Projects in genres: Sport

Synopsis

The Havana Boxing Academy is a Cuban boarding school that takes 9-year-old boys, and turns them into the best boxers in the world. Sons Of Cuba follows the stories of three young hopefuls through 8 dramatic months of training and schooling as they prepare for the biggest event of their lives so far: Cuba's National Boxing Championship for Under-12's. But during the season, crisis strikes: Fidel Castro is taken ill, and all of Cuba's Olympic boxing champions defect to the USA, leaving Cuba at a crossroads, and the boys contemplating a changing world.  

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A group of people kill their time playing ping-pong. On one evening, Eddie Proctor steps out of the game.

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Ondene is beautiful, talented, and destined to study law at Oxford if she gets good A-levels. Nothing less will satisfy her domineering, mother, Hyacinth. When a, basketball court is set up near her private school, Ondene is charmed by a charismatic, freestyle basketball player, Leon, and they decide to enter a competition. From a deprived background, Leon dreams of going to university, and needs to win to pay his way. Ondene deceives Hyacinth to be with Leon, and romance blossoms. But just before the freestyle basketball and A-level finals, Hyacinth finds out, and splits them up. Angered by Hyacinth's interference, Ondene decides to take charge of her life but she has to make tough decisions about her family, education, and the man she loves.

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Bench Pressing isn’t a hobby for 73 year old Bill McFadyen – it’s a way of life. Stranraer’s very own bench press champion is on a quest to be the best in the world.

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Mental Block depicts the journey of a young freerunner (Ali) striving to find his own personal route through life using the discipline of parkour, but all motion stops when he reaches the inevitable mental block. Set within inner-city estates Ali discovers the hardest obstacles to overcome are in the mind.

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Midnight Madness is Europe's first basketball film. The film follows Nhamo Shire, the founder of the Midnight Madness tournament, and two players, Mike Martin and Pierre Henry-Fontaine, as they battle through the summer to make it as one of the top 10 basketball players who will go to Los Angeles to train and compete against their American counterparts. Nhamo recollects how in 1999 he launched the first Midnight Madness in Harlesden as a means of deterring teenagers from gangs and crime when they are most vulnerable: night time. 9 years on we follow him as this extreme basketball tournament rages in twelve cities across the UK. Midnight Madness culminates at Crystal Palace where 5,000 screaming fans attend the finals. We also follow Mike Martin who lost his mum a couple of months before the summer and wants to win the tournament as a tribute to her memory and Pierre Henry-Fontaine who's dream of making the big time in the United States ended prematurely. He now sees the opportunity of playing against the Americans in their own backyard as a means of proving to himself he can play and compete with the best. Far from the violent picture painted in the media of inner city life we discover through Midnight Madness passionate, hardworking and touching individuals trying to make a difference.  

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The dynamic pace of Quincy's basketball match soon calms when he is faced with a life changing dilemma.

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Sourced from content from the Great North Run film archive, concentrating on the audience rather than the runner. Frame layers are arranged across the screen in the direction of the natural panning of the original shots, revealing a unique panoramic view of the content.

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A visually striking and meditative study of a team of athletes, including British Olympic finalists Jeanette Kwakye and Sarah Claxton, filmed over the two months leading to the start of the 2007 outdoor season. Sprinters is an intimate and arresting portrayal of the frequently brutal world of top level athletics, revealing the mental and physical barriers confronted by the runners as they pursue their dreams, and a world in which agony, ecstasy, winning and losing are separated by a hundredth of a second.

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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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Synopsis

Rollin'on is a film about skateboarding, hard work and perseverance. The film tells the story of a group of young people who regularly meet at Finsbury Park skate-park. Its main narrative is given by an interview with legendary skateboarding champion Tony Hawk, in which he tells the story of his first rolling steps into the world of skateboarding and how much skateboarding contributed to changing his life from bullied shy boy and outsider to revered professional skateboarding champion and video game character. The film draws a parallel between the lives of the young skateboarders in Haringey and their hero and hopefully will prove very inspirational among viewers. The film touches on themes such as bulling at school, social barriers and prejudice, as well as investigating weather skateboarding could offer a viable alternative to gun, knives, street crime in general and boredom.