Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Commissioned by Carlton TV as part of the First Cut 2003 series.
 
A day in the life of an historic English city park. In sunlight the green and pleasant place is a leafy haven for all sorts of harmless pastimes.
 
But as darkness descends a more threatening character emerges.

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One day you might have the misfortune to find yourself both dead and in the Midlands. But rest easy, knowing there are people, good people you can call upon. There are People To Contact When You're Dead In The Midlands. A short story that's largely about mediums.

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Perfectly Frank is the moving tale of architect Frank Gehry's desire to design a very special building in memory of a dear friend - the eponymous Maggie's Centre, a Cancer support centre in Dundee, Scotland.

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After nine years of insomnia, a man decides enough is enough. He goes to meet the very things which help him get to sleep at night - three flying pigs - but will this lead to a permanent cure?

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A character study of the relationship between a professional poker playing mother and her film making daughter, set against the backdrop of the World Series of Poker. 

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During the Bosnian conflict the population of Sarajevo spent almost four years under seige. This is a story of how a troubled youth strove to keep their sanity through the music they made; parties they organised and radio they broadcast. We chart the last ten years of a music scene and a youth culture still carrying the scars of war but looking toward the future with hope and spirit.

Synopsis

Riva is the portrait of a woman, Riva Ben Eliezer, now ninety years old. How do you look at the life of someone who has lived through so much? I would look at her hands, wrinkled and old, and think, these are the hands that did all those things, that were communist in Palestine, that were imprisoned and tortured, that bore children and a great and terrible war, that lived in Siberia, that taught kindergarten, that wrote books. These hands, no other, did this, and this is what they look like now. This is what time and life has done to my grandmother's hands.
 
But the film is more than that. It is more than a portrait of a woman who lived through extraordinary times, who was a Jew in a place and time when there was nothing and nowhere worse to be. It is the portrait of a whole life, not just the sections that have the most drama. It is the portrait of her now - for now contains all her past, somehow, in her hands and in her face. In her voice and especially in her laugh.
 
It is a private film made for the public. The use of hand processed images, with their patina of blotches and scratches, creats a space for Riva to exist, where the presentation of her ninety-year-old body is not intrusive but respectful. It is a private film also because it was made in private, just me and her, so our relationship becomes a part of it.
 
It is not my intention with this film to deify Riva. Just to show her, as I see her, because it is important to see the lives of others, lives that have been deeply lived, as Riva's has.

Synopsis

Dundee is the bingo capital of Britain. With the highest number of gambling establishments per capita of anywhere outside of Las Vegas, it's residents truly are bingoing mad. This documentary looks at the strong tradition of bingo playing in Dundee as seen through the eyes of a small section of bingo addicts - set against the city's industrial past. In this city bingo is not just a game, it's a lifestyle.

Synopsis

Special Delivery is a 30 minute documentary about the work of Ray Greaves; one man, who, in his big white van delivers hope to the Children of Chernobyl. This forty eight year old former miner, from Doncaster, has spent the past nine years raising money and collecting aid for the Zelenei Gai Children's radiation rehabilitation centre in Chernigov, near Chernobyl. To the doctors and nurses there, Ray is the reason they can continue with their treatment of young victims of the 1986 nuclear disaster. To the kids he's the English Santa Claus.

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Artist George Wylie's personal exploration of the many complications - engineering, political and corporate that accompany the building of a Crystal Ship, high above a bridge crossing the River Kelvin.

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One man's attempt to realise his dreams in the midst of the English countryside. Richard White is determined not to allow parking restrictions, his jealous crippled wife or reclusive neighbours to stand in his way of mounting a fully fledged production of a Mozart opera in his living room.

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Then and Now tells the story of a family from Iraq who left their home and came to live in Scotland five years ago. Mohammed, the father, was an officer in the Iraqi army. The programme tells how he was smuggled into Kurdistan as his wife and daughter escaped by another route. After a year waiting in a refugee camp in Turkey they were finally accepted as refugees in the U.K.