Projects in genres: Woman Director

Synopsis

Marina is a forty-something Russian woman living in a small village in South Leicestershire, England. Seven years ago she married Gregory, a village garage owner, collector of Morris Minor cars and Ipswich Town supporter. They met when Gregory went to seem them play against Torpedo Moscow. Marina moved to England with her five year old daughter in the hope of happiness and a secure future for her child. A journalist and a writer in her previous life, she now works as a local hairdresser and in her spare time writes for the parish magazine. Gregory loves her, and her daughter seems to flourish in a private school, but Marina isn't satisfied with her life, but can't really explain why. The feeling increases when she meets Valentina, an old friend from Moscow. She is a successful writer and Marina asks herself whether maybe she could also write books in Russian, her native language which nobody seems to need in England. A chance encounter with a touring string quartet from Moscow throws her out of her daily routine, and unexpected love opens up all the questions which Marina has been hiding deep inside. It's a story about love and about people who are moving from place to place in search of home, but can't find it anywhere. It's also a story about middle age - the age when one has already (or not) achieved something in life, but when there is still time to start everything anew. And it's a story about a Standing Stone on the outskirts of a small English village where, some of the villagers believe, aliens might land one day.   For this film, Marina Blake won Best Actress at Kinoshock 2008. In addition, the film won awards for Outstanding Achievement, with particular reference to direction, screenplay and cinematography, and for Best Actress, at the Faithful Heart Film Festival, Moscow, in October 2008.

Synopsis

A west bound, no-place comprised of flyovers, slip roads and cracked concrete. Here thirty year old Marvin is stuck in a teenager’s life: working in motorway services, spending his evenings in abandoned, overgrown fields - watching the light change, apparently biding his time. Traffic rushes through, trippers stopping only for fuel and food. Rural life has been abandoned. Villages sprawl into deadend suburbs. Only Roland has been here as long as Marvin, relentlessly talking of leaving, never doing it, aggravating the still confidence of Marvin’s moments. When the catalyst for change arrives it does so in the strangest form, that of a foul-mouthed foreign adolescent. She appears in Marvin’s abandoned field to practise her extraordinary act, and this image of a tiny, runtish girl, hovering an inch above the long thistles, sets Marvin into a spin. Everything changes. As he fights to help her, something finally changes in Marvin.; something that could take him anywhere. September conjures a world of mesmerizing skies, failures, jealousy, hopes, outsiders and motorway roars to painting original cinematic landscape. Cars race below, leaving Marvin on the bridge, we trundle down the motorway, light intermittently hitting the windscreen through the trees, and the film flutters out of existence to leave its audience, like Marvin, strangely altered. Financed by the UK Film Council, the film stars (Nicholas Aaron) as boy/man Marvin, and (Tim Plester) plays Roland. Produced by Met Films, September is a long short, mashing HD and 16mm, with music from Kaada, Crescent, Bass Clef and Tom Bugs. Writer/director Esther May Campbell picked up the Best British Film Award at Encounters 2008.

Synopsis

She, A Chinese tells the story of, a young Chinese woman, MEI, who leaves her monotonous village life behind for the excitement of the nearest big city, Chongqing. However, life there doesn't quite turn out as she expected it; fired from her factory job, she falls in love with SPIKEY, a hit man whose own past soon catches up with him.  A spur of the moment decision takes Mei to London, where she marries an elderly man, MR HUNT.  A new life begins for Mei, trapped in the silence of Mr Hunt's house, alienated and bored. Her frustration at life with Mr Hunt leads Mei into an affair with RACHID, an Indian immigrant who runs a local take away restaurant, and she moves into the backroom of the restaurant to live with him.  Rachid decides to return to his own country, leaving Mei pregnant and alone, facing an uncertain future.

Synopsis

A poetic exploration of memory and loss, 'Steel Homes' is a portrait of life at a self-storage warehouse. Self-storage units are windows into human histories: the silent cells with their discarded objects and dust-covered furniture are inscribed with past dreams, secret hopes and lives we cannot let go off.

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Strigoli is a Vampire movie that defies categorization. Shedding a fantastic light on a post-communist Romanian village, the film introduces us to an ancient myth: Strigoi, the souls that rise again after death to seek justice if they've been wronged, their appetites intensified by a hunger for blood. Vlad (Catalin Paraschiv) investigates a mysterious death in his grandfather's village that raises questions about land ownership in the community. The trail points to ex-communist bully Constantin Tirescu and his wife, but when Vlad confronts them, he discovers that the richest landowners in the village have become real bloodsuckers.

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Two disabled drivers fight over a disabled parking bay - with drastic consequences.

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Supramanya (Supraman) is a young Indian boy whose blind mother is struggling to make ends meet. When she gives up on taking care of him, Supraman takes matters into his own hands.

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What happens when a Rwandan genocide survivor meets a young man from Darfur? This is a tale of a friendship made on fragile emotional grounds. A subtle treatment of a complex subject, set in the world of London's night cleaners.

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Tad's Nest a place where eels mature before being compelled to return to a location using only memories of sensations to guide them. The film examines the way memories are held as sensations and the ability of memory to invent people and places to perform the sensations. Compulsion to return, replay, and revisit.

Synopsis

People wait for something to happen. They lay on the fields and in the houses and wait for the arrival of a foreign element that promises to change their lives. It won't be until this arrival that they will be set free.

Synopsis

Winner of the Best UK Feature Award 2008 at Raindance Film Festival,  The Blue Tower is the first feature by award-winning Indian British writer/director Smita Bhide, set in Southall, West London's colourful and bustling Indian community. Mohan dreams of escape: from his unhappy marriage, his overbearing family, his unexciting prospects. He finds it by falling into an affair with the pretty young nurse looking after his cantankerous bed-ridden Auntie Kamla. At first the relationships feels like the answer to his prayers, but there are secrets to come out and before long he's on a road to disaster, his every step dogged by the looming menace of the Blue Tower waiting for him round every corner. Featuring a cast of Asian actors and shot on HD, The Blue Tower plays like something by James M. Cain with touches of Great Expectations thrown in. It's not a 'corner-shop comedy' or a Bollywood pastiche but something new in British-Asian cinema, a full-blooded story of illicit passion and desperate hope which presents a unique and cinematic portrait of multicultural Britain.   "Dark domestic thriller marks a new departure for British Asian cinema" (Empire Online).   "Smart writing and dark humour elevates The Blue Tower from an accomplished thriller to an extraordinary cinematic experience" (Deepa Mehta, Director "Water").   Best UK Feature 2008 Raindance Film Festival.  

Synopsis

In the stark aftermath of a neurological pandemic, two strangers come together on an isolated Scottish farm. April, a 16 year old survivor with a dark past has survived alone for months. Daniel, a man bereaved, clings desperately on to hope of life in the outside world. Questioning his own sanity in the face of the maddened and distant cries of the suffering, he finds that the true enemy lies much closer to home.