Projects in genres: Comedy

Synopsis

In The Calcium Kid, a mockumentary comedy, Orlando Bloom plays young milkman Jimmy, an amateur boxer who by a bizarre twist of events ends up fighting the world champion in his home town.

Synopsis

Joanne Conlon's local church are replacing their statue of the Virgin Mary. Joanne is appalled as her grandmother claims she once saw this statue cry. She takes the Madonna home. But her father, Frank, has just been sacked. Joanne's mother, Sylvia becomes an instant success as a bingo caller, but Frank is furious - shouldn't he be the breadwinner?

Joanne's Aunt Doreen places the statue inside her chip shop. That evening the statue cries once more. Now people come from miles to see the miracle! The local priest offers to take the statue back home. It doesn't stay in the church long. When the back of the statue's head comes off a sponge falls out. Doreen had 'encouraged' the Virgin to cry so she could sell more chips!

Sylvia is offered a singing assignment, but Frank forbids it. His anger and jealousy boil over. He throws the statue into the Mersey. Sylvia jumps in after it. Frank jumps in to save his wife, forgetting he can't swim. Husband, wife and mother of God are all saved by emergency helicopter.

Joanne finds the perfect home for the icon, on the grave of her grandmother. As the Virgin stands on the grave the icon starts to cry - all by herself!

Synopsis

A haunting black comedy about a man who no longer uses his name because he's decided he's ceased to deserve one, and a dog called Rothko who says he is the man's lawyer. As reality bleeds into hallucination, Rothko decides to take the man for a walk.

Synopsis

Broad comedy based upon the infamous TV character Ali G. Ali unwittingly becomes a pawn in the evil Deputy Prime Minister's plot to overthrow the Prime Minister of Great Britain. However, instead of bringing the Prime Minister down, Ali is embraced by the nation as the voice of youth and 'realness', making the Prime Minister and his government more popular than ever.

Synopsis

Darkly comic digital short about two women who are desperate to have a baby. They arrange to meet a man at a seedy industrial estate in the hope that he will make one of them pregnant.

Synopsis

Meena is twelve years old and lives in the village of Tollington 'the jewel of the Black Country' - in 1972. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. Her idyllic adolescence, surrounded by eccentric relatives and friends, is disrupted by the arrival in Tollington of Anita Rutter and her dysfunctional family. At 14 - blonde, aloof, beautiful, outrageous and sassy - Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita's life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn her salad days sour. ANITE AND ME paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath.

Synopsis

A funny, poignant, thought-provoking story of four very different characters who set out on the longest walk of their lives and discover their true selves.



Arthur, Geoffrey and Andy first walked the 177 miles of Offa's Dyke twenty years ago when they were studying law together at university. They vowed to repeat the walk, but this time the motley crew are joined by a stranger - a forty year old wife and mother in the throes of a mid-life crisis who throws more than one spanner in the works.



As the miles pass in a haze of pouring rain, screaming rows, hilarious encounters and dodgy B&B's, our intrepid travellers discover hidden depths, long-buried antagonism and secret passions...and an unlikely friendship.

Synopsis

Bend It Like Beckham is a British 'Teen-Comedy' about bending the rules to get what you want.

If you're 18, love Beckham and can bend a ball like him the world's your oyster, right? Wrong. If you're Jess - 18, Indian and a girl - forget it. Do you think your marriage-obsessed folks will let you play a Man's game?

If you're Jules - 18, English and a girl - what will it take to convince your mother that just because you play footie with girls doesn't mean you're a lesbian?

Both girls dream of playing professionally - that means going to the States where the girls get paid, get sponsorship and get proper respect. Jess and Jules are on their way with help from their coach, Joe, until they both fall in love with him.

Synopsis

Geena and Jay are star-crossed young lovers from opposite sides of the East London racial divide. Geena is second generation British Asian, born of a Gujurati family. Jay is small town, white and working class.

Fresh from leaving school in the West Country, 18 year old Jay joins his elder brother Darren in London, working alongside him in the East End clothing business. In between humping garments from sweat shop to market place, Jay sets his dreams to music on his guitar.

Geena is also through with school, and starts her business studies course in the autumn. Meanwhile she must earn her keep in the family firm, which imports material and sarees from India. Chafing against an over-protective home life and its strict ideas about a woman's place, Geena escapes as she always has; into Bollywood-tinged fantasies.

When Geena has her fortune told by a jyotish astrologer, she is shocked to be told she's in love. Surely not with the ambitious computer wizz, Dillip, whose BMW she sometimes shares? Or one of the clammy-handed conformists paraded by her parents at innumerable family functions as possible suitors? Then she bumps into Jay, and Cupid's dart pierces both their hearts. Once they have shared the first secretive 'karma-kiss', their worlds become inextricably tangled.

But true love never runs smoothly. Geena's brothers have ambitions for the family business, and are moving into the lucrative but illegal world of 'moodies' - fake designer garments. What's more, their skill and competitive pricing are putting their rivals out of business, most especially the firm of East End wide boys for whom Darren and Jay are working.

Synopsis

Crust is a very original, very funny British character comedy about three ordinary working class people going for gold with a large boxing crustacean in the back of a transit van. And beneath that, a surprisingly warm hearted tale about one man shedding his macho shell and getting back in touch with his emotions. A high concept howler, but rooted in real people with real feelings.

Told against a backdrop of Asda car parks, motorways, Travelodges, run-down boxing gyms, pub car parks, TV Executive's offices, Soho pubs, chippies, disused warehouses, kebab shops, Ulrika Jonsson's hallway.

The story of Bill and his search for that missing something with his one last stab at 'success'. The story of amateur boxer/crustacean opponent Steve and his inability to satisfy Shaz, who's dating beneath her and wants to get into something media-related. And the story of a crustacean suffering in silence, a shrimp in the wrong place at the wrong time, but not half as stupid as it looks.

So fasten your seatbelts and join three slightly hapless Midlanders with big dreams and an even bigger shellfish, trying to make it against the odds in 'Cool Britannia'.

Synopsis

Frantic knockabout tragedy as Bobo is sent to clown prison for a daring but silly crime and must escape to try and prevent his family from bringing shame on all clowndom.

Synopsis

We meet Mel, a young attractive blonde, on her wedding day. Within the hour her new husband, Fred, is dead. She must quickly find a husband to present to her grandmother, who is dying of cancer. In a stable relationship Mel stands to inherit Granny's money. Sipho, the photographer at her wedding, quickly steps into dead Fred's shoes.

When, a few weeks later, Granny dies and the Will is read Sipho is announced the benefactor! It is now up to Mel to find a way to get her hands on what she considers to be rightfully hers. This involves finding another dead body to pull off her plan.

Set in the new South Africa, this film is a black comedy, and while every scene ends with an amusing twist, it is a film that provokes 'thoughtful' laughter.