Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Planeat is a provocative challenge to our love of meat and dairy. Tracking a group of scientists, the film forces us to confront the evidence that a heavily animal-based diet is bad for our health, environment and future of the planet. However, with the help of some innovative chefs, these problems can be solved.

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What do the contents of your pockets say about you?

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Commissioned as part of the 'Bridging the Gap' production scheme, short documentary Pollphail is a startling portrait of imagined futures and a village in limbo.

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An intimate and revealing documentary featuring Whitstable artist John Butterworth. John was predominantly an abstract artist until the untimely death of his brother Charles left him devastated and disconnected from his early work. No longer able to relate to the intangible nature of his art he began a series of figurative paintings that featured people falling from the sky. Portrait is about coming to terms with grief, and a reflection on art, life and mortality.

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Shot in the run up to the 2008 Olympics, this documentary follows Aifeng, a young sex worker in a Beijing massage parlour. Like many migrant workers in modern China she is struggling to support her family back home. When she suddenly loses her job, Aifeng faces her biggest challenge yet.

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The search for the meaning behind the unwrapped and unusual objects that Paul Smith, the fashion designer, has been receiving in the post for the last 20 years, from a mystery person.

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Bullfighting endures the stigma of animal cruelty yet also holds the grace and elegance of tradition. This paradox evokes an inner conflict rarely addressed. Red Sands is an objective and Eisenstein-esque documentary, raising questions about age old tradition and its future.

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10 years ago there was a Rock and Roll band called The Fury. Feted by Music Industry insiders, lauded by their fiercely loyal fans, they were tipped by many to be the breakout band of 1997. 10 years later, their debut album remained unreleased. The band split up. Rock and Roll Stole my Soul is a retrospective documentary that looks at the rise and fall of The Fury. Archive footage of the band ten years ago is combined with interviews of the band in 2008 to tell the story of how the band that could have had it all ended up with nothing.

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In the jungles of Borneo, an Iban father on the cusp of old age begins a river journey to seek medical help for his sick child. Along the way, the boy is troubled by recurring visions of a strange figure who appears on the river bank. As the journey progresses, father and son are drawn inexorably to a final encounter with the mythical 'transformed' shaman who dwells deep inside the jungle. Semangat was made by working closely with one Iban longhouse community from Sarawak, Malaysia with whom the story was devised and filmed. Set in the jungles of Borneo, the basis of the film explores the conflict that exists between ancient animist beliefs and modern approaches to illness. The main protagonists of the film are a real father and son, and a retired shaman from this community. Semangat is a micro-budget hybrid docu-fiction film funded by The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, The UK Film Council/CTBF John Brabourne Award and Screen South. It has been produced under the creative guidance of award winning filmmaker, Pawel Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love). It has been co-produced with The National Film and Television School.

Synopsis

Separado! Odyssey to a Parallel Universe. Star Trek meets Buena Vista Social Club in this psychedelic western musical as Welsh pop legend Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) takes us on a pan continental road trip in search of his long lost Patagonian uncle, the poncho wearing guitarist Rene Griffiths. In 1880, following a controversial horse race that led to an unresolved death, Gruff Rhys' family split as Dafydd Jones took his young family to join the burgeoning Welsh community in Patagonia, South America. There was to be no contact between the families for almost a century when in 1974 Rene Griffiths arrived in Wales with his Latin infused Welsh love songs and became an over night sensation. Director Dylan Goch follows Gruff Rhys on a tour that takes in the theatres, nightclubs and desert teahouses of Wales, Brazil and the Argentine Andes as he discovers what became of his family, the Welsh Diaspora and its musical legacy.

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The small UK town of Hebden Bridge, where film-maker Jez Lewis grew up, is a beautiful and quirky rural idyll. But while it is paradise to many, it is purgatory to others. In the twenty years since he left, dozens of Jez's old friends have died young, many of them through suicide and drug overdoses. Beginning with a personal quest for understanding, the film moves into a year-long drama of human tragedy and redemption as Jez re-bonds with his oldest friend Cass. Coming to terms with his own imminent mortality, Cass attempts to lift himself out of the cycle of self-destruction he has lived amidst for so long. Around this emerges an intimate study of a place claimed to be the funkiest town in Europe, but which harbours an undertow of lethal hedonism and disillusionment. As young people continue to die by their own hands, a maelstrom of conflicting values throws up unexpected truths about the human condition, whilst Jez finds himself drawn inexorably into the action. Filmed among friends, with absolutely unrestricted access, Shed Your Tears And Walk Away is a searingly authentic portrayal of a marginalised and overlooked people who seem to have lost their survival instinct.

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A fast-paced documentary populated by a charismatic and often surreal cast of characters, Shot in Bombay goes beyond the tinselly glamour of 'Bollywood' to explore the industry's darker sides. With unprecedented access to a star-studded Bombay gangster movie, the film reveals an edgy metropolis, where fiction regularly blurs into reality.