Projects in genres: Experimental

Synopsis

Did George Floyd's killing mark a turning point for change or false dawn? Despite the global outcry, US Police continue instigating indiscriminate violence against Black communities. Is there a parallel history of structural racism in Britain? Since watching George's viral footage, Black Britain, Michael's mind has been thrown into freefall.

Synopsis

In a bedroom, perched on the edge of an unmade bed, a man looks out of a window at the falling snow. A blackbird settles on the windowsill and strikes up a song which comes to form a melody over which the man begins to sing of the murders of his wife and two little children. One by one, his son and daughter appear, and his wife turns, each sings a verse of their own. The man then tells of his own suicide. Finally, the blackbird flies away and the man returns to gazing out of the window.
Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2021 - Directors' Fortnight - World premiere

Synopsis

Clips from two Italian films of the early 1960's meet on a train platform in Rome. Together they move towards, but don’t quite arrive at, another story, as the processing makes animation of what began as live action. To the sound of Wagner and Rossini.

Synopsis

ANYWHERE BUT HERE is a metacommentary film about wanting to go places and see new faces, but being prevented from doing so by the pandemic. The narrator unravels a bittersweet resolution in the self-reflexive filmmaking process as we dive deeper into her dreamscape.

Synopsis

A short desktop documentary about a stolen video, and the online search for the thief.
When Hugh finds out that his video has been stolen, and turned into a viral meme by an anonymous TikToker, he embarks on an internet odyssey in an attempt to find the thief.
Official Selection Aesthetica Film Festival 2021
Official Selection Tribecca Film Festival 2022

Synopsis

Disinterested and tired of misunderstandings, Jonny, who is Deaf, leaves a dinner party taking the viewer on an audio-visual, time-traveling adventure.
For hearing viewers, it is an illuminating and emotional experience. For deaf viewers, the film is a familiar tale of misunderstanding and isolation.

Synopsis

Baron von Harden is rich and highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at Mephisto's House of Ill Repute exchanging his soul for unlimited worldly pleasures.

Synopsis

At a time when ever-greater numbers of people are bilingual (or trilingual), it’s often the case that the language someone most regularly talks in isn’t the same as the language they think in. A mother tongue precedes any other tongue—the umbilical idiom an individual instinctively falls back on, and the one they feel most at home in. The title of Kondo Heller’s video MU/T/T/ER plays on the word for ‘mother’ in German—a language, like English, with which she is intimately familiar without it always feeling unconditionally, authentically familial. In this video and audio collage, compiled where Heller was living during lockdown, snatches of English and German share the space with remembered or re-discovered Swahili. As a background murmur to all these, a subliminal but ubiquitous resident voice surfaces in the spluttered mutterings and stuttered utterances that are the common parlance of someone living alone. These fragments of inner monologue, mumbled under one’s breath or spoken out loud, are matched to different rooms in the house, as if to echo different facets of the self. A poetic reminder of the patterns and habits of introspection, and the quiet tumult of everyday personal thoughts that reverberate within.

Synopsis

A first date becomes a torment of past and present relationships. Set in a quirky west London restaurant, millennials Adira and Dan sit down to their first date together.
Despite matching on a dating app, on the first impression, photographer Dan does not fit Adira’s archetype. After an awkward first course, screenwriter Adira explains her struggles with writer's block, Dan suggests she write a screenplay of her own life.
Awkward silences at the dining table transport us to intimate moments with Adira in her flat. We see her struggles with depression and loneliness. A dark figure follows Adira like a shadow through London streets. Gushing streams moving upward through a Nordic valley take us deep into Adira’s sub-consciousness.
Moving through various dream-like states reality becomes uncertain. Adira is writing, we hear the typewriter violently tapping, is she changing the course of events? Back at the restaurant, Dan has become visibly distressed. His character viscous.
This is life through a social media lens, a fifty-word limit, and endless filters - until a violent encounter brings reality crashing down.

Synopsis

An experimental short film that explores the theme of female rivalry within the patriarchal arena. Trapped in a vicious circle fuelled by envy and jealousy, a theatre understudy transcends and finally confronts the real source of her dark emotions.

Synopsis

An immersive installation and Virtual Reality animated and interactive artwork focussed on reproductive diseases and pain that women experience: endometriosis, fibroids, polyps, Ovarian and other cysts, cervical, ovarian, uterine and endometrial cancers.
The sensory and emotional experience moving from the outside in within a real dome space into VR space, with a 3D audio soundscape of the voices and stories of real women recounting their experiences, making it an intimate, emotional and possibly haunting experience, with accompanying wearable haptic garment providing a visceral vibration responsive on the lower abdomen, where the various diseases occur.

Synopsis

A short film that, through lip-syncing, depicts the traumatising stories of queer performers Soroya, Harry and Kenya and their emotional journey to adulthood. The film explores themes of loneliness, anxiety, trauma and recovery, all common issues within the LGBT+ community.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2021
Official Selection Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg 2022