Projects in genres: Music

Synopsis

The stranger-than-fiction true story of the rise and fall of a true British pop pioneer is a satirical and often comic drama revealing the many sides of Joe Meek. Set in the London music scene of the early 1960s, Meek began his career with a bang, producing UK and US #1 hit 'Telstar', the biggest selling record of its time. From an apartment on the Holloway Road, Meek went on to create the strange and wonderful recordings that have made him an iconic figure in the world of British pop.

Synopsis

Previously unseen footage of Blind Faith’s famous first performance at a free concert in Hyde Park in 1969 incorporating footage of the director Anthony Stern and his friends in the park that day. The sense of the film is as a poignant reflection on the ‘end of an era’, the drawing to a close of the ‘golden idealism’ of the 1960’s.

Synopsis

We follow an eccentric local London character as he listens to his walkman and dances his way around town. While everyone else searched for the X factor he just loved the music.

Synopsis

On October 12th 1978, New York Police discovered the lifeless body of a 20 year-old woman, slumped under the bathroom sink in a hotel room. She was dressed in her underwear and had bled to death from a stab wound. The woman was Nancy Spungen, an ex-prostitute, sometimes stripper, heroin addict, and girlfriend of Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious. In a trial by tabloid newspapers Vicious was pronounced guilty before noon the following day. But the case never had the chance to be brought to trial, and a number of New York cops weren't convinced. Less than six months later in a flat in New York's Greenwich Village, Sid, himself aged only 21, died of a heroin overdose. For the next 28 years the assumption was that Sid did it - case closed.

Over time, the death of Sid and Nancy has passed into rock legend and has only added to the controversial and notorious image of the Sex Pistols and punk music. At the request of Sid's mother, who committed suicide in 1996, rock author and punk expert Alan Parker has devoted himself to discovering what really happened in room 100. Parker has re-interviewed 182 people, re-examined NYPD evidence, and gone back to his original interviews with Sid's mother.

Synopsis

'Do you love me?', 'Yes', he said, and then - a colourful musical journey into the narrative of a woman’s tangled past, with magical glimpses of her present world and hopes for a liberated future.

Synopsis

Whilst watching Chunky pretend to be sick on The Goonies, Ladyscraper starts to be sick all over his appartment. He starts to take off his clothes but he continues to be sick outside, on the street, in car parks, green lanes and canals - until he sees Chunky's clothes lying, abandoned in a park. When he puts the clothes on he feels much better.

Synopsis

This current work continues to explore the interrelation between body, space and movements. Conceptualized as a split-screen projection. A naked female figure enters into the low-lit studio space and starts a playful improvisation triggered by her magnified reflection projected on the floor. The work explores the complexity of reality and space. The place of the body in a fragmented multi-layered world. The piece has been inspired by Jean Cocteau's 'Orphee' (1950).

Synopsis

The film explores themes in Rilke's poem - Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes' . The narrative is concerned with the mental and physical experience of Eurydice while she is in the Underworld waiting to be rescued and is expressed through dance, drama and music.

Synopsis

Legendary jazz guitar great Pat Martino underwent brain surgery that saved his life but erased all memory, emotion and the ability to play. THere he shouldhave remained yet, after years in the wilderness, he came back with such astonishing power and artistry as to bring into question all the known medical facts. Neuropsycologist Paul Broks explores the mysteries of memory, self and creativity underlying the human condition. Martino provides the sublime soundtrack.
 

 

Synopsis

Mi Piace is a film of made with the documentation of one performance to camera, where during a spurious singing rehearsal, the singer's body is progressively bound to test the changes in the voice. The film leaves ambiguity as to the exact nature of the events, which are presented as a diverse collection of documentation, hence suggesting a history.

The singer is asked to perform repeatedly a popular aria (O Mio Babbino Caro), at each repetition (itself interrupted in mid flow at different points) the singer's body is bound, starting from the ankles, and proceeding upwards. The section isolated in the soundtrack Mi Piace, is part of the aria and means  like' or in its original context 'I would like to'.

Synopsis

Teenagers hang out by the floodlit running tracks at night.

Synopsis

This documentary follows a year in the life Isabela and Irlan two aspiring ballet dancers who engage daily in a clash between two worlds: rich and poor, black and white. Ballet is an art form steeped in the history of the wealthy white elite, and many feel that the likes of Irlan Santos da Silva and Isabela Coracy, two black kids from poor backgrounds, don't belong. Despite the constant prejudice and doubt, both are determined to follow their ambitions. For them, dance is a way out, an escape and on stage an ecstasy, that is rarely found in their tough day to day lives. The question is can they make it?