Projects in genres: Art / Artists

Synopsis

MATTER OF BRITAIN was an English country village’s performance of the Holy Grail myth. In that myth, King Arthur’s knights quest for the Holy Grail in order to heal their wasted land. The performance took place over 12 months from 2023 to 2024 in multiple locations across the parish of Mayfield, East Sussex. Over 300 members of the community took part as questing knights, angelic choirs, guiding anchorites and tempting devils. The performance was documented and subsequently made into an ethnographic fantasy that has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, CPH:DOX, Cinéma du Réel and Open City Documentary Film Festival. The work was supported by an Arts Council England Project Grant, the Lund Trust, High Weald AONB, East Sussex Arts Partnership, the University of Reading and the Museum of English Rural Life.

Synopsis

ANAK WHERE DID WE STAY? is a five-channel film by Sadia Pineda Hameed that brings together The Box’s home movie collection and the artist’s personal/family collection. Rasheed Araeen’s chakras, spouting waves, Beatlesmania, a basking shark, hula dance, an Enoch Powell protest, tidal islands and seafoam floating into the air—the archives converge across time to tell the story of the artist’s mother’s migration from one archipelago to another: the Philippines to the British Isles. The film becomes a gathering site for personal and collective experiences of journeys, resilience and belonging. Road trips unexpectedly reenact the archive, footage finds itself out of context, voices commentate the film as if rewatching a home movie together; mimesis, associations and autonomy are central to the retelling. As camcorders became more accessible from the 1970s onwards, home movies were an unconscious means to rebuild personal archives after colonial displacement, extraction and erasure. ANAK WHERE DID WE STAY?, named after the home movie from The Box’s archive 'Perranporth Where Did We Stay?', unfolds as a conversation between the artist and her mother, exploring the three interconnected journeys of migration, holidays and remembering. Produced as part of The Box’s Reimagining the Film Archive programme (BFI Screen Heritage Fund).

Synopsis

Under the skin of Douglas Gordon, probing what it means to be an artist. Capturing the chaotic energy of a working studio and blurring the lines between art, performance, and reality. The filmmaker's presence challenges the authenticity of the process, exposing the tensions, collaboration, and unpredictability of documenting a boundary-pushing artist. Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2026 - Panorama Dokumente - World premiere

Synopsis

At a time when many people struggle to talk openly about grief, SOLITUDE WITH SCHUBERT asks what role music can play in helping us live alongside loss. The film follows concert pianist George Xiaoyuan Fu as he navigates the death of his father through Franz Schubert's late works. Extending this exploration beyond himself, Fu connects with a hospice bereavement group and performs a recital for them – sharing how music can offer connection, catharsis and solace when words fall short. He then records an album with mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean, reflecting on how the echoes of those we’ve loved and lost stay with us. It’s an intimate portrait of how art can offer solace and meaning, creating a space for grief to be safely felt, shared and transformed.

Synopsis

MOVING SOUND is a speculative work set across 1980s and near-future Wales, shot on super 16mm. In the film, sounds of present day anti-colonial and anti-capitalist strategies for mining strikes are transmitted from Soundcamp streamboxes to the past via an underground, time travelling broadcast. In the 1980s, workers build DIY receivers from Moving Sound portable audio devices, which they use to distribute the broadcast around sites of production and the everyday. First screened in the King Coal Experience (an immersive recreation of the Big Pit underground mine) amidst disused mining machinery, MOVING SOUND blurs fictional 16mm and archival 8mm footage of sonic action to explore how organising converges and enacts across geographies, temporality, fantasy and reality.

Synopsis

“This story I am going to tell you is the same story as any Algerian will tell you when you’re living abroad...” Dear F... is a hybrid documentary that navigates the intricate dynamics between personal and collective histories. Intertwining stories of Algerian migrants and their diaspora. Born in the early 90s, the filmmaker discovers a cache of letters from that turbulent time, shedding light on the challenges faced by Algerians. Blending the past and the present day through conversation with local barber Walid, whose shop is adorned with Algerian identity. The barbershop itself a symbol of transformation, knowledge and community, navigates how migrant identities connect with ideas of home. Dear F... nurtures connections through letters and conversations, always circling back to the starting point. Official selection London Short Film Festival 2025

Synopsis

One of Britain’s greatest landscape artists, Eric Ravilious, is killed in a plane crash while on commission as Official War Artist in Iceland in 1942. His life is as compelling and enigmatic as his art, set against the dramatic wartime locations that inspire him. This film brings to life this unique and still grossly undervalued British artist caught in the crossfire of war 80 years ago, whose legacy largely sank without trace, until now… This is the first full length feature documentary about Eric Ravilious, told in his own words through previously unseen private correspondence, made with the blessing of the Ravilious estate.

Synopsis

Shakespeare’s male-dominated Ophelia in Hamlet committed suicide by drowning. This film is a warning address to all women but directed at Elizabeth Siddall, known for playing Ophelia in the famous Pre-Raphaelite painting by John Everett Millais. Life imitated art, since Elizabeth caught pneumonia whilst posing in a cold bath for the picture, and was also dominated by her unfaithful and controlling husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti, causing her to also commit suicide. In the UK alone ‘200 women take their own lives every year, and nearly 30 women attempt to complete suicide every single day due to domestic abuse’. Parallels can also be made to today’s actresses and Harvey Weinstein, Me Too, and the latest uncovering of the Epstein, Trump, Casablancas etc. case (where young girls were groomed for the sexual appetites of a roll call of powerful, rich men). Villanelle aims to bring hope, rewriting Elizabeth’s fate and the fate of all women facing such distressing thoughts.

Synopsis

THE SONG OF MY LIFE takes its audio-visual style from pop karaoke videos, 1970s melodramas and ballads. It is a duet of absences, marked by a missing vocal partner and gaps in the backing track, which comes from a 1971 easy-listening song of the same name by Filipino actress and singer Nora Aunor. Atmospheric and dreamlike, the film weaves together mesmerising images filmed by the artist - light hitting water, waves on the sea, illuminated flowers - with found footage of crushed cars and a TV romance. These visuals shift our attention between what we hear, what we read, what the artist tells us, what her mother cannot directly say, and the silences in between; interested in the gaps in the telling of stories, what she calls the “quiet and misunderstood spaces” where secrets within a family may be sensed or implied. The need to look for meaning in hidden or alternative spaces also arises from living under colonialism, where estrangement between generations is also the consequence of this. Abundant with clues and coded references, THE SONG OF MY LIFE is like experiencing the retelling of a story - each return unearthing more than before.