Projects in genres: Woman Director

Synopsis

Mother/Country is a stunningly filmed, intimate experimental documentary. The film charts the director's return journey back to her Mother's house 20 years after the Iranian Revolution. Through the development of fiction with actors, the filmmaker attempts to unravel the events of the past and to find resolution.

Synopsis

Screwed-up supermodels, closet lesbians, mother-fixated transvestites or simply lonely, everyone needs a friendly ear and that is the chosen profession of Lorraine, a psychotherapist who 'brings everything down to the mother'. But to whom does the therapist talk? As her clients work through their issues Lorraine has to face the reality of her own destiny. Lorraine's devoutly Catholic mother Mary, having brought her children up very strictly, now has Alzheimer's. Mary cannot remember whether she has eaten and has lost control of her bodily functions. Lorraine delegates the problems of her mothers Alzheimer's between her cheque book and her sister, Nina, who has seen her dreams of a singing career and hopes of love and relationships slip by. Stagnation has turned to slow decline as Nina dedicates her life to caring for a woman she despises. The matriarch has become the infant and the relationship of the adult siblings disintegrates into all-out war and misunderstanding.

Synopsis

Mr Thompson is a very old man, who wakes up every morning to buy a drooping flower from Miss Simmons, the forever-unmarried flower shop lady. She secretly believes this is just an excuse for him to see her but she never does anything about it. Today, however, through some strange turn of fate, they have managed to set themselves a date.

Synopsis

Dr. Megan Pillay is on call for 24 hours when a young man, Martin, arrives in a coma. She is determined to save him, but her colleagues are not so sure.

Synopsis

The film is a visual adaptation of Bunmi Ogunsiji's Opal Poem in which the writer explores issues surrounding her sexual independence and creative identity. It combines performance poetry with stylised imaging to take the audience on an imaginative journey through the main events in the life of a young writer.

Synopsis

Gilly Booth's film One Dau Trois (123) uses three languages, two countries and two principal actors to etch out a story of passion, control, power and indifference. It draws from styles and techniques of French avant-garde cinema. It thieves Godard's directorial devices (ad hoc dialogue, actors responding through ear-phone to director's questions) to construct a "documentary" love-story based less on Godard's claim that artifice lead to truth than the idea that artifice follows its own law. The characters have it tough: A and B can barely cope with their lines, and with the insistent interference of the camera, the director and the films stylistic pretensions. They try to act cool, and discuss serious topics (only to be inundated by graphics spouting French poststructuralism and an anarchist discussing her hairdresser). Caught in the purgatory of multiple digital video and 35mm endings, the enigma of the film is cruelly withheld - unless one is versed in semaphore.

Synopsis

Two inner-city schoolgirls, Shaya and Monique, jump on the bus to go home. Monique sends a text to a boy they met at the weekend. Being best friends, the girls do everything together and share everything - up until this moment. Monique gets her first proper date and Shaya isn't invited.  

Synopsis

By 2050, lifestyle is designed by the Corporate State. Unhealthy food, obesity, famine and war are illegal.   Martin Dwyer, a mid-level executive, reports to the Head Office for a routine review. Instead, he is invited up to the top floor, the Executive Floor.

Synopsis

A personal journey to the Caribbean island of Trinidad exploring carnival, catholicism and homosexuality.

Synopsis

Commissioned by Carlton TV as part of the First Cut 2003 series.   A day in the life of an historic English city park. In sunlight the green and pleasant place is a leafy haven for all sorts of harmless pastimes.   But as darkness descends a more threatening character emerges.

Synopsis

Alarm bells are beginning to ring and storm clouds are bearing down on the brilliant future of Adrian, the new teenage pop idol. Showing no respect or loyalty for his newly gained millionaire status, his old friends, neighbours, a fat ex-girlfriend and his pain in the neck of a brother threaten to reveal seedy details of his private life, hoping in return to receive the benefits from selling the exclusive rights of a bombshell article. After all, they want to live comfortably too. But Adrian doesn't want them to live at all. Accompanied by his "artistic" girlfriend, the gorgeous Amaretto, and followed closely by an intrepid gossip journalist, Adrian sends all  his acquaintances to a remote island in the Caribbean for a crazy holiday, which he hopes will be their last.

Synopsis

An ancient tale retold, of a city under siege and the terrible action taken by one woman to save it.   The city elders are prepared to surrender, but Judith has other ideas. From the battlements she has watched Holofernes, the enemy general, and now she plans revenge and triumph. When they meet in his camp, they discover more complex desires and needs in each other, and during one night work out a passionate and dangerous relationship. By dawn Judith is victorious, but it is a bitter victory.   Does patriotrism justify any action? Is Judith a hero or a maniac? Is Holofernes oppressor or victim? Is this a story about the sexiness of war or the savagery of sex? Can violence ever generate peace, or does it just keep the brutal cycles of war, defeat, victory and reprisal circling forever?