Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Polash, a 14-year-old British-Bangladeshi school going boy, has become mentally imbalanced to see the death of his classmate Freddy, a British-African boy, on his lap. An egoistic clash between Polash’s two other classmates John, an English boy and Nafiz, a British-Pakistani boy, brings death to Freddy. Smoking cannabis, carrying knives, dominating others violently is the ornament of the life to John and Nafiz. Polash tries in vain to bring his friends Nafiz and John to sanity. One day Nafiz and John have become enemies of each other because of John’s Bangladeshi girlfriend called Mina; they attack each other with the knives, Freddy and Polash want to stop them but by an accident John’s knife stabs Freddy, Freddy dies leaving Polash mentally sick, John and Nafiz end up with prison. Razia, Polash’s lonely widowed mother, can not take the pain of seeing his only son abnormal. She seeks help from her friend psychiatrist Dr Ahmed. Dr Ahmed works on Polash’s mental health, Polash improves but again another dramatic incident shocks him while he is with Dr Ahmed at a natural meditative lonely place; they are robbed by his classmate Petra and her drug addicted team. Polash goes through sufferings and starts writing to get released from his pain - some years pass away. Grown up John and Nafiz are together again, they are the bosses of terrorists of Luton (a small town of the East of England) and try to control the neighbouring town Dunstable (another small town of the East of England). So they need more power, intellectual power, therefore they call their childhood friend Polash for a meeting, Polash is very happy to see his two friends after a long time, but his happiness fades away soon knowing that his friends have become even worse plus they are now forcing him to join them, Polash denies, John and Nafiz threat him in return. Polash doesn’t care his friends’ threat but continues his research on this decaying society, interviews people here and there to know their point of views and writes. He frustrates to see all of his pages are filled with blood, bloodshed everywhere, his mother encourages him to continue his fight with his pen, not to leave the battle field against insanity, Polash continues. Then, one day John and Nafiz and their pride of being the big gang leaders end up when their junior gang mates conspire and kill them. Polash feels broken to know such an end of his childhood friends’ lives. Dr Ahmed stands beside him to console him and say that none but John and Nafiz created their own fortune, what the others can do.

Synopsis

British artist and living legend Andrew Logan, loved the world over by celebrities and misfits alike, takes us under his glittering wing and inside his outrageous, anarchic and spectacular costume pageant: the Alternative Miss World Show. As the Show’s master of ceremonies and ringmaster, Logan is the high priest of an esteemed congregation. Artist David Hockney judged the first one, musician David Bowie couldn’t get into the second, film director Derek Jarman won the third and fashionista Zandra Rhodes designs Andrew's hostess costume. Other patrons include Mary Quant, Biba, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Brian Eno, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Divine and John Waters, Elton John, Larry Hagman, the Queen Mum and Tony Blair. He describes the Show as his most important artwork - a fabulous living sculpture that spans 40 years of arts and culture. Over its 35 year history Alternative Miss World has both reflected and informed British arts and culture. The first was a backlash against the austerity of the early 70s. Since then, the Show has inspired glam, punk and new romantic. It dazzled in Thatcher’s recession, flaunted itself in the AIDS crisis, became darker in the corporate 90s and decidedly un-Cool Britannia in 2004. Using live observational camera, archive and exuberant animation, this documentary charts the mounting of the 2009 Show, interwoven with its history - the rise, fall and rediscovery - of both the event and the artist at its centre.

Synopsis

In the wake of his death, the two survivors of English ventriloquist, Arthur Worsley (1920-2001) incorporate his dummy into their daily lives as a surrogate family member. Loveable, terrifying, covered in goat skin, the puppet 'Charlie Brown' develops deeper and deeper meaning for Arthur's elderly widow and his adult son Michael as both grow older in the declining resort town of Blackpool. A minature portrait of a remarkable family never before captured on film.

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Unless we change our ways, there will be no fish left in the world's oceans by the middle of the century. This lavishly shot feature length documentary tells the disturbing story of how this has happened, who is to blame and what can be done about it. Filmed all over the world - on land and under the sea - the film features the communities on the receiving end of this eco-catastrophe, the pioneering scientists who have discovered it and the politicians - active and inactive - who lay down the laws for the oceans. Based on the book of the same name by Charles Clover, this is the Inconvenient Truth about the world's oceans - and the food which they prodiuce, on which millions rely for their existence.

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Experimental documentary looking at the day that Muhammad Ali came to Tyneside in 1977 and the effect that this event had on the young Yemeni-British men who attended the Mosque. This film examines the emerging Arab/British identity and briefly introduced this historic community.  

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Jeffrey Marshall is a professional musician, born without arms or legs. But do people come to his shows to listen to the music or to stare at the spectacle of how he's playing? In The Last Freak Show we join him in Nashville as he promotes his debut album before heading out to explore his personal and cultural identity as a disabled performer by becoming the star attraction in the last remaining freak show in America.

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Seven disabled climbers set out to climb Mt Kilimanjaro and find something far more amazing than the summit.  

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A series of four-by-three minute films which document the activism of Brazilian women who find innovative ways of bringing hidden issues into the political public domain.

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A man stumbles on a rotten delapidated shed in the middle of a forest. The story of the shed and the people that lived there is told through the photos and sketches the man finds.

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At 101, Rose is a former journalist, sex-therapist and counsellor and now the oldest newspaper columnist in the world. Hetty, 102, is a veteran Stop-the-War campaigner, just about to embark on her 84th peace march; and Alison, 87, is a novelist and self-styled ‘establishment lady’ who was once a committed member of the Communist Party. Hetty, Rose and Alison are three of the oldest residents of the Mary Feilding Guild, a home for the ‘active elderly’, and regularly share their impassioned concerns on everything from terrorism to global warming, the rise of fundamentalism, and the decline of the media – not to mention the meaning of life, death and existence. But despite their unstoppable enthusiasm, humour and passion, all three women are not simply ready for death – they actively want to die. At the end of lives lived with passion and purpose, Hetty, Rose and Alison are facing the painful reality of physical, sometimes mental, deterioration and its consequences for their sense of identity and worth. In the singular community of the Mary Feilding Guild, they bring to the screen a rare perspective on old age. They are first-hand witnesses who have gone ahead and report back to us from the edge of their own mortality. They can tell us things of which no-one ever speaks.

Synopsis

In 1924 Englishman George Mallory was torn between his love for a woman, Ruth, and his obsession with the last great adventure left to man: becoming the first person to climb Mount Everest. Dressed in gabardine and wearing hobnailed boots, Mallory was last seen alive 800 feet below the summit. Then the clouds rolled in and he disappeared into legend. Following his discovery of Mallory’s body in 1999, modern adventurer Conrad Anker became haunted by Mallory’s story. In 2007 Conrad returns to Everest to lay Mallory’s ghost to rest. He risks everything to discover the truth about this compelling and gilded man from a bygone era. And to rewrite history. This feature documentary is directed by leading film maker, Anthony Geffen, in his first collaboration with Executive Producer, Mike Medavoy. Liam Neeson narrates the film. Ralph Fiennes, Hugh Dancy and Alan Rickman provide additional voices. Ruth Mallory is voiced by the late Natasha Richardson in her final film role.

Synopsis

Every summer, more than a thousand people go looking for themselves and a soul-load of enlightenment at the No Mind Festival in northern Sweden. Deep in the forest, seekers divide into small, random 'sharing groups' and submit to a two-week intensive program of pseudo-shamanic-tantric reiki rituals. We follow the comical-come-karmic adventures of one sharing group made up of a middle-aged mojo-worn lothario, a Swedish pop star, the requisite Hawaiian hippy, an emotionally fragile Finnish grandma and the audience's sounding board, Nick, an Australian rugby coach who doesn't buy a second of their 'find your inner power animal' antics. As the fire-walking and tree-hugging exercises continue, however, channels are opened into the very real issues that brought the characters there, including Nick's. In a completely free and honest environment, the camera captures the intimate conversations, startling breakdowns and defining confrontations that pave each of their remarkable journeys towards love, loathing, hilarity and themselves.