Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

‘Dark tourism' has been defined as travel to places historically associated with death or tragedy. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, this industry is booming. Over 3600 people died during The Troubles (1968-1998), the colloquial name given to the 30 year period of violence and political dispute between Unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom and Nationalists who wanted to join the Republic of Ireland. A new phenomena of tourists now travel to the working class streets of the city where the majority of the conflict took place with long-term residents beginning to feel like they’re part of the attraction. Official Selection Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020

Synopsis

This is a ghost story. A series of uncanny events lead The Seeker to a forest in Poland where she meets a distraught elderly woman who hands her a note written in Polish that she cannot understand. Returning months later with an interpreter she hears the story of The Deathless Woman, a Roma matriarch who was buried alive in the forest by German soldiers in 1942. The Deathless Woman draws us from the scene of her death to other sites of Roma persecution. She hovers above the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau on the night the Roma revolt against their Nazi captors. She glides under the lake in Várpalota where 118 women and children were massacred in 1945. She passes through the burnt-out house in Tatárszentgyörgy where neo-Nazis murdered a Roma family in 2009. She even crosses into the virtual realm and enters the digital landscapes of the Internet, encountering hate speech and video games where players are invited to gun down unarmed Roma as they run through the streets. The film interweaves The Deathless Woman’s ghostly narration, The Seeker’s journey of discovery, fantastical re-imaginings of buried secrets; and documentary testimony from witnesses to atrocities against the Roma in Poland and Hungary. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

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A short film about an art collector Berkovic, and dealer Oscar Swindon - featuring an unexpected twist which will keep the audience hooked.

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A film of three interconnected narratives – a story of the artist's grandfather, one of ‘the land’, and another detailing an encounter with Nigeria – which the film attempts to tell in as many ways as possible. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Future - Ammodo Tiger Short Competition - International premiere

Synopsis

A group of artists on a small Greek island build an experimental music festival aiming to bridge the gap between the Greeks and the islands refugee community. Stories from Leros.

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A short documentary following the owner of a chicken shop in East London. Nassif Fayadmarni moved here from Iraq and set up the challenging task of setting up a chicken shop. We explore him, his shop and East Ham.

Synopsis

“Filmfarsi was the cinema of a nation with a split personality”, says filmmaker Ehsan Khoshbakht in this film-critical history of Iran under the Shah. Khoshbakht’s found-footage essay film salvages low budget thrillers and melodramas suppressed following the 1979 Islamic revolution. These films defined Iranian cinema in the 1960s and '70s, when the industry shared an equal percentage of the market with the USA. Little more than VHS rips remain. Khoshbakht here uncovers that which was thought destroyed. A cinema of titillation, action and big emotions, which also presented a troubling mirror for the country, as Iran struggled to reconcile its religious traditions with the turbulence of modernity, and the influences of the West. The often cheap, sleazy and derivative films offer an insight into Iran’s psyche. Among the scratched reels, some keystones of Iran’s extraordinary film culture emerge, too: Gheysar, whose title design was done by a young Abbas Kiarostami; the work of director Samuel Khachikian, a progenitor of Iranian noir; and The Deer, a film which more than any other symbolises the historic violent turns in Iran’s recent past. Filmfarsi presaged a revolution, and it became one of its first victims. — Yusef Sayed

Synopsis

Built by award-winning VR creators and an Oscar-winning practical effects team, FLY enables you to become a time-travelling pilot - from the earliest imaginings of Leonardo Da Vinci, to the Wright Brothers’ success on Kitty Hawk Beach, to piloting Concorde and, finally, into one imagined future of flight.

Synopsis

Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy designed New Gourna in 1954, introducing ecological principles for mud architecture to Egypt. He dreamt that rural populations might have sustainable lives. Stills and an experimental soundtrack take a haunting look at efforts from the 1940s in sustainability in the Middle East. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Perspectives

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A film on on the lives, loves and dreams of contemporary Chinese and Europeans, showing how they are both very different, yet at the same time very much the same.

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An optimistic declaration of a young seven-year-old's truth.

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Geoff, Dan and Isaac are three wheelchair users who embark on a mission to conquer the Swiss Alps, and prove that having a disability won’t tame their sense of adventure. Information on Upcoming Screenings: