Projects in genres: Sport

Synopsis

Pensioners from across the planet compete in the over-80s World Table Tennis Championships in Inner Mongolia. The film weaves a competition narrative with candid portraits of life back home that explore the hope, regret and immediacy of growing old. 8 players with 703 years between them guide us through the extraordinary world of Veteran sports. 81-year old Englishman Terry, recovering from life-threatening cancer, battles to retain his gold medal title. At 99, Australian legend Dorothy de Low creates a sensation as the oldest competitor at the Championships. German newcomer Inge, aged 89, has fought her way out of a dementia ward using the power of ping pong. This film is as much about the tenacity of the human spirit as it is a meditation on mortality. Right now 1 in 6 people on the planet are over the age of 60. By 2030 that figure will be 1 in every 4. From the outset the film challenges perceptions of what it is to grow old. With humour and sensitivity it engages with the issues we all face in an ageing global population.

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A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.

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An up-beat comic extravaganza involving the family of a football obsessed grandfather, a women's fitness centre manager and mother, a dodgy car dealer and twin daughters lifeguards.

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This short film tells the story of Ash, a mixed-race girl from Old Trafford, Manchester, UK. On a youth referral scheme, we see Ash travel to the iconic Salford Lads Club where she takes up boxing as a way of dealing with her troubled past. By portraying Ash’s experience of the sport, the film highlights how the boxing ring can be a neutral space where race and neighborhood politics are left outside. The film looks at not only Ash’s own experience of racism, but also the preconceptions she and others hold about other people and places. Clench demonstrates how boxing can become the ultimate visual tool for communication between generations, highlighting that every person has a story to tell regardless of how they look.

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Towards the end of the second world war Dr Ludwig Guttmann, a brisk refugee from Nazi Germany, arrives at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire and is appalled to find the partially paralysed spinal patients heavily sedated and left to rot with bed sores. He immediately begins a new regime,disposing of old equipment and sedatives, bringing him into conflict with stern Sister Edwards and pompous consultant Cowan, as well as the patients. However the sister backs him when she realises he is treating her charges as people, not patients, talking to them and involving them in musical entertainments and sporting activity. Soon Whitehall are sending him all their spinal patients and, with visits to the pub and wheelchair sports taught by an army sergeant, he becomes the men's hero. With the war over Ludwig organizes national wheelchair sports competitions which will in turn lead to the establishment of the Paralympic games. An end title informs that in 1966, now a British citizen, Dr Guttmann was deservedly knighted for his part in bringing hope to the hopeless.

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A poetic journey through the waterways and along the coastline of the British Isles, following a lone swimmer through lakes, rivers and coves, framed by a soundtrack of seminal British music from Delius to The La's.

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Town of Runners is a feature documentary made by award winning director Jerry Rothwell about young people from the Ethiopian rural town of Bekoji, home to the current Olympic and World champions Tirunesh Dibaba and Kenenisa Bekele. The film follows three children keen to follow in their heroes’ footsteps, as they move from school track to national competition and from childhood to adulthood. Set against the background of the seasonal rhythms of this farming region, and the impact of increased urbanization, climate change and globalization on agriculture, the film shows rural young Africans striving to make their own future.

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A teenager on the path to self-destruction finds unlikely inspiration in a troupe of ballerinas, a skateboarder, a graffiti artist, free runners and battling MCs.

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The Bedlamites are a group of fell runners who organise races up some of the most well-known and beautiful peaks in and around Yorkshire, UK. But these runners don't meet on a clear sunny day at the weekend or on a summer's evening. These races are run in winter, sometimes through thick fog and rain, on grassy, uneven and slippery terrain and during the night. Under the cover of darkness they meet to race up and down the Fells using only torches to guide them over the harsh terrain in severe weather conditions. Through this film we hope to transport the audience into this black and white world of nighttime, off-road running where moonlight and a chilly wind reveal the landscape in a very different way; where the snaking of lights up hillsides provide a luminous spectacle and where the narrow spread of the torchlight gives each runner a focus to drive them on up the hill.

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In one legendary week on Ben Nevis in 1960 Jimmy Marshall and Robin Smith climbed six first winter ascents on consecutive days, including the mini Alpine-route, Orion Face Direct. Exactly 50 years later Dave MacLeod and Andy Turner pay tribute to Smith and Marshall by setting out to repeat all the routes that were climbed in that famous week. This film tells the story of the original events and follows MacLeod and Turner as they discover exactly what an achievement it was.

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They say Philadelphia is the capital of boxing and Joe Frazier’s gym is the Whitehouse. Joe Frazier, one of the most famous athletes of the 20th century, is lost in the legend of one of the greatest rivalries in the history of sport. Filmed during the final years of the iconic boxer's life and told through the voice of son Marvis, this documentary reveals the story of the real Joe Frazier for the first time. For over forty years, since the last of his million dollar bouts with Ali, Foreman and others, Joe’s commitment to his adopted Philadelphia neighborhood kept his landmark gym alive. Now, tragically, it has to close.

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A single mother in East London finds a novel way to raise money to buy her football-fanatic son a pair of pricey boots.