Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Takako Shirawa has spent the last 36 years creating an extraordinary day centre for autistic people in Abeno, Osaka. Nestling on a quiet neighbourhood corner, Atelier Corners began life as a family run sanctuary for local autistic children and has developed into a pioneering site of artistic experiment with its members becoming renowned artists, exhibited in Japan and worldwide. Award winning artist and filmmaker Richard Butchins (himself disabled) visited the centre with disabled dancer Kazuyo Morita and spent two years documenting and creating an award winning video installation about the artists and their home. This film shows the artists, the art and the woman that made it possible. It’s a testament to integration and the remarkable minds of the people that inhabit the building that is Atelier Corners. The film is part documentary and part artists’ moving image, a reflective and thoughtful account exploring the experience of disability in Japan, what is positive in the act of creation and the struggle against social exclusion, and how to foster and nurture the spirit of human life in a country that has traditionally excluded and hidden its disabled population from view.

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Desperately building against the inevitability of time, a restless young woman is awaiting another upcoming loss. But maybe more important things never seem to be told.

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One kilometre underneath the North Yorkshire coast, salt miners and research scientists work side by side at the edge of the biosphere. A young woman finds a new future in the darkness of this extreme environment.

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A snapshot of an edgeland, Tilbury in Essex, during the months leading to the Brexit deadline in March 2019. The film moves back and forth between the individual, human-scale portraits of migration and the representation of the town’s economic activity.

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Built from conversations with trans feminine people around the world, particularly the UK, Indonesia and Canada, the film documents We Dig, a threatre performance which centres around the actual excavation of a giant hole - a literal representation of a queer community needing to bury itself for protection.

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A double portrait of two women whose lives have been shaped by a shared passion for homemaking and hospitality. Over the course of the film we see Rosemary and Nancy in their cottage in Yorkshire, where they have settled in retirement. We hear them speak about the project they embarked on together, which saw them shelter and re-house over five hundred families in Massachusetts over a thirty year period, as well as providing a personal and historical context to their story.

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Using a visual rich balance of documentary and animation KINGS OF SUMAVA poetically explores the duality of hero, villain and reunites former Czech immigrant Vlasta Bukovsky and Czech people smuggler Josep Hasil. The infamous boarder guard who lead those who needed to leave communist Czechoslovakia through the mountains of Sumava and to freedom. Due to the communist regimes failed attempts to catch Josef his family were imprisoned for over 180 years.

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A short film about the Argentine electroacoustic composer Beatriz Ferreyra, an original pioneer of early musique concrète alongside Pierre Schaeffer during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Here she discusses her ‘sound hunting’ recording techniques, and other thoughts on sound montage and spatialization. Featuring creaking doors, barking dogs and rainbow hands. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020

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Eliane from Chile, Milad from Iran, and Georgia from Greece are three migrants in the UK who share their thoughts on love, home, family, and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

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A group of Black people reflect on violence as it relates to institutional racism and what needs to be done to free the Black mind. The group comprised of family members of Black men who have died in police custody or psychiatric units; mental health and legal professionals; activists and artists.

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Welcome to the age of cosmic radiation! THE PHANTOM MENACE compiles stories from the recent past of interaction with cosmic rays at ever descending altitudes. Planes crashing, computers malfunctioning and elections going haywire - these were just the prequel to the future. Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Forum Expanded - World premiere

Synopsis

The Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza decides to film his new movie, 'A Tree Has Fallen', in London. It is to be a stylish drama about Simon, a mysterious Nigerian man (Oris Erhuero), who returns to London to make amends with Anna, his mixed-race lover (Lisa Moorish) and Bruce, Anna’s white ex-husband (Matt Ray Brown). Progressively, this love triangle mirrors the increasing social and racial tensions in Great Britain and Europe. In parallel to his narrative fiction, Kivu documents these tensions by filming a series of rallies in the streets of London. But inevitably, the ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy of the ruling Conservative Party comes back to haunt the reunited lovers and to disrupt Kivu’s filmmaking effort. Sensing that his London stay is coming to a forced end, Kivu attends a far right protest to try and understand the rising xenophobia of the Brits and of his character Bruce. Official Selection IDFA 2019 - IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary - World premiere