Projects in genres: Black

Synopsis

As much documentary as it is religious art, as much religious art as it is rock and roll, as much rock and roll as it is rhetoric and as much rhetoric as it is cinema. This unique, kaleidoscopic film is "a richly cinematic experience" inside the lives of worshippers from the congregation of The Greater Bethany Community Church, (now The City of Refuge), in South Central Los Angeles. Bishop Noel Jones, (brother of Grace Jones), is both shepherd and rock as the film weaves between community life, gospel song and his electric church sermons. Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2002 - World premiere Official Selection Locarno Film Festival 2002 Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2002

Synopsis

Isaac Julien's BaadAsssss Cinema is a groundbreaking documentary that looks back to the soulful, strange days of the 70s to explore an exciting and controversial era of film history: the phenomenon that was blaxploitation.

Synopsis

Mohamed Ali is a young African refugee who arrives as a stowaway in a rundown Welsh town. It's Christmas. He is starving, lost. Finally he seeks shelter in a pub. He is thrown out by the landlord but unexpectedly touches the heart of Connie, the landlord's wife. Our short film is an unusual and heartwarming fairytale that reaches beyond its topical subject matter. Whilst entirely fictional, the story is inspired by the real story of a recent asylum seeker to Britain.

Synopsis

This 3-hour documentary tells the story of Studio One, Jamaica's most important record label in the history of Reggae. Filmed in Kingston, the documentary has interviews with many of the artists who Studio One made famous - Horace Andy, Alton Ellis, Ken Boothe, Sugar Minott etc. The main interview is with Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd, owner and founder, and the documentary tells the story of his life and the impact he has had on Reggae music in Jamaica and the rest of the world. Studio One is the foundation label of Jamaican Reggae. Often described as the Motown of Jamaica, Studio One is where the career of literally hundreds of Reggae artists began - Bob Marley and the Wailers, Alton Ellis, The Heptones, Ken Boothe, The Skatalites, Burning Spear - everyone! Lee Perry was a handyman there and Prince Buster a bouncer. The film also visits Trenchtown's old Dancehalls, the Alpha School for wayward Boys (run by Nuns), Tuff Gong Studios and Pressing Plant, Orange street (Jamaica's Tin Pan Alley) and many sites relating to the story. There is rarely seen vintage footage of musical performances, interviews, Haile Selaisse's arrival in Jamaica and even early music videos (from the 1960s). Much of this footage has rarely been seen outside Jamaica. Music is featured heavily in the documentary and the film mixes narrative and musical elements throughout.

Synopsis

This film takes you into different Kenyan communities and explores the tradition of circumcision and also love, marriage, families, rebellion and change. We discover girls struggling with their culture and their loyalty to their parents. Will they be strong enough to break with tradition? And if they do, will they be accepted back into their communities, or will they become outcasts? Fardhosa, a woman doctor, takes us into the Somali community where she attempts to open people's minds to try safer and more humane medical practices. Simalo, a young Masai girl, goes home to confront her mother for having married her off to an old man against her will. And finally, sixteen young girls challenge their parents and take the painful decision to take them to court to stop them circumcising them. This has historic implications for their whole culture. The film shows ancient traditions beginning to be questioned by a new generation that doesn't want to suffer as their mothers have done.

Synopsis

A powerful short film about a young black man who believes he is Muhammed Ali. Based on a ten month study carried out by the film's director Rodreguez King-Dorset for the Department of Health, to explore the issues relating to schizophrenia within black African Caribbean populations living in rural England.

Synopsis

Eleven year old David Wiseman is mad about cricket but no good at it. He has all the kit but none of the skill, and he's a laughing stock at school. So when a Jamaican family move in next door and build a cricket net in the back garden, David is in seventh heaven. But this is 1960s England, and when the neighbours start to make life difficult for the new arrivals, David's Jewish family is caught in the middle, and he has to choose between fitting in and standing up for the new friends who have turned his world upside down.

Synopsis

Between 1969 and 1999 over 1000 died in police custody in Britain. In this controversial documentary four women fight to find out how their own loved ones died. Each family is met with a wall of official silence and the film documents how they unite and challenge this together. The documentary uses powerful exclusive footage filmed over a five year period and witnesses the families' pain and anger at the killings.

Synopsis

Having left Brixton and become a successful business woman, Tiki returns to catch up on her old flame, Soweto. He appears to have wasted his life away, living in a squat. The two people and cultures collide but has Tiki got it all figured out?

Synopsis

An urban comedy which features drug barons, pom dealers and aspiring DJs - and an unfortunate case of canine mistaken identity.

Synopsis

Goldie, the Godfather of Drum and Bass, takes us on a roller coaster ride through his frenetic life. A journey that takes us from Wolverhampton to Tokyo, Miami to Hong Kong; through his years in council care and his life as a musician and international pop star. Along the way we meet his family, his collaborators and his celebrated friends, David Bowie and Noel Gallagher.

Synopsis

A high-octane action thriller set in the post-apartheid South African ghetto. Through themes of racial identification and reflections on Hollywood-style violence, Hijack Stories mixes social commentary and humour while looking at the most painful and violent aspects of South African society. Sox Moraka (Tony Kgoroge) is a talented actor and part of the rising black middle class in Johannesburg. He fled poverty in Soweto to become a well-known television personality for South Africa's new "Rainbow Nation". Sox acts and lives the part, dating his blond co-star and living in a penthouse flat in the white suburbs. While hosting music video shows, the ambitious thespian dreams of becoming an action hero - the African Wesley Snipes. The possibility of landing a role as popular TV gangster Bra Biza sends Sox back to the ghetto to rediscover his roots. Bumbling along in an unfamiliar, violent world, he meets the street-wise Grace, who introduces him to notorious gangster and old school friend Zama Zama or the General as he is endearingly tagged by his posse. The posse consists of Fly, the kamikaze getaway driver, and Joe, a disillusioned activist whose prophetic asides about South Africa's current state provide a constant morality check. They decide that Sox is truly in need of 're-education' and so begins his crash course in the seductive, yet deadly, finer points of gangster life. One terrifying night, Sox learns that gangster life isn't all game play and, as a result, each of the characters' lives will change forever.