Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Abandoned by her parents, Sameem Ali spent six and a half years growing up in a childrens home. When she was told that her family wanted to take her back she couldnt wait to start her new life with them. Instead, she returned to a dirty house where she was subjected to endless chores. Her mother began to beat her and her unhappiness drove her to self-harm. So Sameem was excited when she boarded a plane with her mother to visit Pakistan for the first time. It was only after they arrived in her family's village that she realised she wasnt there on holiday. Aged just thirteen, Sameem was forced to marry a complete stranger. When pregnant, two months later, she was made to return to the UK where she suffered further abuse from her family. After finding true love, Sameem fled the violence at home and escaped to Manchester with her young son. She believed she had put her horrific experiences behind her, but was unprepared for the consequences of violating her family's honour. Honour Me is the shocking true story of Sameem's struggle to break free from her past and fight back against her upbringing.

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In patriarchal Nepal, Belmaya, at 21, has given up on finding happiness. An uneducated Dalit, with an oppressive husband and baby daughter, she yearns for freedom. Rewind to 2006, when she was a rebellious teenager living in a girls’ home. Grabbing the chance to learn photography, she wanted to change her world. But the home locked away her camera. I Am Belmaya follows her transformational journey from 2014 as she once again picks up the camera, this time to train as a documentary filmmaker. But are her husband and community ready for this? Struggling against violent opposition, Belmaya makes a personal film, Educate Our Daughters, which wins hearts and awards, taking her to places she never dreamed she would go.

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A short observational documentary following the unique and beautiful relationship between a blind woman, Megan, and her guide dog, Layla. The film follows them through a day in their life.

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In the underground world of money and sex, this emotionally engaging documentary gives rare insight into the reflective personal struggle of sex workers. Using animation for anonymity, real questions are deliberated by real women, sharing their real stories.

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A chronicle of personal experiences taking place in the Negev desert in southern Israel. The film journeys through natural, industrial, and militarized landscapes as a disembodied voice-over weaves childhood memories, geology, ecology and politics into one narrative.

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David Haye. Unified world cruiserweight champion at twenty-eight, heavyweight champion at twenty-nine… on course to join the pantheon of boxing greats before injury and defeat in the ring seemed to put an end to his career. 4 years later, he’s in the fight of his life as he undergoes radical, experimental surgery and trains harder than ever for one last comeback, one last chance to become a legend! With 900 hours of unprecedented, intimate access filming over 5 years, this is an extraordinarily personal portrait of a man struggling with anxiety, depression and self-belief and what it takes to achieve his dreams, what it takes to become a champion!

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In 1959 the legendary ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax set out on a road trip through The Southern States. Recently returned from years of voluntary exile during the McCarthy era, his goal was to collect a definitive cross-section of traditional American roots music, using prototype stereo tape-recorder. This was a world on the cusp of monumental change, the recordings that Lomax made serve as both a peerless collection of traditional music and a social document of the times. 60 years on, SOUTHERN JOURNEY REVISITED follows the route that Lomax previously traversed - searching out the remaining echoes of the recordings he made along the way. Alongside the music, the documentary takes the pulse of a nation, surveying what has and has not changed, for good and for bad, in the 6 decades since Lomax trod the self-same path. Inspired partly by the negative stereotypes of the South that predominate both in Europe and the rest of America, the filmmakers set out to see for themselves if those stereotypes held any water. What emerges is a rich and varied tapestry that gives the lie to any reductive theories about the people and politics of the land that lies “Away, Away, Away Down South”.

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A b&w 16mm artists' essay film, drawn from the book ‘Republic Of Dogs / Republic Of Birds' by the poet Stephen Watts, exploring landscape, history, memory and the power of words to celebrate and resist. “For four decades, poet, translator and activist Stephen Watts has been the quietly urgent, profoundly committed voice of the marginalised and the overlooked, whether person or place. He understands that the true ethical centre that matters lies at the edge, whether in the pull of outpost islands or the common ground of migrant streets. Now he has found his collaborative equal in the engaged 16mm filmmaker Huw Wahl, who has translated the text of Watt’s book-length prose poem Republic Of Dogs / Republic Of Birds into a luminous feature-length documentary essay of remarkable beauty and spirited attention. THE REPUBLICS moves from the early 1980s to the present, and from London’s Isle of Dogs and Scotland’s Western Isles to the mountains of Northern Italy. It is one of the most impressive artists’ films of recent years, whose own poetry speaks as honestly and eloquently as that of the writer it portrays.” (Gareth Evans, Moving Image Curator, Whitechapel Gallery)

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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.