Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

The story of the phenomenon of Air Jordan sneakers showing their social, cultural and racial significance and how ground-breaking marketing strategies created a billion dollar business. But it is also a story with a dark side – for thirty years people have been willing to kill for a pair of Air Jordans, while manufacturers Nike have turned a blind eye. This film is a parable of America's dark love affair with consumer capitalism and celebrity culture. Official Selection SXSW 2020 Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2020

Synopsis

Some filmmakers' style is so unique, they announce themselves in a scene: Lynch; Welles; Malick. And then there is Roy Andersson. A director whose visual storytelling can be encapsulated in a single frame. Because Roy, without hyperbole, is truly one of a kind. All his films take years to make. His crew builds every set; then films and destroys them. He uses only fixed shots with no close-ups or edits. He casts non-professional actors. Roy’s intricate in-camera trickery is meticulous to the point of madness. And each production is shot entirely in an unassuming townhouse below Roy’s apartment – Stockholm's legendary Studio 24. Roy’s contrarian methods have won garlands at the world's most prestigious festivals, and the adulation of visionaries like Darren Aronofsky and Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Now, at 76 years old, he is about to present his final work to the world. ABOUT ENDLESSNESS will mark the end of a major chapter in cinema. For when Roy stops making films, they will never be made this way again. Charting the arduous, unsettled arc of what Roy lovingly terms his “final effort”, BEING A HUMAN PERSON is a poignant and heartbreakingly honest portrait of a master storyteller calling time on his career.

Synopsis

This intimate story chronicles the cross-cultural relationship between musicians Faith and Branko over seven years. In 2011, Faith travels from England to Serbia to learn gypsy accordion. She meets Roma violinist Branko and despite language barriers, they fall in love through music. Captivated by their musical chemistry, they marry and take their duo abroad. As much as Faith is free-spirited and privileged, Branko is untraveled and attached to his family, but they each believe that the other will better their lives. The relationship is tested by the realisation of their differences and that music may be all they have in common. Official Selection Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 - World Premiere

Synopsis

Idiot or genius, Arthur, homeless outsider spends most of his days in the book shop. Ironically the "idiot" has a knowledge of the world of music and film far greater than any random customer in that shop. Everyone is running around the vanity fair of the huge shopping mall, while Arthur hides behind book stores reading and learning stories from the world. The modern alien, whom everyone calls an idiot, lives in the outskirt of reality but it seems that the world around is incapable of embracing his wisdom. He wanders around the modern jungle city, trying to find his humanity which everyday is taken away from him. He is attacked or humiliated to what he responds with the most eloquent language learnt from books. A portrait of a man who chooses to be free on the streets, and has no place where he belongs.

Synopsis

Hull, England, 1970. In a run-down commune in a tough port city, a group of social misfits - mostly working class, mostly self-educated - adopted new identities and began making simple street theatre under the name COUM Transmissions. Surviving on meagre resources at the margins of society, COUM’s playful performances gradually gave way to work that dealt openly with sex, pornography, and violence. At the core of the group were two artists, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti: Cosey forged a unique position in relation to 1970s feminism by modelling for pornographic magazines as an exercise in conceptual artwork, while Genesis pushed himself to other extremes, testing the limits of the human body.

Synopsis

An investigation into the truth behind the murder of Guatemalan cleric and human rights activist Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was killed in 1998 just days after trying to hold the country's military accountable for the atrocities committed during its civil war. The shocking murder of Gerardi in the aftermath of the Guatemalan Civil War sets the ground for a powerful battle between justice and corruption in this political crime thriller Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2020 - Spotlight Documentary - World premiere

Synopsis

An aspiring teenage rapper from Afghanistan, finds himself stuck in Athens with a group of friends. Through music and poetry he tries to make sense of the world around him. Official Selection Aspen Shortfest 2020 - Winner Best Documentary Official Selection HotDocs 2020

Synopsis

At midnight on 22nd October 2019, marriage equality rights were extended to Northern Ireland. With no sitting government in Stormont for three years, the law was passed through Westminster, much to the horror of the evangelical Christian right and their flagship political party, the DUP. Meanwhile, in a quiet corner of east Belfast, a radical theatre group was in the process of creating the world’s first ever ‘documentary opera’. Led by enigmatic artistic director Conor Mitchell, The Belfast Ensemble were taking every homophobic phrase said by DUP politicians over the past 40 years, and putting them to music, verbatim.

Synopsis

The Nye family, who arrived in London from Australia in the '60s, were passionate about horses. They established a stable in Hyde Park, and have been doing a remarkable work at the community level for decades. They contributed to democratizing riding in the city, passing their dream from generation to generation. The camera captures the day-to-day routines and challenges of life at Ross Nye Stables with humour and poetry. Premiere at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival 2021

Synopsis

An exiled Venezuelan director returns to his collapsing country to make a fiction film based on his own self-destructive father, who he casts to play himself. Father and son venture to the Amazon jungle, revisiting past traumas in a country that offers them no future. EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF explores the ways a son who left and a father who stayed face the pains of their past and the uncertainty of their future, all through the catharsis of making a film.

Synopsis

Christmas 1979, the height of The Cold War; Dave Evans' grandfather visits the family in South Wales and brings with him a mysterious young woman from Bulgaria. When grandad and his friend leave a few days later it will be the last the family ever see of him. Dave investigates his grandfather's disappearance and uncovers the story of how his family living in a small village in Wales were dragged into a web of Cold War intrigue and dirty dealings in high places.

Synopsis

The Hippies were a bizarre English punk band formed in '79 by the Hulse children, Toby (12), Matt (11) and Polly (8). Their cassette album 'A Sound for the Future' featured songs about disease, assassination and the Antarctic. "Stop eating toast and singeing your legs by the gas fire. Get up and do something!" (Ruth Pendragon, Mother, Manager, Guru), 1979. The Hippies performed ticketed live shows for their mother’s kindly but chaotic group of Cambridge friends; the homeless, drunks, animal rights activists, junkies, cross-dressers and gay Franciscan friars. The Hippies then and now. What truly happened back in the past and whose side of the story should be told? Especially as the film’s director was the band's 11-year-old drummer? Matt’s mum Ruth, maverick, mystic, manager, plays a pivotal role in the bigger picture, offering an insight into a time of personal and social upheaval, both for her and her family in Thatcher’s Britain. Using music of the period, archive, animation and poetic reimaginings of key moments, Matt Hulse explores a part-remembered, kaleidoscopically fractured, family history, through an energetic, jarring, ride; part performance, part art, part process, post-punk.