Projects in genres: Comedy

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.

Synopsis

Developed from a collaboration between dancer Pete Shenton and film maker Laura Smith, Shaker is a tongue-in-cheek mix of dance and comedy, in which a man tries to capture the heart of a female choreographer, who's only wish is to disappear.

Synopsis

"We were sexy, stylish, we had short sharp songs. We had a kind of manifesto, which was that we were against everything else that was around at the time - which probably accounts for our almost complete lack of success." Singer Pat Reid looks back on his band, the heroically ill-fated Evangelista.

Synopsis

Heartlands is the richly comic story of a man who decides to give up his local shop and travel on an odyssey across the heartland's of England to retrieve his first love, his friends and his dignity.

Colin is a naïve, gentle man whose life is turned upside down when his wife leaves him for the captain of the local darts team. He follows them to Blackpool from the Midlands on his beloved Honda 50, stopping and meeting an odd variety of new friends on the road who in different ways help him work out what he has to do to mend his broken heart and salvage the rest of this life.

The film is a humorous tale of innocence seen through the eyes of a man who has never quite grown up and must, for the first time, confront the outside world. It is set in the beautiful, mysterious landscape of the Peak District in the North of England, populated by a bizarre collection of campers, ramblers and hikers all at one with their surroundings.

Synopsis

London 2001. The future has arrived, but Jaz and Naz are disappointed with the science fiction they grew up with. Until their unintentional involvement with a bunch of East End criminals makes a dream come true.

Synopsis

This comic drama is about three different people on a survival weekend, where the only food is our Hero - a streetwise chicken called Lunch, who is determined not to become anybody's last supper! The film is told from the chicken's point of view and was shot in the Western genre.

Synopsis

An offbeat comedy set in the badlands of an East London park. Our distraught hero meets his fairy godmother who enlists the help of a magnificent seven to reunite him with his lost love, culminating in a trade-off with all the intensity of a spaghetti western show-down.

Synopsis

A man goes through three years of a relationship in three days. A romantic comedy.