Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Artist and barber Faisal Abdu'Allah sets up his very own drop-in barbershop. Snipping and shaving while spinning yarns, Faisal discusses art, life and haircutting with customers.

Synopsis

The film shows Chalford a village in the Cotswolds through one year. The only shop is under threat and becomes a focal point. Whole food hippies, pedal powered eco warriors. Life long residents and a multitude of children live life and help run the shop on ideology rather than commerce.

Synopsis

A film about people who own (and love) the robot dogs called Aibo. The first consumer focus artficially intelligent product designed to create love bonds with owners. As the Aibo is an imitation of life, so our film mixes real owners with a fictional character playing improvised scenes based on research.

Synopsis

A portrait of Peggy Smith and her husband Leslie - a retired cruise ship drummer - as they bicker their way through their old age in a London retirement home.

Synopsis

Marjorie is an 89 year old retired vaudevillian actress. Fortunes have faded, but the memories of her magnificent past are vibrant. Marjorie's stark, subdued current existence is illustrated through the use of animated documentary. The film inter-cuts with fantastical, dreamlike, animated imagery which depict her memories of a happier time.

Synopsis

A procession of the Italian Confraternity - an order of the Catholic church that perhaps, to the eyes of traditionally non-Catholic countries, triggers other very different movements. This confusion is dispelled by references, filmed in the same town, same day, to more recognizable aspects of Catholicism. Innocent, but still the power to shock?

Synopsis

A recently arrived American notices a woman living in a partially demolished house on a massive development site in Shanghai, a row of welcoming red lanterns strung proudly over her doorway. This film captures the final days of the Red Lantern House and the beginning of an unlikely friendship.

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Rehearsals is an impressionistic snapshot of Belfast as Northern Ireland feels its way towards the future. The film revolves around groups of musicians and artists rehearsing in their homes or pubs whilst voices and images of Belfast remind us of the stark and poignant realities of everyday life.

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In August 2005, inspired by Harry Smith's anthology of American Folk Music, London DJ Alex Reuben set out alone on the American Road, fulfilling a lifelong dream to document the social dance of southern USA. His childhood inspiration to dance had been the music of New Orleans and Fats Domino. Reuben traveled from North Carolina to Memphis, Tennessee and onto Mississippi. Hurricane Katrina halted his journey towards Fats, and Louisiana. The result is a dance road movie that gives insights into lesser-known forms of American dance and music culture and the lives of extraordinary Americans. Set against the US federal governments' woeful response to the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina, at a time when Americans were questioning their position on the war in Iraq, we explore Appalachian Clogging, Hip-Hop, Stepping, Mamphis Marching Bands, Mississippi Fife and Drum, Cajun and Zydeco. A Capture commission for Arts Council England.

Synopsis

She Should Have Gone To The Moon tells the astonishing story of the pilot and pioneer, Jerri Truhill, who was trained in 1961, as part of NASA's top secret Mercury 13 programme, to become one of the First Lady Astronauts. The documentary is about Jerri Truhill's ambition to conquer the unknown and the filmmaker's fascination with a woman who dared to break down all barriers in aviation. Set against a momentous era in American history, the film constructs both an intimate portrait of Truhill and explores a unique chapter in American culture and society. In the film, the sharp-witted Jerri Truhill looks back on her compelling life via a phone call with the filmmaker. This conversation becomes the catalyst for the director's imagining of key events in Truhill's potent narrative and inspires a journey to meet the heroine in Texas. Along the way, the filmmaker places herself in Truhill's story, first wandering across the surreal landscape of White Sands and then suspended in zero gravity inside a water tank. Included are stylized and dreamlike scenes, which are counter pointed by shots from both Truhill's and NASA's film archive. The various strands produce the film's heady timeline, as they circle through real and imagined spaces and merge into a bittersweet interview with Truhill at her home.

Synopsis

It ain't East Coast. It ain't West Coast. This is South Coast. Forget the MTV-sponsored images of ghetto superstars and bling - South Coast is a quintessentially British take on hip hop 30 years after it emerged from the Bronx block parties. Three years in the making; this character-driven documentary features a host of engaging characters including Norman Cook (aka Fat Boy Slim), notorious Train Painter, Aroe and irrepressible MC, Buzz; break-dancers on Brighton's pebbled beach; Brighton's first gay rap crew, grimy MCs in word battles with poets; graffiti art galleries, and laid back but incisive rhymes about British seaside life.  

Synopsis

Springsummer is a digitally treated short film documenting Kei Kagami's Spring/Summer 04 collection. Fashion photographer Enamul and graphic designer Matt Moate have previously worked together on numerous photographic projects but this film represents their first collaboration in moving image. Springsummer seeks to explore the emotive undercurrents of Kagami's groundbreaking work in a delicate fusion of imagery and abstraction played out to a blistering original soundtrack by sound designer Rob Mullender.