Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

An observational documentary about Natty, a 19-year-old from Birmingham, who has just been released from prison, where he was sent for violent crime. Will financial and peer pressure lead Natty back into gang crime? Through the course of filming, Moby Longinotto raises difficult questions - should we be observing these lives and if and when should we be getting involved?
 

Synopsis

On 12 August 1969, the disaffected Catholic population of the Bogside district of Derry, Northern Ireland, took to the streets in the wake of a Protestant Apprentice Boys parade in the city. The riots continued for three days and ended when British troops were deployed, a decision that was to shape the future of Northern Ireland for over thirty years. This film takes us ‘behind the barricades’ on both sides to reveal the inside stories surrounding the battle.

Synopsis

Coloring the Media begins with the premise that since the invention of the camera, Native Americans were the very first people to be documented either in photographs or in moving pictures. This film explores this journey as European Americans used the camera as a propaganda tool to depict native peoples in America as less than human. Through the development of stereotypes, and inadequate research, early films depicting native peoples set into motion a language of film that is still being used today. This language came to affect all peoples of colour around the world as they were often portrayed as ignorant or noble savages whose only good was to make the European look superior, civilized and just in their cause - which was more often than not the civilization of the savage.

By using contemporary films such as Smoke Signals; and documentaries such as Healing the Hurts and Spirit combined with interviews with Native people, Coloring the Media takes us on a journey and asks how the past can affect the present and shape the future for Native Americans and also for people of color. As Black and Asian people living in Britain speak about their experiences and the struggles they face today, we see how the language of film set into motion in the early 20th century still plays an important part in the portrayal of people of colour.
Coloring the Media offers a refreshing investigative insight into the past and present. For future generations it offers a solution of change through the voices of people, and asks one important question: 'What is it going to take to make this change happen, now, today?'
 

Synopsis

Eden in Northern Ireland shares few of the qualities of it's namesake. It exists around the perimeter fence of one of Ireland's largest power stations. Simon Aeppli's hometown forms the basis of a video that explores a rundown half forgotten place. Focusing on Eden's residents the video reveals a place filled with eccentricity, humour and beauty.

Synopsis

On 21st May 2003, British artist Mark Anstee started work at the In Flanders Fields Museum, Belgium. His task was to draw two opposing armies of equal number on a four metre square wall - in twelve days. The life and times of 19,386 small biro men. 

Synopsis

Performance artist Ivan Inversion is endeavouring to bring the wonders of standing on one's head to the attention of the masses. He plays guitar and sings whilst dangling upside-down from a lamp post in London's Covent Garden district. His audience give their reactions, he explains the logic underlying his performance.

Synopsis

A hymn to London that takes us on a journey from the suburbs to the heart of the city, with a mesmerizing score by Saint Etienne (Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell).

London has long been a source of influence, stimulation and curiosity for the band, and the film is a poignant 'psycho-geographical' drama that celebrates the capital in both its seediness and glory. Exploring the dreams the city holds for so many alongside the reality of urban life, the result is an extraordinary record of London today. Digitally shot and edited, Finisterre evolved alongside the album of the same name. Initially conceived as a way of channelling the money allocated to pop promos into something more substantial, it became in every sense an independent production. Its development is unique: early sequences were projected as live visuals behind the band on their last tour, while the film has played recently to cinema audiences in London, Madrid, Vancouver and Tokyo.
 

Synopsis

A world-champion kite flyer attempts to teach his blind boss to fly kites. A documentary film about two people and their passion for flight.

Synopsis

Myra is part Cherokee, a cleaner in the local hotel. She and husband Thomas and unemployed son Terry live in a trailer park. In 1828 gold was found in Dahlonega in the American deep south; the Cherokees were rounded up and force-marched to the west in the 'Trail of Tears'. In a moving portrait, Fool's Gold peels away the layers of affluent colour-co-ordinated shops, cafes and big cars to reveal a community, where people like Myra and Thomas, live out life untouched by the prosperity of tourism, who struggle with poverty but share the little they have with others.

Synopsis

Billy Gibbons lives in a village called Audlem in Cheshire, quite an odd place, which sometimes has a slight feel of League of Gentlemen about it. Still, Billy stands out -  every aspect of his existence is somehow rooted in the 1950s: from his clothes, house, car, music to his rocket man objects which signify the 50s exploration of space and lunar landing.
 
This documentary shows the lifestyle and multiple characters of this unusual man.

Synopsis

A personal document of the director's ancestral pilgrimage. She went to Poland in search of her missing uncle, Meilich Last. The film attempts to retrace the remnants of the spiritual and ghostly presence of the vanished world of her cultural origins. 

Synopsis

"Street kids are hard to rehabilitate.

They are used to their freedom, they behave the way they want. They smoke and take drugs. The street is the only life they know... So it's very difficult to tell these kids what to do."
 
Shot on the streets of Dakar, Senegal.