Projects in genres: Woman Director

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.

Synopsis

Two disabled drivers fight over a disabled parking bay - with drastic consequences.

Synopsis

Supramanya (Supraman) is a young Indian boy whose blind mother is struggling to make ends meet. When she gives up on taking care of him, Supraman takes matters into his own hands.

Synopsis

What happens when a Rwandan genocide survivor meets a young man from Darfur? This is a tale of a friendship made on fragile emotional grounds. A subtle treatment of a complex subject, set in the world of London's night cleaners.

Synopsis

Tad's Nest a place where eels mature before being compelled to return to a location using only memories of sensations to guide them. The film examines the way memories are held as sensations and the ability of memory to invent people and places to perform the sensations. Compulsion to return, replay, and revisit.

Synopsis

People wait for something to happen. They lay on the fields and in the houses and wait for the arrival of a foreign element that promises to change their lives. It won't be until this arrival that they will be set free.

Synopsis

Winner of the Best UK Feature Award 2008 at Raindance Film Festival,  The Blue Tower is the first feature by award-winning Indian British writer/director Smita Bhide, set in Southall, West London's colourful and bustling Indian community. Mohan dreams of escape: from his unhappy marriage, his overbearing family, his unexciting prospects. He finds it by falling into an affair with the pretty young nurse looking after his cantankerous bed-ridden Auntie Kamla. At first the relationships feels like the answer to his prayers, but there are secrets to come out and before long he's on a road to disaster, his every step dogged by the looming menace of the Blue Tower waiting for him round every corner. Featuring a cast of Asian actors and shot on HD, The Blue Tower plays like something by James M. Cain with touches of Great Expectations thrown in. It's not a 'corner-shop comedy' or a Bollywood pastiche but something new in British-Asian cinema, a full-blooded story of illicit passion and desperate hope which presents a unique and cinematic portrait of multicultural Britain.   "Dark domestic thriller marks a new departure for British Asian cinema" (Empire Online).   "Smart writing and dark humour elevates The Blue Tower from an accomplished thriller to an extraordinary cinematic experience" (Deepa Mehta, Director "Water").   Best UK Feature 2008 Raindance Film Festival.  

Synopsis

In the stark aftermath of a neurological pandemic, two strangers come together on an isolated Scottish farm. April, a 16 year old survivor with a dark past has survived alone for months. Daniel, a man bereaved, clings desperately on to hope of life in the outside world. Questioning his own sanity in the face of the maddened and distant cries of the suffering, he finds that the true enemy lies much closer to home.

Synopsis

The Five Murders of John Dawley is a compelling story that delves into the sinister history, revenge, secrets and lies that surround the Dawley family. John Dawley is dead. The brutal patriarch of a notorious family is found shot dead by his five sons, during a supposed family reunion. Each son has a motive and a gun and soon they have set up their own kangaroo court to try and eke out the murderer. But, as secrets and bloodlust take over the brothers, a night of violent recrimination and bitterness ensues.