Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Exploring Oscar and BAFTA-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young's early works - Outlining Young’s location within a lineage of visual artists who he always claims as inspirations as well as echo chambers, and who are actively formulating a new black aesthetics. (liquid blackness)

Synopsis

A homage to the 20-year journey of renowned professor and activist Rok Ajulu. Filmed across six countries, in multiple formats, it follows Rok’s account of his struggles as an exiled freedom fighter of the post-colonial era. In conversation with his daughter, he tells of his numerous deportations, prison sentences, and academic career. As Rok recounts the collapse of the apartheid regime, BREAKFAST IN KISUMU shows us a homecoming: his journey back to Africa for the transition of the African National Congress (ANC) from liberation movement to governing party, his marriage into the Sisulu Family, and the continental significance of 1994. Official Selection IDFA 2019 - IDFA Competition for Short Documentary - International premiere

Synopsis

Working with artist Neil Ferguson, filmmaker Peter Bromley visits the homes of Marcel Duchamp and Gustave Flaubert. They explore their art and literary works partly through the performance of art actions. Filmed in London, Varengeville sur Mer and the City of Rouen.

Synopsis

In 1984 music producer Gary Davis left early recording success in New Jersey and New York City for a fresh start in Florida. From his new home he got working - making over 40 feature length kung fu, zombie and blaxploitation movies, while also helping birth a new sound in hip hop; Miami booty bass. Gary pushes against deep rooted racism and all the hurdles of life to make his art, with an eccentric cast of locals helping along the way. This film mixes archival footage, the films and music of Gary Davis, interviews and a few non sequiturs to paint a fever dream portrait of this determined artist.

Synopsis

Connor and Lewis are twins who are part of a family who have a point of differentness which has a profound impact on the lives of all five family members. After months of fighting and no communication, the two of them come together to spend a day in Canvey Island. Official Selection Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019 - World premiere Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Official Short Film Competition - Journey Strand

Synopsis

Three characters search for meaning in an urban weed. The Narrator pursues perdikaki to find the woman first seen picking it, yet as observations accumulate a shadow researcher emerges. Is Kyria’s knowledge being sought, or the Collector’s? And, other than the symbolic plant, do the other figures exist at all?

Synopsis

The tragic story of an American music virtuoso who found in 1970s Iran the love and acceptance he never received back home, and who was punished by his country upon his return after the Iranian revolution. Over images of a young boy playing the accordion in a home movie from 1940’s America, a radio host comments on the trial that was to ruin Lloyd Miller´s life decades later in the Eighties – for charges he was innocent of. The images of the young boy are quickly replaced with images of an Iranian TV show from the 1970’s, where a sharply dressed man named Kurosh Ali Khan is being interviewed in Farsi about his musical creation, Oriental Jazz. Music kicks in, and now we see the man presented in a video, much younger, playing the santur, a Persian instrument, accompanied by jazz. A voice begins to narrate, in the third person, the story of Kurosh, an American man who is forced by political circumstances to leave the country he’s considered his only real home for seven years. He is on his way back to America, leaving his life as a famous TV host behind him.

Synopsis

An intimate portrait of Hobbit and Jake, who have decided to raise their one-year-old child Anoush gender open. The family lives on a houseboat in the UK and in order to prevent people from making gender-related assumptions, they are keeping the biological sex of their baby a secret. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Debate Strand

Synopsis

You might think America is a democracy, where freedom of speech and basic rights are guaranteed. But at its heart, there is a great injustice. Against all the odds several extraordinary citizens are banding together and fighting back for their basic right to clean water. Armed only with facts and their illnesses, they risk arrest to take on the might of industry and government. From Flint to the Navajo Nation, via Standing Rock, this is their story.

Synopsis

Anthony Godby Johnson was an early 1990s New York City miracle: a boy who escaped years of horrific abuse only to discover that he was dying of AIDS. A boy who authored his own autobiography. A boy who earned friends and fans worldwide—and who did not exist. DOK Leipzig • International Competition • World Premiere London Short Film Festival • Official Selection Flatpack Film Festival • Official Selection Manchester Film Festival • Official Selection

Synopsis

Artist, activist and performer Jess Thom, who has Tourette's syndrome, conducts a revealing investigation into one of Beckett’s most intense monologues, ‘Not I’, in which she asks the audience to reconsider issues of disability, representation and social exclusion. This film is radical in its asking of exciting and novel questions about the portrayal of disability in the arts and the exclusion of disabled people as cultural and creative producers. Jess moves past the reverence that surrounds Beckett’s work and makes it accessible to everyone, while raising questions about cultural curation, who has access to theatre and who can perform it.

Synopsis

What price do the farmers of Punjab pay for the rice on our plate? The north Indian state of Punjab was said to have produced enough food to feed the entire country during the Green Revolution. However, the overuse of chemicals introduced to enhance production poisoned the water with carcinogens and created an infertile soil addicted to chemicals. Just as the land is dependent, so are more and more farmers becoming addicted to drugs, which help them to work longer hours in the fields. The expense of the chemicals and drugs forces farmers to take loans from 'Arthis', the rich middlemen who increase their interest rates without warning. Over 50,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last ten years, by drinking the toxic chemicals that are murdering Punjabi soil.