Projects in genres: Art / Artists

Synopsis

“You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose; But sadness in me rises like the sea" The Eyes of Beauty, Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil In Greenwich Park, London two lovers stroll and talk about love, their relationship and the making of a film in Venice. The Venice film is shot on 16mm. Venice at dawn is empty and a protagonist sits at the empty San Marco Piazza, is seen walking in a detached manner from the grand sights and facades and interiors of Palazzos into the backstreets. In gilded interiors and painted ceilings, as the winter afternoon light weakens in a soporific atmosphere, she lays in dark interiors with frescoes of Antiquity. Like the Risen, at twilight she walks the alleyways and into the Like the Risen, at twilight she walks the alleyways and into the dark to meet the Devil at dawn. Featuring the actor Pietro Fanelli – the Devil makes a fleeting but impactful appearance, the protagonist offers herself to his gaze and touch. The film follows a path via the remnants of Romanticism and Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil in search of beauty, opulence, exotic pleasure and lovers, exemplified by Venice.

Synopsis

Filmmaker Patrick Hough journeys through the haunted landscapes of Ireland, where colonial violence, ecological loss and queer desire remain inscribed in the land. Moving between forests, mountains, archives and cruising grounds, the film traces the extinction of the Irish grey wolf alongside the cultural suppression that followed Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Fragments of history surface through objects and places: a death mask of Oliver Cromwell, medieval myths of werewolves, maps drawn to measure and divide conquered territory, and landscapes where wolves were once hunted to disappearance. These materials are interwoven with contemporary nocturnal scenes of queer gathering and protest, where shame gives way to transformation, pleasure and resistance. Blending essay film, documentary and poetic fiction, LANDSCAPES OF SHAME asks how violence survives in landscapes, language and bodies - and what forms of wildness still remain. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Synopsis

Defined for much of his life by other people's perceptions of his visible difference, actor Adam Pearson finds a new sense of possibility when he meets Ellie, a teenage girl living with the same genetic condition. As their unlikely friendship inspires Adam to confront the rules he's built to protect himself, he returns to the big screen and discovers that the hero he's been searching for may be himself. Official Selection Telluride Film Festival 2026 Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Synopsis

Spring 1991: queer life is under renewed attack in Britain, and filmmaker Derek Jarman is adapting Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II into a radical protest film. Drawing on extraordinary never-before-seen footage shot by Seamus McGarvey on Jarman’s set, QUEER EDWARD 11 is about the refusal to separate art from life, politics from pleasure. Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2026 Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Synopsis

Narrated by actress Guslagie Malanda, THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD is an essay film that explores what it means to exist on an island, as well as the tensions of living in the shadows of French colonialism. Set across a single day and shot on 16mm, the film recalls a speculative relationship to the island of Corsica. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Synopsis

Fish are nightly invaders of my sleep. Work consumes my dreams. Night gives way to another commute; adverts appear before me, their faces drawn tight. The day passes again, and at night, within the walls of my workplace, a fishmonger’s in London, dreams appear again, this time, a grief-stricken reverie, memories of my father. The film's title is inspired by Maurice Blanchot’s ‘The Book to Come’ which incited my exploration of whether images can capture anything sacred in a world of dispossession. A diaristic, psychogeographic journey through a city that metastasises uncontrollably before me, the film captures a form of alienation that supersedes and confounds the trajectory of grief. What is lost when all becomes gloss? Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Synopsis

Inspired by John Baldessari's 1973 short film, TITLE breaks down narrative cinema into a game-like diagram of gestures, soundtracks, pickup shots, subtitles, and B-movie dialogue. Shot with students and friends across Paris, Lyon, London, and Menorca, the film stages a playful confrontation with 1960s and 70s formalism and conceptual art, reinterpreting it with new words, bodies and relationships. Official Selection London Film Festival BFI 2026

Synopsis

Retracing Allen Ginsberg’s 1967 ‘trip’ to the Llanthony Valley, Wales Visitation follows an attempt to channel the poet and document his route through enactments, alignments and apparitions. Using clues gleaned from Ginsberg’s poem of the same name, the film unfolds as a semiotic trail where the filmmaker’s encounters echo and accumulate. Handheld footage of tourists, sleeping horses, birdcalls and day/night cycles signpost a route as it begins to form. A diary, a dramatisation and a spiritual road movie, Wales Visitation traces not a fixed path, but the conditions under which something might be called back. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Synopsis

ANAK WHERE DID WE STAY? is a five-channel film by Sadia Pineda Hameed that brings together The Box’s home movie collection and the artist’s personal/family collection. Rasheed Araeen’s chakras, spouting waves, Beatlesmania, a basking shark, hula dance, an Enoch Powell protest, tidal islands and seafoam floating into the air—the archives converge across time to tell the story of the artist’s mother’s migration from one archipelago to another: the Philippines to the British Isles. The film becomes a gathering site for personal and collective experiences of journeys, resilience and belonging. Road trips unexpectedly reenact the archive, footage finds itself out of context, voices commentate the film as if rewatching a home movie together; mimesis, associations and autonomy are central to the retelling. As camcorders became more accessible from the 1970s onwards, home movies were an unconscious means to rebuild personal archives after colonial displacement, extraction and erasure. ANAK WHERE DID WE STAY?, named after the home movie from The Box’s archive 'Perranporth Where Did We Stay?', unfolds as a conversation between the artist and her mother, exploring the three interconnected journeys of migration, holidays and remembering. Produced as part of The Box’s Reimagining the Film Archive programme (BFI Screen Heritage Fund).

Synopsis

Under the skin of Douglas Gordon, probing what it means to be an artist. Capturing the chaotic energy of a working studio and blurring the lines between art, performance, and reality. The filmmaker's presence challenges the authenticity of the process, exposing the tensions, collaboration, and unpredictability of documenting a boundary-pushing artist. Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2026 - Panorama Dokumente - World premiere

Synopsis

At a time when many people struggle to talk openly about grief, SOLITUDE WITH SCHUBERT asks what role music can play in helping us live alongside loss. The film follows concert pianist George Xiaoyuan Fu as he navigates the death of his father through Franz Schubert's late works. Extending this exploration beyond himself, Fu connects with a hospice bereavement group and performs a recital for them – sharing how music can offer connection, catharsis and solace when words fall short. He then records an album with mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean, reflecting on how the echoes of those we’ve loved and lost stay with us. It’s an intimate portrait of how art can offer solace and meaning, creating a space for grief to be safely felt, shared and transformed.

Synopsis

MOVING SOUND is a speculative work set across 1980s and near-future Wales, shot on super 16mm. In the film, sounds of present day anti-colonial and anti-capitalist strategies for mining strikes are transmitted from Soundcamp streamboxes to the past via an underground, time travelling broadcast. In the 1980s, workers build DIY receivers from Moving Sound portable audio devices, which they use to distribute the broadcast around sites of production and the everyday. First screened in the King Coal Experience (an immersive recreation of the Big Pit underground mine) amidst disused mining machinery, MOVING SOUND blurs fictional 16mm and archival 8mm footage of sonic action to explore how organising converges and enacts across geographies, temporality, fantasy and reality.