Projects matching: ISO

Synopsis

Mumbo Jumbo is a sumptuously photographed fairy tale of contemporary culture in the classic tradition of Gulliver and Alice in Wonderland.

Meet Thomas Doubting, a total loser. He can't sell his songs. He can't get a job. He's been evicted. His girlfriend dumped him. Even his dog ran away. With nothing left to live for, he decides to end it all, but he can't even do that right. In the process, he meets a mysterious old fellow who gives him a magic amulet, as if that's going to help. But then Thomas notices a headline in a newspaper the guy leaves behind - a large reward is being offered for the return of the beautiful Princess Vanilla to the land of Sinmouth. So it's off to Sinmouth in search of the Princess and his fortune.

Once there he meets a cast of Oz-like characters who believe Thomas is the next 'Mumbo Jumbo', a mythological Sprite from the sixth century who's been summoned to free them from the tyranny of an evil businessman, Mr Bounder. Bounder has kidnapped many of Sinmouth's villagers, ruined the town, and imprisoned the Princess herself. His intent is to build a financial empire on organic, high-yield fertiliser made from the remains of his fellow villagers. Thomas's work is cut out for him as he muddles and stumbles his way through the magic land on his quest to save the Princess and the world - or at least a mythological part of it.

Synopsis

When Tom comes crashing into Jessica's life from the boughs of a burning tree, she is both alarmed and intrigued by his dark nature. The woods are Tom's sanctuary from his distressing home life and they become the world where he and Jessica form a bond which is powerful and uncompromising and ultimately self-destructive.

Synopsis

For his feature debut, musician/photographer/film-maker Roger Thorp returns to themes that have informed much of his previous work, which includes films for the International Labour Organisation and the United Nations. Naked August traces the relationship between two loners, a young drifter and a musician, who meet and find in each other a kindred spirit to banish the feelings of isolation and alienation that have dominated their young lives.

Starring in the lead roles are two young graduates from the Bristol Old Vic, Sophie Clarke and Adam Penny.

Shot on digital video in February and March this year in Bristol, the film, which has been blown up to 35mm, was produced by Parrallel Pictures, the company founded in 1993 by Iain Brown and Bill Chamberlain. Says Chamberlain: 'The film is very much in the European arthouse tradition, in terms of its themes and its style. Although it deals with quite downbeat issues of alienation and malaise, it's a very uplifting film.'

Synopsis

In 1963, Yale University placed an advert in the local newspaper calling for volunteers to participate in a memory experiment. Obedience is the story of one man who, having volunteered for the experiment, finds himself in a struggle between his moral conscience and a malevolent authority.

Synopsis

Set in a French château and famous concert halls around the world, Off Key is a tale of swollen egos, raging libidos and enough dysfunction to keep New York's psychiatric community in the money for all time. Ricardo (Joe Mantegna), the group's charming philanderer, is caught off guard by the announcement that his estranged daughter will shortly marry Armand (George Hamilton), the trio's pompous Frenchman. As distasteful as he finds the prospect, he is not one to pass up an opportunity to reunite the three tenors, who split ten years prior following some inexpert gunplay and a drawn-out court battle. Fabrizio (Danny Aiello), who has a classic case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, completes the picture. As the three men, children legitimate and otherwise, past and future wives, and a streetwise New York prostitute flock to the wedding, the world's press gather to record the events, little knowing that the three tenors are about to put on the show of their lives.

Off Key is directed by Manuel Gómez Pereira who is acclaimed for his phenomenally successful comedies, and produced by Andrés Vicente Gómez, whose credits include over 90 feature films in 30 years of production. Among these are the 1993 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film Belle Epoque, The Girl of Your Dreams with Penelope Cruz; and Carlos Saura's Goya in Bordeaux, five-time winner at the 1999 Spanish Academy Awards.

Synopsis

How would you cope if you were suddenly confronted by your very own Guardian Angel, who could read your mind and would be there to help you sort out your life? This is the question Baggy and Sam have to answer one Summers' day, after yet another night on the town.

'Sam' (Andrew Lincoln - Boston Kickout, Gangster No.1) and Baggy (Andrew Rajan - Loved Up, Savage Hearts) are true mates, intent on having a good time all of the time. All this changes when their respective Guardian Angels, 'Zeke' (Shaun Parkes - Human Traffic, Rage) and 'Paris' (Susannah Harker - White Mischief, Surviving Picasso) turn up. Before being incarnated as humans, Zeke used to be a squirrel and Paris a dolphin. Hardly the best of credentials - All this leaves 'Alison' Sam's platonic best friend, in the dark.

They are all on a journey, overseen by the Angels' Mentors, there to help them succeed. Paris needs to get Sam to rediscover his voice. Zeke has to help Baggy mend a broken heart. But Paris is falling in love with Baggy and Baggy isn't helping matters. Sam feels Baggy is ruining things, Alison thinks Sam wants Paris and in doing so, realises she wants him herself.

Zeke wants to help Baggy and Paris get together, but can't work out the right way. Paris is an Angel and must not fall for Baggy - Or can she? Paris has a choice between this world and the next. Sam has a song to sing to his true love. Alison has only to wait. Baggy must understand what love means and Zeke has to find the right way.

The Mentors look on: 'All will become clear'.

Synopsis

Brendan, a porter at the Dublin Medical College, is plagued with financial strains and a gamblers' sordid past. Not only has he let down his wife, but also his daughter who desperately wants to go to university. However, never one to crumble, Brendon has a plan. He has found a 'golden goose' - an object with a hidden talent sequestered deep within the archives of the college which may provide the Midas touch Brendon so needs. This source has an uncanny knack for picking the winning horse at the local races.

Needless to say, Brendan and his colleagues intend to exploit this 'talent' to its fullest - risking everything on their ability to outwit the local bookies and other, rather more unexpected, obstacles. They are, quite literally, betting their futures 'On The Nose'. In a race against time they need just one last win to set themselves up - before the inevitable happens and their chance of happiness is snatched away from them forever.

Synopsis

Set in the United States at the height of the Cold War in the fifties, One Of The Hollywood Ten examines the personal struggle and triumph of Herbert Biberman, a film director, in his crusade to continue his filmmaking career in the face of the McCarthy-led Blacklist. At its most personal, Biberman's story is a compelling drama of individual perseverance and familial sacrifice and, at its most political, a conspiracy thriller and ever-relevant testament to societal paranoia and hate-mongering.

The film opens by establishing the historical climate - anticommunist paranoia, Congressional persecution of 'unAmerican activities' and friends informing on friends - that pervaded the early years of the Cold War in Hollywood and beyond. In detail, the various reactions of members of the film community to persecution is explored, from the high-profile trip to Washington, D.C. by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in support of those persecuted that ended in his famous recantment, to the varying tactics of those not so readily remembered in pleading either the fifth or first amendments, or merely pleading to not be asked to speak at all. At the centre of this maelstrom is Herbert Biberman and his wife, Academy Award-winning actress Gale Sondergaard, who refused to name names and who stood by their acknowledged communist beliefs. For this, Biberman was cited for contempt of Congress, becoming in the process one of the 'Hollywood Ten', and was sentenced to serve jail time in a federal prison in Arkansas.

Act two evolves from the more familiar contextual elements of the Blacklist in the first act, to follow Herbert and Gale's attempts to restart their film-making careers on Herbert's release from prison. Herbert, unable to be re-instated to the Director's Guild of America, an organisation he co-founded in the thirties, resolved to strike back in the only way he knew possible: by making a film: The Salt of the Earth.

Synopsis

The 1981 Toxteth riot was the most violent civil disturbance in Britain this century. Over three days more than £11 million worth of property damaged, 1,000 police injured, 500 people arrested. Citizens of the deprived area reacted angrily to high unemployment and years of racial harassment from the police.

Hearing from the rioters, community leaders, victims, local and national government members, this unique documentary recalls how this situation escalated out of control. Ordinary people caught up in the riots gave their views and accounts as to the reasons for, and the inadequacy of the authorities' response to, the days of disorder and destruction.

Synopsis

Following a successful job interview in London, Alison asks her old school friends to leave their Brighton homes to flatshare up in the capital. Taryn already commutes to London where she works as a graphic designer while aimless, unemployed Charlie agrees to sleep on the inflatable sofa in the lounge.

Over the course of the next three months there will be enough sex, death, poetry and daytime television to try the patience of even the closest friends.

Synopsis

French/German border - late 1944. The forests of the Ardennes. A platoon of battle-weary German soldiers, forced into confusion and retreat by advancing Allied forces, take refuge in an isolated Siegfried Line bunker. As night falls and a rainstorm begins to blow, the exhausted soldiers huddle in the concrete shelter - trapped by the advancing GI's.

A brief and violent assault upon the Bunker from the surrounding Americans is followed by a period of tense calm and, in the cold darkness of the bunker, the wise older soldier, MIRUS, mischievously relates to the others a story he'd heard from locals in the nearby village. The ancient surrounding forest, he reveals, is haunted; witches were burned here in the middle ages and, during the Black Death, the infected victims had been slaughtered and buried here, in an attempt to cleanse the village. At the same time, the newcomers also learn of adjoining tunnels, which connect the bunker to an abandoned underground munitions storage complex which might well be the only way out.

An eerie noir thriller in the classic tradition of Val Lewton's 'psychological horror' films of the 1940's, relying on character, mood and inference, rather than the contemporary trend of graphic violence - a chilling metaphorical tale which combines the best elements of Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron and Robert Wise's The Haunting.

Synopsis

The Navigators follows the fortunes of a group of rail track workers based at a South Yorkshire depot as the privatisation of British Rail takes effect. When Harpic (so called because he's clean around the bend), the depot boss, gives Paul, Mick and the rest of the gang their new working brief, the company's 'mission statement', 'performance-related pay' and no paid holidays seems like a joke. But before long the choice is very clear to the gang; take their chances with redundancy cash and life as casual agency workers, or work for the company under the new rules...