Projects in genres: Scottish

Synopsis

A creative biography of the Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. One of the most important women in British modern art, the painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a highly inspirational figure, whose work was deeply impacted by a pivotal event in her life. In May 1949, this leading representative of the modernist St. Ives group of artists climbed to the top of the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland, an experience which was to transform the way she saw the world. She spent the rest of her life capturing its shapes and colours, indeed its very essence. In his essayistic portrait Cousins delves into complex themes of gender, climate change and creativity, while laying bare the artist’s character and vast imagination so pervasively that he creates the impression we are seeing the world through her eyes. Official Selection Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2024 - World premiere Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

Tony Klinger's amazing and emotional journey to celebrate the 50th anniversary (+Covid) of his late father's (Michael Klinger) great film production, GET CARTER. The documentary traces all the elements that went into the iconic film including interviews with Michael Caine, the late director Mike Hodges, and Britt Ekland, and harvests information from experts, historians, film social media academics, and the huge family of people who simply rates it as the greatest British gangster film ever! We take the journey with Tony and share his immense joys, deep sadness and enlightening discoveries.

Synopsis

After a successful first audition, actor Cait’s call-back is upended by her scene partner: a man she hoped never again to encounter, with whom she shared a traumatic night many years ago.

Synopsis

Under two feet of peaty soil in Orkney, lies the only recording of Scottish composer Erland Cooper’s unheard album. In an entirely unique attempt to collaborate with the natural world, it would be an experiment on patience, art and value. Will the tape emerge silent, and does it matter if it does? RECOMPOSING EARTH takes you into the mind of an artist and the magic of the Orkney Islands that inspire him, with a story that reminds of music's importance as an expression of the human condition. With interviews including Paul Weller, producer Marta Salogni and Sir Ian Rankin.

Synopsis

When an egotistical tattoo artist tries to get a selfie with an international popstar who shows up on his doorstep in the middle of the night, his refusal to take no for an answer embroils him in a nightmarish battle of wills that threatens to destroy his business, his relationships, and his sanity. Official Selection Glasgow Film Festival 2024 - World premiere

Synopsis

Structuring this intimate and insightful portrait of Lynda Myles, academic Susan Kemp invokes a form known to define, criticise, and shift paradigms in culture – the manifesto. Meshing archival material with interview subjects including Jim Hickey and B. Ruby Rich, Kemp employs a series of provocations to tease out the philosophy behind a lifetime of ground-breaking film work. In the film's central conversation, Myles beautifully expresses the thrill of putting on a show (including the 1972 Women's Event, pioneering retrospectives of Douglas Sirk, Sam Fuller and Raoul Walsh and many more) while always avoiding the polite. This vivid filmic manifesto is an active document set to inspire anyone who programmes, produces or simply loves cinema today. (Kate Taylor) Official selection Dublin International Film Festival 2024 - UK premiere

Synopsis

A speculative narrative that takes place in a future of the past, in a present ruptured now. An intimate exploration of grief and resistance across diasporic distance in shifting landscapes of loss, from the streets to the bed; in sites of displacement, nuclear contamination, and military occupation from Scotland to Puerto Rico; from the bottom of the ocean to the planet Uranus. Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2024 - Forum Expanded - World premiere

Synopsis

A journey into the historical and tactile entanglements between sheep’s wool, migrant plant seeds and the River Tweed. Official Selection Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2024 - World premiere

Synopsis

Archive footage, music and voice combine to explore the choreography of childhood and the possibility of childish autonomy. In a world ruled by adults, how does the child in film resist oppression and control? The childish imagination escapes in flights of fantasy, both brief and absorbing. Energy is directed and contained. "I'm live as a battery. Who am I to you?"

Synopsis

After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, a boy grew up obsessed with all the movies he couldn't see. He met a mysterious film collector who saved thousands of films from destruction by the new regime. Despite arrest and torture, the collector refused to give up his secret hoard. Together they forged a friendship based on passion for cinema and resistance against tyranny. The boy escaped to exile in London to become a filmmaker, and tells their shared story of obsession and celluloid dreams. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Documentary Competition - World premiere

Synopsis

In Glasgow's alt-queer party scene, a drag artist navigates the night of their return to the stage after being one year sober.

Synopsis

Political engagement spawned the wildest of wonderlands for Hong Kong’s creativity – but as a new law annihilates freedom of expression overnight, artists and creatives find themselves targets and their works disappeared. We race to preserve the creative uprising amid China’s crackdown. In June 2020, the day after the National Security Law was imposed, the government started listing words, images, books, slogans, songs that were now deemed illegal - making so much that was ‘normal', forbidden. Hong Kong Mixtape weaves in the personal story of San the director, as we immerse with these underground artists, including some of Asia’s most famous and iconic creators - rappers, dancers, performers, illustrators, stunt collectives - as they navigate this authoritarian new normal. We also follow San having to ask herself the same questions as the other artists; are you willing to risk a life sentence for your art? And if this the last time we can be home - what do we make now? Official Selection Glasgow Film Festival 2023 - European Premiere