Projects in categories: Documentary

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.

Synopsis

A year in the life of heroic farmer Steve, scene stealing Ida (queen of the herd), and a supporting cast of 55 cows. When Ida falls ill, Steve’s optimism is challenged and their whole way of life is at stake.

Synopsis

A person’s culture is something that is often described as fixed or defined and rooted in a particular region, nation, or state. Stuart Hall, one of the most preeminent intellectuals on the Left in Britain, updates this definition as he eloquently theorizes that cultural identity is fluid—always morphing and stretching toward possibility but also constantly experiencing nostalgia for a past that can never be revisited. Filmmaker John Akomfrah uses the rich and complex mood created by Miles Davis’s trumpet to root a masterful tapestry of newly filmed material, archival imagery, excerpts from television programs, home movies, and family photographs to create this lyrical and emotionally powerful portrait of the life and philosophy of this influential theorist. Like a fine scotch, The Stuart Hall Project is smooth, complicated, and euphorically pleasing. It taps into a singular intelligence to extract the tools we need to make sense of our lives in the modern world (Sundance).