Projects in genres: Woman Director

Synopsis

A film about a friendship between 12 year olds Toby, who is trying to make sense of life and Arthur, who is inflatable.

Synopsis

Tomboyish Pumpgirl loses herself in girlish daydreams about stock-car driver Hammy. She naively believes that Hammy loves her and will leave his wife, Sinead.

Stuck in a loveless marriage with Hammy, Sinead’s need to be stimulated spiritually pulls her into an adulterous passion with Shawshank.

When Shawshank realises that the lascivious Hammy has a soft spot for Pumpgirl, he orchestrates a gang rape of her.

Hammy is filled with conscience-stricken despair after the rape and seeks solace in his family. Pumpgirl starts to stalking Hammy and is furious when she sees him play happy families with Sinead and the kids. Unfortunately, Sinead is now pregnant with Shawshank’s child.

As Hammy’s guilt turns to self loathing, he decides to set fire to Shawshank’s truck. He tries to call Sinead and, when she fails to reply, anguished, indeed suicidal, he attaches a tube to the exhaust pipe on his car, feeds it through the window and sits down inside.

Ignoring Hammy’s calls, Sinead is trying to tell Shawshank about the baby. Shawshank misunderstands Sinead’s intentions and becomes violent.

Finally realising that she had been deluding herself about Hammy, Pumpgirl kidnaps his kids Kelly and Darren. Eventually, she relents and delivers them safely to Sinead.

Synopsis

Young and pretty Romanian Nicola was trafficked into the UK after the promise of a legitimate job and prosperous future. She’s ended up forced into work at nasty Rocky’s brothel.

One evening Nicola snicks out of the flat to make a desperate phone call home. This is short lived as Rocky finds her and drags her to the house where she’s beaten up and coerced to get ready for her next client.

Synopsis

Rage is a tragicomedy seen through the eyes of a boy who becomes a player in a high fashion murder investigation when interviews for his website start to spiral into catastrophe.

Synopsis

The idyllic world of 6 year-old Ravi (the Watchman's son) is tranformed when Pooja moves into the building with her husband Rohit. Pooja takes Ravi under her wing, puts him in school and introduces him to a whole new world, but can she keep it up.

Synopsis

Sanctuary is the true story of one woman, Marjorie, who tries to seek asylum in the UK. Speaking of her experiences in her own words, this film illustrates the journey she goes through - her inward journey as she confronts the affects of her torture and her outward journey as she struggles for asylum

Synopsis

As Alison waits for her lunchtime appointment, a familiar figure enters the restaurant - it's Laura, her first love. Without warning, Laura drops a bombshell: she still loves Alison and wants her back. Before Alison can catch her breath, Sara, her girlfriend, rushes into the restaurant and wonders how Alison knows Laura, her mother.

She has a choice. Does Alison make the right one?

Synopsis

Marina is a forty-something Russian woman living in a small village in South Leicestershire, England. Seven years ago she married Gregory, a village garage owner, collector of Morris Minor cars and Ipswich Town supporter. They met when Gregory went to seem them play against Torpedo Moscow. Marina moved to England with her five year old daughter in the hope of happiness and a secure future for her child.

A journalist and a writer in her previous life, she now works as a local hairdresser and in her spare time writes for the parish magazine. Gregory loves her, and her daughter seems to flourish in a private school, but Marina isn't satisfied with her life, but can't really explain why.

The feeling increases when she meets Valentina, an old friend from Moscow. She is a successful writer and Marina asks herself whether maybe she could also write books in Russian, her native language which nobody seems to need in England.

A chance encounter with a touring string quartet from Moscow throws her out of her daily routine, and unexpected love opens up all the questions which Marina has been hiding deep inside.

It's a story about love and about people who are moving from place to place in search of home, but can't find it anywhere. It's also a story about middle age - the age when one has already (or not) achieved something in life, but when there is still time to start everything anew. And it's a story about a Standing Stone on the outskirts of a small English village where, some of the villagers believe, aliens might land one day.
 
For this film, Marina Blake won Best Actress at Kinoshock 2008. In addition, the film won awards for Outstanding Achievement, with particular reference to direction, screenplay and cinematography, and for Best Actress, at the Faithful Heart Film Festival, Moscow, in October 2008.

Synopsis

A west bound, no-place comprised of flyovers, slip roads and cracked concrete.

Here thirty year old Marvin is stuck in a teenager’s life: working in motorway services, spending his evenings in abandoned, overgrown fields - watching the light change, apparently biding his time.

Traffic rushes through, trippers stopping only for fuel and food. Rural life has been abandoned. Villages sprawl into deadend suburbs. Only Roland has been here as long as Marvin, relentlessly talking of leaving, never doing it, aggravating the still confidence of Marvin’s moments.

When the catalyst for change arrives it does so in the strangest form, that of a foul-mouthed foreign adolescent. She appears in Marvin’s abandoned field to practise her extraordinary act, and this image of a tiny, runtish girl, hovering an inch above the long thistles, sets Marvin into a spin. Everything changes.

As he fights to help her, something finally changes in Marvin.; something that could take him anywhere.

September conjures a world of mesmerizing skies, failures, jealousy, hopes, outsiders and motorway roars to painting original cinematic landscape. Cars race below, leaving Marvin on the bridge, we trundle down the motorway, light intermittently hitting the windscreen through the trees, and the film flutters out of existence to leave its audience, like Marvin, strangely altered.

Financed by the UK Film Council, the film stars (Nicholas Aaron) as boy/man Marvin, and (Tim Plester) plays Roland. Produced by Met Films, September is a long short, mashing HD and 16mm, with music from Kaada, Crescent, Bass Clef and Tom Bugs. Writer/director Esther May Campbell picked up the Best British Film Award at Encounters 2008.

Synopsis

She, A Chinese tells the story of, a young Chinese woman, MEI, who leaves her monotonous village life behind for the excitement of the nearest big city, Chongqing. However, life there doesn't quite turn out as she expected it; fired from her factory job, she falls in love with SPIKEY, a hit man whose own past soon catches up with him.  A spur of the moment decision takes Mei to London, where she marries an elderly man, MR HUNT.  A new life begins for Mei, trapped in the silence of Mr Hunt's house, alienated and bored. Her frustration at life with Mr Hunt leads Mei into an affair with RACHID, an Indian immigrant who runs a local take away restaurant, and she moves into the backroom of the restaurant to live with him.  Rachid decides to return to his own country, leaving Mei pregnant and alone, facing an uncertain future.

Synopsis

A poetic exploration of memory and loss, 'Steel Homes' is a portrait of life at a self-storage warehouse.
Self-storage units are windows into human histories: the silent cells with their discarded objects and dust-covered furniture are inscribed with past dreams, secret hopes and lives we cannot let go off.

Synopsis

Strigoli is a Vampire movie that defies categorization. Shedding a fantastic light on a post-communist Romanian village, the film introduces us to an ancient myth: Strigoi, the souls that rise again after death to seek justice if they've been wronged, their appetites intensified by a hunger for blood.

Vlad (Catalin Paraschiv) investigates a mysterious death in his grandfather's village that raises questions about land ownership in the community. The trail points to ex-communist bully Constantin Tirescu and his wife, but when Vlad confronts them, he discovers that the richest landowners in the village have become real bloodsuckers.