Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

Titanic Town, set in the 70's Belfast of bombs, bellbottoms, Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen, is a sometimes raucous, poignant and comic tale of one woman's crusade to stop the war. Bernie McPhelimy, feisty, hot-headed and fierce tempered, becomes an unlikely heroine for peace but her innocence brings the battle to the centre of her own home and into the heart of her daughter's first great love affair.

Synopsis

In a Kansas City motel, an independent film crew is shooting a sequence on closed-circuit TV which explores the thin divide between intimacy and violence. All day long, the motel's boss stares drunkenly at surveillance monitors showing all the activity in the building. The film scene sparks off very different reactions in the boss and in a young woman who works at the motel.





Later, confusion over real and 'fabricated' surveillance tapes exposes an unspeakable threat to the young woman. Ted, the film's director, realises too late the reality of the danger she is in.





Reality and fiction come into conflict, and the characters are forced to test their abilities to deal with the complexities of emotional crisis.





The film explores the notion that all forms of surveillance used in contemporary society fracture people's identities, creating electronic and dislocated personalities that exist and operate autonomously from the individual.





The film examines the consequences of our increasing obsession with the 'need to know', and explores how effortlessly technology and surveillance have become accepted as an invisible presence that provides us with a vision of reality or 'technological truth'.





How far removed are we from being able to communicate innocently and emotionally, from being able simply to 'touch' or connect with one another, without the pervasive need to dissect and evaluate?

Synopsis

Trautonium rediscovers a virtually forgotten pioneer of electronic music, Oskar Sala, and his invention, the Mixturtrautonium. Aged 87, Sala is the only living soul able to play the last surviving model of this most complex of all early electronic musical instruments. His career saw collaborations with some of the biggest names in contemporary music.

Synopsis

Nineteen year old Iris thinks she can handle her mother's untimely death. She doesn't understand why her older sister Rose is so upset. Surely life goes on, and in order to prove this Iris leaves her boyfriend Gary and moves into a bedsit.
In her new home, she begins to transform herself by dressing up in her mother's wig, fur coat and sunglasses. A new sexually confident Iris emerges and she begins to haunt the streets and clubs of Liverpool, picking up men. Iris thinks that she is in control, that she is having fun. However, her increasingly manic behaviour is exacerbated by her combative relationship with her older sister Rose. The two sisters have always competed for their mother's attentions and her sudden death brings to the surface their feelings of jealousy and rivalry. Iris becomes increasingly estranged from her sister, her friends and her ex-boyfriend, who is trying to win her back.

Synopsis

Steve is 24 and lives on a council estate. Sophie, Steve's girlfriend, is more fortunate, but is naively excited by Steve. So when Steve shows Sophie and a mutual friend Pete, a handgun, her excitement grows. Pete is an easily influenced 23 year old, who follows Steve. But when he sees the gun, he gets scared. The gun is for a reason.

Synopsis

After her mum disappears in mysterious circumstances, Lorna grows up with a fascination for the unexplained. She and her boyfriend, Gordon, set off together in search of the truth.

Synopsis

Unmade Beds is a black comedy about vanity and desire in modern America. Set in the sexual jungle of the New York singles scene, two men and two women frantically pursue their impossible dreams. Equipped with ample provisions of self-delusion, misogyny, anti-semitism and homophobia, Brenda, Michael, Aimee and Mikey are on the road to heterosexual fiasco.





Barker hired a research staff who combed New York for potential characters. Their search led them deep into the New York singles scene. They attended singles events, played the personals, and ran ads in the back page of the New York Press. Disguised as singles on the prowl, they canvassed bars and cafes in Manhattan's diverse neigh-bourhoods, until they found the 'cast'.





Employing his unique brand of 'real-fiction' Barker then directed his 'cast' under feature film conditions during the summer, fall and winter of 1996-97. During this period he wrote and rewrote his script in response to the unfolding events in their lives. 'I'd say 90% of the script was based on the actual behaviour and language of the four principal characters' says Barker. 'The rest is a pack of lies'.

Synopsis

The British career of an American sports therapist is going nowhere, in fact it has ground to a halt and he contemplates a return to the United States. Young widow, Suzanne, is the proud mother of underachiever, Ben and six year old Natalie. Whilst she worries about Ben, her friends worry about her and frequently meet to confer on her future and find her a new romance. Meanwhile friend and philanderer, Frank, a dentist who practices hypno-therapy, uses this method to further his chances with Suzanne. However, in the tradition of all the best romantic comedies, nothing goes according to plan...

Synopsis

Tord is a 16 year old who spends most of his time watching films, TV and playing computer games and fantasizing. In his daydreams he can do virtually anything: be a popular comedian, star in a new Die Hard film and pick up the girl of his dreams. While his friends go to the hottest disco in town and pick up girls, Tord can do nothing but daydream about the same things. But all this is about to change when he meets Marvin....

Synopsis

The state of society now is caricatured in a well-to-do but dysfunctional family contrasting sharply with the smoothly operating society of wasps in a nest over their heads. Wasps is a film about insects, infestations, nervous energy, control, chaos and untimely extinction.

Synopsis

A chance reunion in a cafe; a remembrance of a childhood acquaintance set against a vivid landscape of recollection.

Synopsis

In this richly funny London-based romantic comedy, a young female barrister takes on an arrrogant defence lawyer in a high-profile case, only for them to fall unexpectedly in love with each other.