Projects in genres: Drama

Synopsis

Greer’s weird. Everyone in the Village thinks so... This ravishingly visual short takes the audience on a beautiful journey to its dark heart. Ruth Paxton has written and directed a captivating tragedy where virtue is not rewarded and dreams don’t come true.

Synopsis

1 Day is a high octane caper through a day in the life of an inner city hustler. The film follows Flash whose day gets steadily worse when he finds out he suddenly has to repay a debt to his big head, Angel, and he has to find the money fast. As more and more people get on his case and the clock starts ticking, Flash is pursued by everyone from a rival gang, the police, three irate babymothers and his granny.

Entirely street cast film, the film was shot on location in Birmingham. It features original hip hop and grime tracks - as well as gospel, reggae and spirituals -making it the first ever British hip hop film. While Flash gets robbed, harassed and shot at, the film explores life for many young men in the Afro-Caribbean community which originated the urban music at its heart.

Synopsis

Every man has a song in his heart, so what do you do when someone else is singing yours?

Set in Manchester, London and Barcelona, A Drop Of The Pure tells the story of a Manchester lad who returns home from London to set up an Acoustic Night above a pub, to get a his soul back and play from his heart again. Then he must fight to save the night from closing.

Mixing drama and documentary and including performances from some of the best of Manchester's acoustic scene.

Synopsis

An engaging film documentary in the style of 'What the Bleep Do We Know', 'Sicko' and 'SuperSize Me' which follows writer/producer Paul Duddridge as he attempts to host his own 'mini Olympics' where teams are split by race rather than nationality. It's all quite harmless and silly but exposes some uncomfortable questions, misconceptions and prejudices that most of us hold.

Experts discuss: What race really is, how many races there are, how they evolved, the differences between them.

Filmed on location in California, Arizona, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Ohio and the UK - A Film About Races is an irreverent exploration of the common myths and misconceptions about race - definitely not a film about racism.

Synopsis

Explores a dark and fragile world of adult-hood in cosmopolitan London. Set in the year 2006. John and Francis have been friends since college, seven years ago. Everything they do has become repetitive and uneventful, unwilling to ever take any risks to improve themselves.

Without his best friend to comfort John, during the worst year of his chronic depression. He begins to depend more and more on his secret night-time hobby, taking intimate photos of Mandy Thompson a former college student and John’s first love.

A Mutual Friend is an in-depth portrayal of everyday life. A stark and riveting reminder of the sinister side of human nature, a vicious cycle of self-harm, vengeance and blind ignorance.

Synopsis

A Time And A Time is a film constructed entirely from archive footage shot in Bristol over the last century. Three specific locations are chosen and filmed images from these geographical points are cut up and reassembled so that we recreate the place with people and buildings and vehicles that span time.

A 21st century office worker crosses a road that has just been blitzed, a woman from 1910 watches a man on a mobile phone kick a football. The distance that time creates is removed and these people are reunited in location.

Synopsis

Seventeen year old force-of-nature Emelia starts a new job at The Cliff House, a small hotel run by the dysfunctional Fischer family. Beth Fischer, also seventeen, is cramming for her exams in a desperate bid to escape to University. Dad Jonathan is an author. Once the bright young thing of the literary establishment, he is now suffering interminable writer's block. Wife Joa runs the hotel Jonathan bought with earnings from his first book. She resents it, him, and everyone around her as she gave up her 'promising career as an actress' for this.

Emelia is an aspiring writer; believing she is following in the footsteps of her great-grandfather Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. Jonathan sees promise in Emelia and begins to tutor her, but their relationship quickly crosses the pupil-teacher line and they embark on a love affair. At the same time, Emelia and Beth strike up a surprise friendship: Emelia's free-spirit helps Beth learn to let her hair down and Emelia is inspired by Beth's determination and focus.

Secrets are revealed as the threads of the story collide and unravel. Can Emelia get rid of the Albatross that hangs round her neck and rewrite herself?

Synopsis

Two Eritrean girls enchant with fragmentary tales of escaping their country, telling us what it feels like living as an unaccompanied child refugee, alone in London.

An intimate portrait, highlighting the emotional fallout of political conflict commissioned as part of London Borough of Islington's 'Kick Islamophobia' campaign.

Synopsis

A drama based on a true story in which a restaurant chef haunted by his past, challenges a village mayor's opposition to a proposal for a motorway. The ramifications lead ultimately to devastation and inspiration, as seen through the eyes of a young restaurant pianist.
 

Synopsis

This is a hard-hitting documentary about Condoleezza Rice, an extraordinary but little understood woman who rose from segregated Alabama to become the most powerful woman in the world. Incisive and shocking, this is the first retrospective film on the Bush Administration. It overturns the popular misconception of Rice as a yes-woman to President Bush to reveal her as his most enduring confidante, and thus responsible for much of the Bush legacy. This political, biographical documentary tells a Faustian story of a woman whose hubris tempted her into a pursuit of power that destroyed her core values, and hurtled America into a perilous new direction.
 
Dr Rice leads her own defense, through a series of candid interviews. We have exclusive interviews with her three most authoritative biographers: Marcus Mabry (Twice As Good); Glenn Kessler (The Confidante); and Antonia Felix (Condi).
 
The film's most disturbing revelations center on Rice's role as Chair of the group of 'Principals', whose role was to select and authorize torture techniques, which included water-boarding, fingernail extraction, and sleep deprivation. Condi signed off on the orders to the CIA with the words, 'This is your Baby, go do it!'.

Synopsis

Ana’s husband has died. She finds herself alone, isolated in her home on the outskirts of a rural village in North Devon, trying to start again. It is a cold February; grey, wet, misty days blur into one.

At first Frazer is there as support, a solid presence, a man’s man: someone to lean on. Yet Frazer is also lost. Ana is young and beautiful; he is older, trapped in a marriage that died years ago.

The relationship develops. There is tension; it’s complicated. Guilt is felt on both sides and as time passes Frazer begins to fall in love with her.

Confused emotions and suppressed desire drive the two towards inevitable  conflict until finally Ana must confront her true feelings for Frazer and, with  or without him, move on. And this can be her only certainty: that by the end, things will be beginning again.

Ana Begins is a subtle and intricate love story that explores and embraces the confusions of suppressed desire.

Synopsis

A doctor develops a strange illness – anaphylaxis, a severe allergy to human skin. He struggles with his inability to touch people until he discovers that dead bodies don’t trigger his illness. He changes his job to work as a pathologist, dealing only with dead bodies. This is when he encounters a dead poet. Her corpse appears in his autopsy lab, tattooed from neck to toe with writing. Imprisoned as wife and mother, she suffered from postnatal depression. Writing was her only solace, but she sought escape so much it became a dangerous obsessive compulsive disorder. Her psychiatrist forbade her to write. But she did, tattooing her body with her life’s story – and died as a result.

As the doctor reads her tattooed story he discovers a profound bond between his solitude and hers. She becomes his only chance for a human connection and he reaches to her across the boundaries of death with one last act – of love.