Projects in genres: Music

Synopsis

A fast motion path circles into dance.

Synopsis

From its DIY collaborative origins in London council estates and pirate radio, via its intricate musical influences, to a complicated emergence into the mainstream, this immersive and exciting documentary tracks the evolution of Grime music. With extraordinary access to the key originators, producers and musicians from the subculture, as well as behind the scenes footage and a wealth of archive, the film combines a nuanced overview of the genre with a vivid sense of its socio-political context and impact across three decades of rocky UK history and reactionary politics.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Create - World premiere

Synopsis

DON'T GO GENTLE is a film about finding strength in vulnerability. It journeys through determination, friendship and adversity of Idles as they fight for a place in a divided socio-political environment, unexpectedly inspiring and unifying an international community along the way. In a time when the ground is shifting beneath our feet, where open communication and truthful reflection are more vital than ever, we journey with lead singer Joe Talbot and the band as they tear across stages, knock down stereotypes and empower fans to face down uncomfortable realities and talk about mental health.

Synopsis

The first feature documentary entirely in Scottish Gaelic, IORRAM (BOAT SONG) is an immersive and poetic portrait of life in the Outer Hebrides, as the islands and the language face an uncertain future.

Archive sound recordings of ghostly voices, stories and songs from the last century are mixed with stunning footage of daily life in the islands today, on land and sea, to create a lyrical and playful dialogue between past and present, and between sound and vision, set to an original score composed and performed by award-winning folk musician Aidan O’Rourke.

IORRAM began as an experiment to make a cinematic film entirely composed from archive sound and contemporary moving images. The sound archive at the heart of this project contains over 30,000 pieces of previously untranslated and largely unheard Scottish Gaelic recordings, representing a treasure trove of cultural history and memories which deserve to be heard.

Making documentaries from archive film footage is a long established practice, but there are also vast riches in sound archives around the world, which are gradually being digitized and restored, and represent a valuable resource for filmmakers interested to explore the relationship between past and present, and between the ears and the eyes. If cinema has historically prioritized vision over sound, IORRAM marks an ambitious effort to redress the balance, and provide audiences with a new and deeply satisfying kind of cinematic experience.

Synopsis

A clip from the iconic 1999 science fiction film "The Matrix" becomes a much older silent movie with piano accompaniment, seen again in its own far future or where time no longer counts. The two lovers shift roles and even genders in the obscure cinematic space that contains them.

Synopsis

Follow Brogues and Sparkly Toes on their adventures of love, loss, dancing, and lots of mud! A heartbreaking LGBTQ+ tale told entirely through feet!

Synopsis

Poly Styrene was the first woman of colour in the UK to front a successful rock band. She introduced the world to a new sound of rebellion, using her unconventional voice to sing about identity, consumerism, postmodernism, and everything she saw unfolding in late 1970s Britain, with a rare prescience. As the frontwoman of X-Ray Spex, the Anglo-Somali punk musician was also a key inspiration for the riot grrrl and Afropunk movements.
But the late punk maverick didn’t just leave behind an immense cultural footprint. She was survived by a daughter, Celeste Bell, who became the unwitting guardian of her mother’s legacy and her mother’s demons. Misogyny, racism, and mental illness plagued Poly’s life, while their lasting trauma scarred Celeste’s childhood and the pair’s relationship.
Featuring unseen archive material and rare diary entries narrated by Oscar-nominee Ruth Negga, this documentary follows Celeste as she examines her mother's unopened artistic archive and traverses three continents to better understand Poly the icon and Poly the mother.
Official Selection Glasgow Film Festival 2021 - World premiere
Official Selection SXSW Film Festival 2021 - North American premiere

Synopsis

SOFT RIO plays between erotic and erratic productions of layered movement and sound. Inspired by Audre Lorde's 1978 essay "Uses of the Erotic", the film was shot on the stage of the Rio Cinema in London (once a striptease stage) featuring dancer Astrid Sweeney and sound by @xcrswx.

Synopsis

Sat backstage for the biggest audition of his life, Matty sticks out like a sore thumb. Surrounded by violins, clarinets and flutes, his love of drumming is a far cry from the musical elite. And there’s one other thing... Everyone’s voices have been swapped with their instruments.

Synopsis

Tina Turner overcame impossible odds to become one of the first female African American artists to reach a mainstream international audience. Her road to superstardom is an undeniable story of triumph over adversity. It's the ultimate story of survival - and an inspirational story for our times.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2021 - Berlinale Special

Synopsis

Hope is studying at The Royal Ballet, the most prestigious institution for dance. But as she approaches her final performance, the first time she is to perform since her mother's death, an undiagnosed eating disorder causes her to spiral out of control.

Synopsis

A reinvention of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
The radical new take on Dickens’ classic seeks both to exhume the original story’s gritty commentary on social inequality and the corrupting influence of greed, and to breathe new life into the lyricism of the original text by setting its scenes to extraordinary tableaux of modern dance.
The opening scenes of the film follow a Victorian family preparing a toy theatre for their annual performance of 'A Christmas Carol'. As the family's grandmother narrates the much-edited story and her grandchildren change the scenery, we enter the imagination of one of the children in the audience and watch as the cardboard stage, and the story with it, transforms into a darkly fantastical otherworld.