Funk Queen Betty Davis changed the landscape for female artists in America. She “was the first…” as former husband Miles Davis said. “Madonna before Madonna, Prince before Prince”. An aspiring songwriter from a small steel town, Betty arrived on the '70s scene to break boundaries for women with her daring personality, iconic fashion and outrageous funk music. She befriended Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, wrote songs for the Chambers Brothers and the Commodores, and married Miles – startlingly turning him from jazz to funk on the album she named “Bitches Brew”. She then, despite being banned and boycotted, went on to become the first black woman to perform, write and manage herself.
Betty was a feminist pioneer, inspiring and intimidating in a manner like no woman before. Then suddenly - she just vanished. Betty Mabry Davis is a global icon whose mysterious life story has until now, never been told. Creatively blending documentary, animation and nonfiction techniques, this movie traces the path of Betty’s life, after years of trying, the elusive Betty, forever the free-spirited Black Power Goddess, finally allowed the filmmakers to creatively tell her story based on their conversations.
Official Selection IDFA 2017 - World premiere
An ensemble slice of life in a diner, where rap lyrics become part of the drama.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - World premiere
'Relic 1' forms part of Larry Achiampong's Relic Traveller: Phase 1, a multi-disciplinary project manifesting in performance, audio, moving image and prose.
Taking place across various landscapes and locations, the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration.
With the help of The Advisor, a husband and wife must answer three seemingly harmless questions to create their perfect designer baby.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2018 - Shorts Program - World premiere
A short essay film by artist animator, Jessica Ashman. Using animation and recorded interviews of eight other women of colour artists, the film explores navigating the visual art and animation world as a black face in a white space.
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.
A short film exploring the life and work of prolific artist Faith Ringgold by eschewing linear narrative and drawing connections within her collection of works, in order to hint at a larger narrative at work.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - World premiere
'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.
A tense, psychological thriller set in early 90s London where Drey (Winston Ellis), a minicab-driver-turned-moral-crusader collides with Jinks (Darren Kent), a creature of the night on the tale end of a bad deed. An unsettlingly journey unfolds as they attempt to make sense of their own uncertain destinies.
A lyrical short documentary featuring writer and Scots Makar (poet laureate) Jackie Kay. Jackie explores what identity means today as a Black, Scottish, lesbian writer, revealing how storytelling and imagination can offer us a way to live with – and grow to love – our many identities.
