Emmott and Rowland were sweethearts whose romance played out in the village of Eyam during the Plague of 1665/1666. Theirs was a sad and romantic tragedy, which has captured the imagination of those who read about it over the following hundreds of years.
'52 Portraits' is an epic love song written to an art form. Dance.
'52 Portraits' is a series of moving image portraits of dancers accompanied by sung autobiographies. It captures the profound, funny and surprising power of their subjects, revealing the stories, thoughts and struggles of dancers in an unexpected way.
Conceived by choreographer Jonathan Burrows, composer Matteo Fargion and video maker Hugo Glendinning. The idea behind the project was to catch both the individual and unexpected brilliance of individual performers, but also the larger collective concerns of dance artists, which accumulate over the course of the 52 films. Originally conceived as a digital project, it began with ideas of the familiar; the common; the shared technological situation. These short gestural portraits were released online every week over a year. These videos now form the chapters of this film.
What emerges in this film is a political and sociological gesture, interrogating the numerous ways artists are subject to hierarchies, stereotypes and marginalisation of any kind. The result is a hugely varied and personal story of what it means to be a dancer.
Revisiting the audition process for the character of Kanchi in Powell and Pressburger’s 1947 'Black Narcissus'. The coveted role went to actor Jean Simmons.
By auditioning only Indian ex-pat or first-generation British Asian women and non-binary individuals, filmmaker Michelle Williams Gamaker re-casts a Kanchi for the 21st Century, who crucially speaks.
A dark comedy-drama, that follows the story of Arifa a British-Pakistani woman who reaches a crisis in her life when the escalation of her feelings for intriguing but evasive ‘professional gamer’ Riccardo, coincides with the reappearance of her estranged father, Hameed.
A Filipino family is caught in a long-winded catering delivery for their niece’s wedding in London that seems to pull them further and further from the reception itself.
Shahid struggles to find love in the British Asian community due to the stigma of his divorce, several years prior. He then turns to the internet and meets Fatimah and the two hit it off - but he keeps his divorce a secret. Soon, he has to decide between living a lie or risking their relationship.
Seventeen-year-old Ying Ling is away from home training to become a mortician at one of China’s largest funeral homes. Despite her fear of ghosts and dead bodies, she learns the spa rituals; cleaning and massaging the corpses while the grieving families look on.
Ying Ling finds solace from her macabre role through her playful banter with another of the young morticians. Together, they spend their time off talking about their hopes, fears and plans for the future.
As one of many rural-to-urban teenagers working to support her family, Ying Ling must immerse herself in the surreal and grinding world of China’s industrialisation of mortality. With intimate access and moments of humour, we follow Ying Ling as she learns about life while surrounded by death.
Official Selection Berlinale 2017 - Generation 14plus - World premiere
Jess is an eighteen-year-old from London balancing her responsibilities as a daughter with her ambitions of a career in dance. When she is confronted with just how cold and unjust life can be during a journey to work, her perspective of the world around her begins to shift.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Journey Strand
In 1977, immigration divides Britain. What happens when a punk fanzine challenges the status quo?
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2017 - International Documentary Short Film Selection - World premiere
Personal moments are lost in film cuttings or disappear into a coloured fog only to suddenly reappear in new constellation. This is the visual richness of Highview: four, partially overlapping, 16mm images that fully coalesce into a colourful abstract painting but also create a narrative as an exploded montage. (Rotterdam International Film Festival brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand
Set in England against the backdrop of a mass refugee crisis. Amongst the chaos and uncertainty of what lies ahead, is one young man who must question his own humanity when his need to survive takes precedence. How far is he willing to go?
Radical Tendencies is a social realist drama about Tahir Masum, an everyday young university student, whose life is changed when he is racially abused and influenced by a new “friend” into the world of radicalisation.
