Projects in genres: Woman Director

Synopsis

Nora is based on true stories of the dancer Nora Chipaumire, who was born in Zimbabwe in 1965. In the film, Nora returns to the landscape of her childhood and takes a journey through some vivid memories of her youth. Using performance and dance, she brings her history to life in a swiftly-moving poem of sound and image. The result is a film about family dramas, difficult love affairs and militant politics, which moves back and forth between the comic and the tragic, the joyful and the mournful. It is a film about a girl who is constantly embattled - struggling against all kinds of intimidation and violence - but who slowly gathers strength, pride and independence.

Shot entirely on location in Southern Africa, Nora includes a multitude of local performers and dancers of all ages, from young schoolchildren to ancient grandmothers, and much of the music is specially composed by a legend of Zimbabwean music - Thomas Mapfumo.

Synopsis

A photomotion, alternarrative re-telling of fragments of a story.

A female figure leads each frame through a dialogue of re-telling, by way of telling a story which is punctuated by falling down a hole, becoming smaller, larger and encountering a cat. This is Not Alice.

Synopsis

During the Spanish civil war and its aftermath, thousands of people were executed and thrown into mass unmarked graves. Today people in Spain are beginning to face up to a past that has remained for 70 years an uneasy alliance of a determination to forget. In Not Reconciled, historic accounts of the civil war, novels, diaries of republican and fascist fighters, are combined with observation of the everyday lives of the villagers.

The voices of the ghosts of Rosa and Carlos, young Spanish civil war republicans echo over the ruins of Belchite in Aragon, Northern Spain as they wait for the discovery of their unmarked graves. They tell the story of the town, talk about their part in the fighting, quarrel and make up, discuss philosophy and history and women’s rights and the terrible aftermath of the civil war. The sounds of wind, the echoes of voices, the crumbling ruins, the slow silent walks of tourists and the seeming oblivion of the present day town next door to those who lost their lives, are overlaid with conversations by the film maker with present day Belchite inhabitants as she tries to penetrate their indifference.

Synopsis

Off Season is an understated story about a widowed dad who has brought his young son for a visit with Gran on the grey, windy coast. After causing a bizarre accident, he tries to protect his son from a truth they both already know.

Synopsis

August 2008. Two homeless alcoholics meet on Brighton beach. A short film about friendship, creativity and alcohol.

Synopsis

David's attempt to leave residential care is thwarted as he struggles to find acceptance and connection in the outside world.

Synopsis

We've all had 'one of those days' – when nothing seems to go right, when life just seems to be dealing you one poor hand after another. Unfortunately for Howard Whittam, that day is Judgment Day.

Howard and his wife Jean have lived a very ordinary life. They’ve never taken drugs, overtaken on the inside lane, or run naked through a graveyard. An unkind observer might even say they were dull. But somewhere deep down, these law abiding English suburbanites believed that one day, divine justice would reward them for their propriety. But when Judgment Day does arrive, it’s a logistical disaster. Too many people, not enough staff. So when Howard finds that due to a clerical error, he has been mistaken for the genocidal maniac Vlad the Impaler, he begins a downward spiral into what seems like a never ending abyss of paper work and mindless officialdom.

Synopsis

An autobiographical documentary, a fiction that's also an essay and an extended poetic meditation on the ability of the image to represent experience.

Sarah Turner's film is a ghost story that explores what we forget and how we remember. The stunning imagery comes solely from the window of the Trans-Siberian train, shot first in 1988 and then again in 2008, and culminating at the haunting expanse of Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world.
 

Synopsis

In a Perfect World what would you wish for?

A 12 minute film poem using the visual theme of a wishing tree, created from the surreal and lyrical answers given by the students of Centre Academy Special School, London.

Synopsis

Planeat is a provocative challenge to our love of meat and dairy. Tracking a group of scientists, the film forces us to confront the evidence that a heavily animal-based diet is bad for our health, environment and future of the planet. However, with the help of some innovative chefs, these problems can be solved.

Synopsis

Post is written, directed and produced by London based filmmaker Giada Dobrzenska.

Post delves into a writer and artists complex and fractured spirit and mind, when a young woman starts receiving anonymous fanmail.

Written and made in response to Nick Bantock's visual novel 'Griffin and Sabine' Post is a psychological response to Bantock's work- reading into what his stories suggest but dont spell out.
 
Post is a short experimental film which screened at the raindance film festival in 1999 and the portobello film festival in 2000.

Post is an experimental sound/visual narrative short.

Synopsis

Shot in the run up to the 2008 Olympics, this documentary follows Aifeng, a young sex worker in a Beijing massage parlour. Like many migrant workers in modern China she is struggling to support her family back home. When she suddenly loses her job, Aifeng faces her biggest challenge yet.