In 2012, the Ivy House pub in Peckham was sold to property developers as part of the ongoing gentrification of south London. The locals opposed it. Unfolding from this scenario, the film weaves verbatim testament into folk operatic form with the Ivy House itself, embodied and imagined as a central character and inhabited by the memories of the generations who have passed through its doors. Sarah Turner films the community’s creative reanimation of the mourned pub through dance, poetry and song... which both records and creates a vision of social possibility... The activism that saved the pub is a metaphor for social and creative agency. This is not just a film about resistance; it is a film that itself refuses categorisation... a triumphant genre-blending documentary which turns community action into an exhilarating participatory opera. (London Film Festival)
Public House premiered in the documentary competition at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival and was nominated for the Grierson Award. The film has since been re-edited and remastered in a new version for wider audiences.
A short film of the poem 'Lights Out' written by Edward Thomas (1878-1917). The poem was a meditation on the possibility that the writer would not survive the First World War... he didn't.
Inspired by the text The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, the films centres on a personal diary from a narrator, a European subject, who is describing how his human identity is gradually eroded, being transformed into something else, as a response to the suffering he is viewing.
"and we have killed him" is a visually experimental film, loosely based around "the parable of the man" in "thus spoke zarathustra" by friedrich nietzsche. this film is an exploration of the exploitation of god, and alina (tanya howard) is tired of listening to what others have told her to believe in.
Two sets of hands attempt to spark a fire through increasingly sophisticated means. A double projection consisting of video and 16mm, artist filmmaker Lucy Parker's FIRE is a response to the performative work of British artist Annabel Nicolson.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Wavelengths
Jack is on his slow descent into psychosis after being physiologically worn down by the mysterious Entity. The Entity is a culmination of all Jack's dark desires and wants that have built up throughout his life however it is a separate being in itself. Jack has no power in life and eventually gives in to his weaknesses. Depravity, impurity. Jack caves in and enters the dream world offered by The Entity as his personal plane of existence where he is Lord and master. It may have been a beautiful place if it were not twisted by the growing taint within Jack. It is a nightmarish realm of turmoil, suffering and perverted excess. However Jack does not have long to enjoy his new home or explore the powers offered, Jack thinks he has mastered the being known as The Entity but it is all a illusion. While Jack sips on luxurious whiskeys and foods The Entity has breached into the real world and stands over Jack ready to consume his life energies and move on to his next victim.
A homage to the spontaneous prose of The Beats, from the mythical Cornish west.
An audio-visual stream of consciousness. Entirely un-edited, in terms of writing, performance and visuals.
A narrative resistance group makes underground deposits of elaborate porcelain suggested to belong to an entirely fictional civilisation. Their aim is to influence history and support future claims to their vanishing lands.
This film resides in the cross-section between science-fiction, archaeology and Middle Eastern politics. Combining live action, computer generated imagery and historical photographs the film explores the role of myth in history, fact and national identity.
Official Selection Berlinale 2016 - Forum Expanded - World premiere
Artist Jumana Manna sets out in search of the musical diversity of historical Palestine. Drawing on her research into the German-Jewish ethnomusicologist Robert Lachmann (1892-1939) and his work in Palestine, the film follows Manna’s exchanges with musicians as she encounters them in their homes and places of work and worship.
Berlinale 2016 - World premiere
A look into the anxiety of vertigo and a discordance between technology, self and the natural world. Re- appropriated footage is taken from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', accommodating the tone of the volatile character Willy Wonka. As our sensory bodies are plummeted through fictional landscapes with sinister undertones, inducing fear into our fantasy.
In 1983, writer and theologian John Hull went blind. To help make sense of his loss, he began keeping an audio diary. Encompassing dreams, memory and imaginative life 'Notes on Blindness' creates an impression of his new world, immersing the audience in John’s experience of blindness.
A feature-length version of Middleton and Spinney's 2014 Sundance-selected short 'Notes on Blindness'.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2016 - New Frontier - World premiere
