Projects in categories: Artist Project and Video / Experimental

Synopsis

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)

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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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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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.

Synopsis

WHAT DOES WATER TASTE LIKE? questions the production of identity as it relates to the filmmaker's personal affiliations as a British-Nigerian. Prompted by intimate conversations, the film conjoins footage and voices of the past with their counterparts in the present-tense.

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A young male patient of a psychiatric hospital, witnesses the death of another Black male patient at the hands of white staff. Blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, this work draws from real life cases of Black mentally ill men who have died as a result of excessive force.

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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.

Synopsis

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

Synopsis

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.

Synopsis

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

a ROLE to PLAY brings together the lived experiences and dreams of Bolsover residents, one of the most deprived towns in the middle of England. The film tells stories of the impact of economic changes in a post-industrial Derbyshire constituency where coal was once king.