Projects in genres: Drama

Synopsis

Based on the teenaged journals and drawings of Sylvia Plath, this collaged fantasy describes an evening in the life of a teenage girl in 1949. The music and images are all inspired by the words, images and musical experience of Plath at 17 years old. It was commissioned as an artists' interpretative collaboration for the Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium, Oxford University and University of Indiana October 2007.

Synopsis

Khalil finds himself stuck between two worlds, the world of his adopted home country, England, and the culture of his native country, Iraq. When his dying mother does not recognise him anymore Khalil is confronted with the ultimate loss of his identity.

Synopsis

The Illusionist is one of a dying breed of music hall entertainers. With emerging rock and roll bands stealing his thunder, he is forced to accept increasingly obscure assignments in fringe theatres, at garden parties and in bars and cafes. Whilst performing in a village pub off the west coast of Scotland, his path is crossed by Alice, a naive young girl, who will change his life forever. Watching his performance to the excited villagers who are celebrating the arrival of electricity to their remote island, Alice becomes awestruck by the Illusionist and believes his tricks are real magic. Following him to Edinburgh, she keeps his home while he goes to work in a small local theatre. Enchanted by her enthusiasm for his act, he rewards her with increasingly lavish gifts he has 'conjured' into existence. Desperate not to disappoint her, he cannot bring himself to reveal that magic does not exist but buying these gifts is driving him to ruin. Alice comes of age, she finds love and moves on. The Illusionist no longer has to pretend and, untangled from his own web of deceit, resumes his life as a travelling entertainer, a much wiser man.

Synopsis

Experimental documentary looking at the day that Muhammad Ali came to Tyneside in 1977 and the effect that this event had on the young Yemeni-British men who attended the Mosque. This film examines the emerging Arab/British identity and briefly introduced this historic community.  

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In a world overrun by hellish creatures of darkness, two lovers try to spend one final perfect day together.

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A drama lifted by moments of humour, The Last Station is a love story set during the last year of the life and turbulent marriage of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and his wife the Countess Sofya. Tolstoy, having rejected his title and embraced an ascetic life style, finds himself increasingly at odds with Sofya. As his devoted disciple Vladimir Chertkov urges him to sign a new will leaving the rights to his work to the Russian people rather than his family, the conflict between husband and wife grows to breaking point. The whole affair is witnessed by Tolstoy’s new secretary, Valentin, whose love for the beautiful and feisty Masha is set against the old love of Tolstoy and Sofya. The Last Station is a film about the difficulty of living with love and the impossibility of living without it.

Synopsis

A modern-day Western set in a Bengali village; a story of revenge and the search for personal identity. The village Chairman has his election victory tainted by the arrival of a stranger with a gun. When the stranger sides with the Chairman’s arch nemesis: Thakur, bullets fly in the sleepy backwater village. It soon becomes apparent that the stranger has his own motives for revenge.

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A young boy, Wesley, finds escape from his difficult life by going to sea for a day on a lobster boat.

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The story of two flatmates who share the same space but live completely different lives.

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Set during the Cannes Film Festival, The Making of Plus One packs a punch and pokes more than a little fun at the celebrity obsession fuelling the modern day film industry, full of fads, festival red carpets, creatively incongruous commerciality and artistic dispensability in the far from glamorous reality that is independent feature filmmaking.

Synopsis

Adaptation of the 1512 Renaissance comedy by Niccolo Machiavelli. Callimaco, a young Sardinian returns from studying in Paris and is overcome by the beauty of Lucrezia, the virtuoso and beautiful wife of the rich and foolish lawyer Nicia. In his desire to bed her, he engages the services of a dubious fixer Liguro who knows that Nicia and Lucrezia are desperate for a child. With Ligurio's help, Callimaco masquerading as a doctor, convinces Nicia that the surest way for his wife to conceive is by taking a potion made from the Mandrake Root, with the dire warning that the first man to sleep with her will die within 8 days. Nicia agrees to a plan to kidnap an unsuspecting man to sleep with his wife and thereby draw out the poison, but of course it is the disguised Callimaco who is to be kidnapped. In order to persuade his wife to agree, because she is so virtuous, Nicia enlists the help of her mother, a woman of questionable virtue, and her confessor, a priest of equally dubious morals. Ultimately Callimaco succeeds in sleeping with Lucrezia, who herself decides that due to the stupidity of her husband and deception of her mother and confessor, she will continue to be his lover and ‘what her husband wanted for her to have for one night, she now wants him to have forever’. The story is concludes with everyone getting what they want and believing that each has outwitted the other.

Synopsis

Samanta rises from the dead after three hundred years, she has one obsessive memory: to find her lover. Remembering that he was soon to sail for war, she know she has something important to tell him. Her search takes Samanta through today's London, a frightening, bewildering place. Meeting few who will help her, she searches for the river Thames with Jack, her new acquaintance. Traveling on to her conclusion of what has become of her situation, when she finds The Monument.