Projects in genres: Music

Synopsis

Silent film with 1920s soundtrack.   Millie and her flapper friends go to the beach to view the solar eclipse of 1927. Millie bumps into George, also on the beach with a sunbathing band. Frolicking ensures, watched by Spike through a telescope. George disappears at sea.

Synopsis

A guy walks into a bar and takes on a challenge to win a pot of money. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't listen properly to the rules of the challenge, with shocking results. The story is told in funky rap-style dialogue.

Synopsis

As much documentary as it is religious art, as much religious art as it is rock and roll, as much rock and roll as it is rhetoric and as much rhetoric as it is cinema. This unique, kaleidoscopic film is "a richly cinematic experience" inside the lives of worshippers from the congregation of The Greater Bethany Community Church, (now The City of Refuge), in South Central Los Angeles. Bishop Noel Jones, (brother of Grace Jones), is both shepherd and rock as the film weaves between community life, gospel song and his electric church sermons. Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2002 - World premiere Official Selection Locarno Film Festival 2002 Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2002

Synopsis

As Cinzas de Deus is a visual poem in a universe of realities.   Set in the ruins of an abandoned, once grandiose 19th century city, the film follows a woman, Helo, entering a world of memory and feeling, where characters - perhaps ‘trapped souls’ - are living and re-living moments from an unspecified past.   Helo penetrates their dream-like reality, visions of her own subconscious, absorbs them, challenges them, releases them. Their memory bank gradually erased, they disappear into the ether.    In a climactic finale she confronts her own personal nemesis. She survives the life-and-death confrontation, and, left behind, she dances alone, immersed in dust and eternity.

Synopsis

Asian Invasion is a fly on the wall, behind the scenes documentary of what was going to be one of the biggest events of its kind. Until things went wrong! This documentary follows a group of Asian models and the organisers as they try to put on the show of shows with Bollywood stars and Mainstream Bhangra groups participating.

Synopsis

Isaac Julien's BaadAsssss Cinema is a groundbreaking documentary that looks back to the soulful, strange days of the 70s to explore an exciting and controversial era of film history: the phenomenon that was blaxploitation.

Synopsis

A movie that tells the story of an archetypal human life using images taken from All around the World and The Last 100 Years of Cinema. The images span the microcosm - inside the body - through the individual - the first cry of a new born baby - to the macrocosm - accumulated archive footage of ritual celebration and the carnage of war. The editing, music, and the mythic narrative arc of the material is designed to take the viewer on a roller coaster tour of the human body and life cycle. Every possible depiction of the human life from microscopic medical to portraits and newsreels, from births to deaths, are cut to a powerful music track by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead to create a powerful and highly emotional film, with peaks of ecstasy and troughs of despair. The power of this film derives from the force of numbers; each face, each person, each body, each glimpse of anatomy, is both abstracted and dignified by being part of a huge flow, a torrent of humanity larger that any of us can conceive. A Century of Human Drama and Struggle captured in Moving Images. The film is supported by a highly innovative website project which can be seen at www.bodysong.com.

Synopsis

This 3-hour documentary tells the story of Studio One, Jamaica's most important record label in the history of Reggae. Filmed in Kingston, the documentary has interviews with many of the artists who Studio One made famous - Horace Andy, Alton Ellis, Ken Boothe, Sugar Minott etc. The main interview is with Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd, owner and founder, and the documentary tells the story of his life and the impact he has had on Reggae music in Jamaica and the rest of the world. Studio One is the foundation label of Jamaican Reggae. Often described as the Motown of Jamaica, Studio One is where the career of literally hundreds of Reggae artists began - Bob Marley and the Wailers, Alton Ellis, The Heptones, Ken Boothe, The Skatalites, Burning Spear - everyone! Lee Perry was a handyman there and Prince Buster a bouncer. The film also visits Trenchtown's old Dancehalls, the Alpha School for wayward Boys (run by Nuns), Tuff Gong Studios and Pressing Plant, Orange street (Jamaica's Tin Pan Alley) and many sites relating to the story. There is rarely seen vintage footage of musical performances, interviews, Haile Selaisse's arrival in Jamaica and even early music videos (from the 1960s). Much of this footage has rarely been seen outside Jamaica. Music is featured heavily in the documentary and the film mixes narrative and musical elements throughout.

Synopsis

Manchester, 1976: Cambridge educated Tony Wilson, a Granada TV Presenter, is at a Sex Pistols gig. Totally inspired by this pivotal moment in music history, he and his friends set up a record label, Factory Records, and proceed to sign a number of bands destined to be some of the most influential artists of their time. First, Joy Division, who go on to become New Order; then come the Happy Mondays. What ensues is a tale of music, sex, drugs, larger-than-life characters, and the birth of one of the most famous dance clubs in the world, The Hacienda. Graphically depicting the music and dance heritage of Manchester from the late 70s to the early 90s, 24 Hour Party People documents the vibrancy that made Mad-chester the place to be.

Synopsis

Geena and Jay are star-crossed young lovers from opposite sides of the East London racial divide. Geena is second generation British Asian, born of a Gujurati family. Jay is small town, white and working class. Fresh from leaving school in the West Country, 18 year old Jay joins his elder brother Darren in London, working alongside him in the East End clothing business. In between humping garments from sweat shop to market place, Jay sets his dreams to music on his guitar. Geena is also through with school, and starts her business studies course in the autumn. Meanwhile she must earn her keep in the family firm, which imports material and sarees from India. Chafing against an over-protective home life and its strict ideas about a woman's place, Geena escapes as she always has; into Bollywood-tinged fantasies. When Geena has her fortune told by a jyotish astrologer, she is shocked to be told she's in love. Surely not with the ambitious computer wizz, Dillip, whose BMW she sometimes shares? Or one of the clammy-handed conformists paraded by her parents at innumerable family functions as possible suitors? Then she bumps into Jay, and Cupid's dart pierces both their hearts. Once they have shared the first secretive 'karma-kiss', their worlds become inextricably tangled. But true love never runs smoothly. Geena's brothers have ambitions for the family business, and are moving into the lucrative but illegal world of 'moodies' - fake designer garments. What's more, their skill and competitive pricing are putting their rivals out of business, most especially the firm of East End wide boys for whom Darren and Jay are working.

Synopsis

Developed from a collaboration between dancer Pete Shenton and film maker Laura Smith, Shaker is a tongue-in-cheek mix of dance and comedy, in which a man tries to capture the heart of a female choreographer, who's only wish is to disappear.

Synopsis

Will takes its subject from superstitions and the idea of 'reversal' or making the unknown safe. It uses stark images drawn from superstitions and performance by artist Caroline Locke.