Projects in genres: Drama

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 documentary, a drama, a story of myth and murder. Wanted is a weird, wilderness, western, set in the Dakota Badlands, where the last herd of buffalo cross the paths of beat-up pick up trucks smuggling bootleg whiskey onto the rez'. This is the mysterious world of the tribal cop, where DNA and dreams are accorded equal value in the hunt for a killer, where mere facts are not enough. This is the story of their loves, lives, work and the mysterious case of the Rapid Creek deaths.

The facts are clear - in a little over 18 months, 8 corpses have been dragged out of a creek. Suspecting race hate as a motive, the Sioux Indians are living in fear.

Intelligent, stylish and unconventional, Wanted is a feature length real life drama that uses both documentary and fiction techniques, as well as the latest digital film technology to combine film and digital video.

As the Sam Peckinpah quote at the beginning of the film alludes to, the clinical facts contained in purist documentary often fall short of the moral truth of a situation. It seems that nowhere is this truer than on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where Wanted was shot.

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

Set in a steamy Glasgow of the early 1950s, the film focuses on the existential crisis of Joe (Ewan McGregor), a rootless young drifter who finds work on a barge owned by the down-to-earth Les (Peter Mullan) and his enigmatic wife Ella (Tilda Swinton). One afternoon Joe and Les happen upon a corpse of a young woman floating in the water. Accident? Suicide? Murder?

As the police investigate the case and a suspect is arrested, it becomes evident that Joe knows more about the drowned woman than he is letting on. Meanwhile, against the background of this mysterious death and the 'murder' investigation, Joe and Ella embark on an intimate and passionate affair.
 
Tim Cumming, writing in The Guardian, 8 August 2003:
Alexander Trocchi was the smack-addled icon of beat literature, whose writings have been eclipsed by a lurid life of porn, pimping and dissolution in New York, Paris and London. But with a new film out adapted from his novel Young Adam, the Glasgow-born writer's life and work are ripe for re-evaluation.

 
 

Synopsis

North Africa, 1960s. An idealistic young English gentleman Simon Murray (Paul Fox) is driven to join the French Foreign Legion after a failed romance. Simon’s romantic illusions are soon shattered when he encounters his fellow recruits, including Dupont (Tom Hardy.) They have all volunteered to escape a past far less innocent than Simon’s.

A sadistic training routine forges the recruits together. As fully-fledged Legionnaires they set out to do battle against the insurgents facing deadly firefights among the villages, hills and deserts of North Africa. But when French President De Gaulle grants Algerian independence, the Legion sides with the ‘Pied Noir’ French Nationalists against mother France. Loyalties are torn apart. Comrade is turned against comrade. Simon and Dupont must face each other across a moral divide, their conscience dictating their actions; blurring the distinction between hero and deserter.

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Anti-Racist Neo-Nazi campaign film for Norwegian State TV.

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The wife of a sheep farmer faces several challenges as a newcomer to a village.

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Two young Americans chasing The American Dream on the B roads of Britain, find the wheels coming off their Jack Kerouac inspired fantasy.

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A group of youthful robbers are looking for a retirement fund. But the mob and the police want them to keep working - for them.

$teal is an action packed robbery story. Lead character Slim is as smart as they come and has come up with a daring plan: pull off five heists in a week, using a different extreme sport each time to make the getaway.

But after only two heists the gang net $20 million in untraceable bearer bonds. Why risk your neck when you've made more money than you've ever dreamt about?

However, a crooked cop has traced them (supposed to be on the good side, he is rotten to the core) and wants a piece of the action. In fact he wants it all. He forces Slim and his gang to go through with the rest of the plan, but they're going to have to hand him all the money from each successive heist. Only the last heist is going to be a bloodbath: every member of the gang is not going to get away alive from that one.

Slim has two other minor problems: the bearer bonds are owned by the mob, and suddenly the young gang have a holy hitman on their tails.

And Carmen, Slim's newfound girlfriend? She's a cop.

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Exploring the threshold between the authentic and the fake, the apparitions of identical twin sisters guide the viewer deep into an investigation of the memory arena. Through the mirror and behind the curtain, the reflection of a play is trying to be witnessed.

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A young man stops at a telephone box to call his mother, but she is busy and takes an age to answer the phone.

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Manchester, 1976: Cambridge educated Tony Wilson, a Granada TV Presenter, is at a Sex Pistols gig. Totally inspired by this pivotal moment in music history, he and his friends set up a record label, Factory Records, and proceed to sign a number of bands destined to be some of the most influential artists of their time. First, Joy Division, who go on to become New Order; then come the Happy Mondays.

What ensues is a tale of music, sex, drugs, larger-than-life characters, and the birth of one of the most famous dance clubs in the world, The Hacienda. Graphically depicting the music and dance heritage of Manchester from the late 70s to the early 90s, 24 Hour Party People documents the vibrancy that made Mad-chester the place to be.