, Cernan brings spine-tingling experiences to the big screen more vividly than any moonwalker has done before.