Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

An atmospheric journey into the heart of modern England, filmmaker Louis Price weaves together scenes of everyday life within the Black Country in the West Midlands. An area once so industrialised the sky appeared black during the day, and red during the night, today the Black Country is a place of ghosts, existing in the aftermath of its industrial past. Black Country - A Film From England takes place entirely in one day, observing crematoriums, night clubs, UKIP pubs, living rooms and Council Chambers with a hallucinatory eye that presents no easy answers, or neat narrative resolves. Mixing a combination of industrial archive footage, experimental sound design (wax cylinder recordings, player piano, distorted 78 RPM records), with stripped back austere camera compositions and mysterious, mundane and sometimes unsettling subjects, Black Country is a distorted postcard from a confused and increasingly indecipherable England.

Synopsis

As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realised far before its time. Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan, a reissue of Keyboard Fantasies and subsequent plays by Four Tet, Caribou and more, the music had finally found its audience two generations down the line. 'Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story' tells the time-travelling tale of this mystical musician and vocalist, as the present finally catches up with him and he embarks on his first international tour at the age of 74.   Capturing five decades of relentless musical output and shifting manifestations of gender and sexual identity, set against a backdrop of profound social change, the film celebrates the unpredictable rhythms of life. A lullaby to soothe those souls struggling to find their place in the world.

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Keifer Nyron Taylor captures the last days of grandfather, Lloydie Plummer, exploring his violent upbringing in Jamaica and the damage done to the family he built in the UK.

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People Meeting in a Room reflects on collective film making and workers’ activism, connecting the histories of activists and film makers associated with the Birmingham Trade Union Resource Centre in the 1980s with a group of contemporary collaborators who interpret archival films and collective actions through animation, performance and conversation.

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An underground jazz club in Harlem struggles to keep going after the death of its founder, Seleno Clarke.

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Ronnie Scott’s unpretentious aim was simple: To create a jazz club that he’d be happy to play in himself and which was devoted to appreciative listening. RONNIE'S explores what makes the club so unique, celebrates its musical legacy and discovers who the man behind the name really was.

Synopsis

Combining behind-the-scenes political drama with the spirit of a sentimental screen romance,THE ATOM: A LOVE AFFAIR charts the social and political development of nuclear power - and our changing relationship with it – since the end of the Second World War. Covering seven eventful decades and focusing particularly on events in the US, UK, France and Germany, the film reveals how the 1950s romantic fantasy of an atom-powered future developed into the stormy, on-off relationship whose drama continues to play out to this day. It's a story of deeply felt convictions, political manoeuvering, blunders, crisis and reinvention. And it's told, as far as possible, firsthand, by the politicians, campaigners, scientists, engineers and executives directly involved in the fluctuating fortunes of the 'peaceful atom’.

Synopsis

Made in and around Thrapston, a market town in Northamptonshire, The Great Bear explores narratives of labour and landscape in the English Midlands. Intensified by its focus on the young, activities and subjectivities of work entwine with patterns of seasonal change, the landscape both source and product of working life.

Synopsis

A note on over-development, Simon Liu’s vision of Hong Kong carries both the marvels of modern life and its short circuits. A chaos broken only by the soft touches of natural light and flowing water captured on 16mm, one feels the tension of a city on the brink of combustion. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Future - International premiere

Synopsis

A personal essay film centred on copla - a form of Spanish lyrical song which powerfully communicates emotions of sorrow and the profound sadness of woman. The film combines filmmaker Nina Danino's interest in the female voice with archive and newly filmed performances. The film sets out to look for copla and the women and singers of copla and on her own memory and experience of it. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

Based on the book 'Lost Lives', which records every single death and its circumstances since the beginning of the modern conflict known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, this heartfelt documentary is a cinematic homage to those, from all sides, who lost their lives. Powerfully narrated by famous Irish and Northern Irish actors, including Kenneth Branagh, Brendan Gleeson, Roma Downey, Liam Neeson, Bríd Brennan and Stephen Rea, the film weaves archive footage with recordings of family and friends responding to the devastating news of the death of loved ones. A score performed by the Ulster Orchestra and striking cinematography complete this elegiac piece. The last entry in the book is Lyra McKee, a journalist who was fatally shot in 2019 – an essential reminder that peace can be a fragile process. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Love Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

Ronnie Wood is a genuine, 24-carat rock star guitarist. He has paid his dues, played hard, lived fast (in every sense) and somehow survived to tell the tale. And tell it he does, in this revealing, biographical documentary, which charts Wood’s stellar and storied career. From his childhood and entry into the 1960s music scene, through to his time with the Jeff Beck Group, achieving fame with The Faces alongside bandmate Rod Stewart and finally becoming an indispensable and permanent member of The Rolling Stones, Figgis captures it all. Featuring terrific archive footage, along with candid interviews with a very charismatic Wood and his many legendary friends, this is the perfect rock and roll treat. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Create Strand - World premiere Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2020 - Spotlight Documentary