Projects in genres: Experimental

Synopsis

Lost and found images combined through systematic obscuration trigger suggestion and memories in distant locations.

Synopsis

A building which has stood since the fourteenth century, and a strange attempt at preservation. Light falls into the dark interior, illuminating it directly and by reflection; the decay of the building offers views out. Ancient and modern structures interact as the sun works its way round each day.

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23 August 2008 consists of two shots. A brief opening shot, intercut with inter-titles, of the famous Al-Mutanabbi Street book market in Baghdad is followed by an unbroken eighteen-minute monologue, shot from a single, still camera position and simply recording the speaker’s words without interruption. In it, Faysal Abudullah gradually builds a portrait of his relationship with his younger brother, Kamel, and in the process evokes the lives of Iraqi intellectuals of the left, driven into exile in the early 1980s by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Faysal describes Kamel’s decision to return to Iraq in 2003, his work for the new Ministry of Culture and his tragic death at the hands of unknown assassins on 23 August 2008. While the film throws light on little known aspects of Iraq’s political history, primarily it is the story of the two brothers, of Faysal’s devotion to Kamel and their contrasting attitudes to exile and to life itself.

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A World Assembled represents Toby Tatum's creation of an improbable realm, stitched together from a kit of warring elements into a fantastic whole.

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In the industrial hinterland of England, Benjamin encounters a girl. Arcadian and beautiful, she offers escape from his lonely, repetitive life. But is she human? And does she even exist? Arterial is a short fantasy film inspired by the John Keats poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

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Scenes appropriated from Antonioni’s famous film L’Avventura are centred on Monica Vitti as the central subject. The constant alternating positive and negative image appears to vary with the percussive sound of Gamelan music.

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Dummy Jim is playfully adapted from the little-known journal 'I Cycled Into The Arctic Circle' (1951) by profoundly deaf cyclist James Duthie, who one day set off alone on his bicycle from a village in Scotland, bound for Morocco. How did he end up in the Arctic Circle? Led by deaf actor Samuel Dore on an increasingly bizarre 6000 mile journey, this eccentric road movie mixes documentary, fiction and animation. Killed on the road in '65, the film memorializes a quiet, determined maverick whilst offering an honest insight into his community, with village inhabitants emerging as creative participants and performers.

Synopsis

Lemon cranberry apple banana cucumber orange lime are a selection of fruit fruit.

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At 4.00 am on Tuesday 13th February 1996, a man tries to murder his wife. Implicit, dissociated and somatic elements of this traumatic memory are explored through the juxtaposition of images of light, flesh, blood and text in this silent, autobiographical film.

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Takafa is a documentary essay, a film about memory and the most necessary forms of belonging, through a search for the role played in the city by Istanbul´s street dogs and their relationship to its human populations. Despite several major attempts by Istanbul´s rulers, politicians and planners over the last 400 years to exterminate them, the city´s street dogs have persisted thanks to an enduring alliance with widespread civilian communities, which recognize and defend their right to co-exist. Takafa is structured around readings by internationally acclaimed storyteller, essayist, and critic John Berger. The film opens a window on the contested relationships between power and the public, community and categorisation (in location and identity), and the ongoing struggle / resistance against a single way of seeing and being.

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Two wives and two soldiers divided by war discuss the horror of the conflict. This heightened short form drama utilises poetic language to open dialogue with its audience concerning the transience of life and the consequences of a fictional war on British soil.

Synopsis

The feature debut of award-winning filmmaker Oliver Harrison, The Fallen Word is a dark 'fairy-tale' - a poetic, surrealistic fantasy. Under the brutal rule of a new religious sect, art, music and free speech have been outlawed; the poets are the last line of resistance. These wordsmiths have formed themselves into gangs and - in verbal duels - battle for supremacy. This is a tale of love lost and found, of friendship and betrayal and of the magical power of language and words.