Projects in categories: Artist Project and Video / Experimental

Synopsis

A short essay film by artist animator, Jessica Ashman. Using animation and recorded interviews of eight other women of colour artists, the film explores navigating the visual art and animation world as a black face in a white space.

Synopsis

Documenting the daily rehearsals and technical experiments of the performance piece, 'Give Me the Key'. Filmed daily over thirty days for a future live art performance, Ginger sets up her experiments in-between caring for her mother who is never seen but is ever present in another room. The strain of filming every day whilst caring for a mother near the end of her life becomes too much. After a trip out to the pub and recovering from a dementia outburst, Ginger breaks down on camera and admits for the first time that she is her mother's full time carer and not the Hollywood creative she once was. What unfolds is the colliding of performance and the every day as the artist slowly loses her sense of self. I Have Lost Myself is a powerful and disturbing statement on family relationships and responsibility.

Synopsis

A documentary portrait of Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research (Braziers), the longest-running secular resident community in the UK. Centred upon insights from current residents and members, the film interweaves scenes of daily life with the natural features, architectural characteristics and diverse cultural history of the community. Set in the wider context of sustainable living and the economics of post-capitalism, Intentional Community explores the 'sociobiological' ideas of Braziers' founders, who established the community in 1950 as a social experiment in group co-existence. Today, Braziers continues to explore and live-out ideas of co-existence, collective work and our place in nature. Edited with a layered, non-linear approach, the composite film makes correspondences between the past and present, combing interior and exterior spaces of the gothic manor house with material from Braziers’ archive of photographs, audio recordings and film. Archival footage includes scenes from a 1964 Situationist gathering, attended by writers Alexander Trocchi, Jeff Nuttall, artist John Latham and psychiatrist R.D. Laing. Intentional Community also explores Braziers’ links to the Common Wealth political party, the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, Kibbo Kift, and Grith Fyrd peace camps, reflecting Braziers’ deep-rooted, progressive social values, educational ideas, ecological awareness and connections to the counterculture.

Synopsis

“The angry sleeper stalks his dreams/hard from night to night”. Dirk Bouts's 1470 painting of demons carrying sinners off to Hell is the starting point for this not-quite-serious animated nightmare. Pachelbel's famous canon played on a musical box is the accompaniment.

Synopsis

Urges in the undergrowth, erupting fungal fantasies, bursting botanicals; the dust and desires of a tiny alternative universe. Imagining sensations of attraction and pleasure in insects, and the seduction methods of the plants and fungi that beckon.

Synopsis

“My humble model for progress is the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-ending retrieving what is lost.” (Graham Swift, Waterland) This film piece responds to the environment of the Fens, exploring an artificial landscape that exists only because of human intervention. Filmed over one day, it records bridges over a dike which carries water away from farmland to the river the Great Ouse. Official Selection Oberhausen Short Film Festival 2018 - International Competition

Synopsis

A revision of the Aba Women’s War, the first major anti-colonial uprising in Nigeria, using embodiment, gesture and the archive. The film is structured around the repurposing of archival films from the British propaganda arm, The Colonial Film Unit, cut against a gestural evocation of the women’s testimonies. 'Her Name in My Mouth' invokes the artist's own female ancestors in this filmic revocation of the Aba Women’s War that privileges the body as a site of knowledge. Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018 - International premiere

Synopsis

Told entirely using projected animation onto polystyrene film sets, the film follows the story of a mother and her infant child who are forced to leave their home when mysterious, dark shadows envelop the light in which they exist.

Synopsis

A short film exploring the life and work of prolific artist Faith Ringgold by eschewing linear narrative and drawing connections within her collection of works, in order to hint at a larger narrative at work. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

A modern day silent film - a city symphony - offering a poetic journey through the city of London. A cultural snapshot of London as it stands, and a celebration of the city's diversity. Stunning visuals are combined with James McWilliam’s stirring music, to take the viewer on a poetic journey through London, exploring its rich diversity of culture, architecture and religion. It is a meditative and blissful film that celebrates a vibrant and visually stunning city. Edinburgh International FIlm Festival 2017 - World premiere

Synopsis

A 60 minute 66 second feature film inspired by a walk from Waltham Abbey in Essex via Battle Abbey to St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex. The film documents a pilgrimage in memory of Edith Swan Neck. Bits of King Harold's body were brought to Waltham for burial near the High Altar after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and his hand fast wife Edith Swan Neck is seen cradling him in a remarkable sculpture at Grosvenor Gardens on the sea front in St Leonards. The film re-connects the lovers after 950 years of separation. The 108 mile journey, as the crow flies, allows the audience to reflect upon all things Edith. A conversation in Northampton between Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair and Edith Swan Neck also is a key ingredient to the unfolding ‘story’. With images shot using digital super 8 iPhone apps and sound recorded using a specially constructed music box with a boom microphone, the film unfolds chronologically but in a completely unpredictable way. The numerous encounters and impromptu performances en route are proof, that the angels of happenstance were to looking down, with EDITH as their hallucination.

Synopsis

A woman with mild agoraphobia lives her life in a high rise apartment as she experiences various moments of environmental aggression, trauma and psychosis.