Projects in genres: Experimental

Synopsis

Exploring the magic and dynamism of Blackness in a realm where time and space are altered. The now, the past and the future are rethought and reordered to create something soulful and mindbendingly visceral.

Synopsis

A fisherman’s worms are dragged with the fisherman as he goes about his routine - drinking, fishing, living with no purpose. All the while we are reminded of the efficiency and efficacy of the earthworm. Yet, it seems the worms and the fisherman are not so different as initially conceived.

Synopsis

How does memory work? How can experiences be handed down from generation to generation? How does the act of narration change the experience? Three young men and their grannies go on a quest for their historic and personal legacy. There’s the British spy with a bone-dry sense of humour, the Hungarian communist who survived the Holocaust and the German dancer whose look back turns out to be the most difficult.
Unlike many recent documentaries which focused on conversation and raised their protagonists on a pedestal of awe, the “Granny Project” takes a different approach: playful, not afraid of confrontations, sometimes silly and seconds later honest and emotional. An unconventional attempt of the grandchildren’s generation to ask, on a different level, questions that drove their parents to the streets in the 1960s. This film neither aims to be antagonistic nor accusatory. Instead it’s perhaps naive but no less necessary attempt to understand the other. When the three grannies sit around a table with their grandsons and various interpreters we realise that two things at least are necessary to really bring the past and present in contact: an honest interest in one’s opposite party and a good translation. (Dok Leipzig brochure 2017)
Official Selection Dok Leipzig 2017 - World premiere

Synopsis

An examination of William Pye’s work of the late 1960s and early 70s, culminating with the siting of his sculpture 'Zemran', on London’s Southbank. The archive super 8 of Pye at work, plus examples of his metal sculpture, is augmented with new footage and electronic music created by Ian Helliwell.

Synopsis

A chorus of internet comments draws a 'live' animation portrait of Britain, in all its pastoral glory. The disconnect between patriotic, sentimental perceptions and reality builds an incongruous vision.
The film's script draws directly on user comments found below videos and online newspaper articles concerning the British countryside.
Official Selection Sheffield Doc Fest 2018 - New UK Shorts - World premiere
Official Selection DOK Leipzig 2018 - International Programme - International premiere
Official Selection Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2018 - Artist Film Programme

Synopsis

Bookended by the 2011 London riots, Benedict Seymour’s dramatically, politically urgent new film retells the story of Chris Marker’s 'La Jetée'. A man has been sent back into the past as a way of rescuing the future, his tale told by way of the Narrator who riffs on familiar film dialogue and contemporary references – unpicking the political implications of his journey and our retro obsessions.
A collage, narrative, essay film hybrid, 'Dead the Ends', plunders some fifty years of cinema – including dystopian sci-fi – and uses emojis and gifs as ways of exploring the undercurrents of historical and current visual language, as well as present entrenched, systemic inequality. Cross-currents of thought and broad swathes of material are incisively manoeuvred, whilst, in its intellectually and dramatically gripping shape and scope, the piece feels part-situationist, part-Borgesian. It asks, in richly creative fashion, how did we get here? (LFF brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

Experimental artist and auteur Andrew Kotting creates a groundbreaking crossover between narrative film and contemporary art piece, based on the award-winning play by Hattie Naylor. The film is inspired by the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs. In the recession-ravaged city, Ivan’s human world was dominated by deprivation and violence; his only hope was to turn to feral dogs for company, protection and warmth. Kotting’s spellbinding and utterly original story of survival conjures the streets of Moscow in the 1990s through the eyes of a child, drawing on a range of innovative modes and techniques to produce a montage essay on the state of the world.
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018 - International premiere

Synopsis

From the earliest days of movie-making to the present day, through rare and unseen footage, we see the changing relationship the British have with their land. From images of local celebrations and festivals to agricultural practices through the seasons, village life and lost crafts.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - World premiere

Synopsis

Ancient footage of an old tale hauntingly re-emerges.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

Across the water on the island, four individuals experience the end of life. Showing rarely seen and intensely private events, the film follows the progression of illness for each character and, for one, the last days and hours of life, the moment of death, and after death care. A lyrical, slow cinema description of the temporality and phenomena of dying, this film sensitively witnesses the transition away from personhood.
This is a palliative island, the Isle of Wight, an enigmatic landscape where all around rituals persist. Parallel to bedside vigils and the rhythm of breathing, we see rescue owls on the hospice ward, the rugged coastline, and the constant ferry arrivals. A choir rehearses Brahm’s 'German Requiem'. In the hospital pathology lab, microscopic close-ups of cancer show the interior of the bodies, our biology, our creatureliness. Death is presented as natural and everyday but also unspeakable and strange.
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018 - International premiere

Synopsis

A poetic study of the life and work of artist Margaret Benyon, pioneer in the artistic use of holography. Giving voice to the unsung legacy of a pioneering woman artist, 'A Blemished Code' is an impassioned meditation on the representation of female artists, the balancing of creative and domestic life, and the inherent tensions of being a woman working with new technology. The inner life of the subject is represented throughout by a brilliant musical score featuring sung script and compositions by Stevie Jones, Mai Mai, and Leigh Ferguson. (LFF brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

A haunting metaphorical take on the physical and mental isolation of the migrant experience. Inspired by the director’s father’s experience of being trapped in Greece’s Ellinikon Airport without a passport in 1977, the film follows a week in the life of a man who has been living in limbo at an airport for a decade. All promises of movement are ultimately met with stasis in this profound evocation of our epoch of desperate migration.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival - Experimenta Strand - World premiere