Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

1936. David, an unemployed young man, leaves Liverpool to join the fight against Fascism in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. He joins an international section of the Republican Militia on the Aragon front where he experiences the trials and anguish of the war. Wounded, he convalesces in Barcelona and is caught in the conflict on the Republican side between the Communist Party and his revolutionary comrades in the militia. The resolution of this conflict and David's return to the front may seem tragic but his belief in the possibility of revolutionary change is unshaken. His story is revealed only after his death, sixty years later, in letters discovered by his granddaughter.

Synopsis

Inspired by real events, Ladybird, Ladybird is a love story; the story of Maggie and Jorge and their struggle to have a family. Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by Social Services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her and she finds it difficult to escape the image that is described in her official records. Ladybird, Ladybird is an emotional and harrowing story of a woman's fight to keep her children and her relationship intact.

Synopsis

Joanna Quinn’s concise history of the British Empire sees the British bulldog let off its leash before being brought to heel. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

Bob Williams is a survivor. He supplements his dole by becoming embroiled in whatever scam is on offer, from rustling sheep to rodding drains. But now life has dealt him a bitter blow. His van has been stolen and his daughter, Coleen, is approaching her first communion. She needs the traditional white dress, shoes, veil and gloves. Bob's pride is at stake. Where on earth is the money going to come from?

Synopsis

Memory mixes with desire as a museum attendant is caught up in sado-masochistic fantasies inspired by a 19th Century painting of slaves in chains called 'Scene on the Coast of Africa'. The man remembers his past as a singer and delivers Dido's lament from Purcell's opera. Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Panorama 40

Synopsis

Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson) and her sister Helen (Helena Bonham Carter) become involved with two couples: a wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry J. Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave), and a working-class couple Leonard Bast (Sam West) and Jacky (Niccola Duffet). The interwoven fates and misfortunes of these three families and the diverging trajectories of the two sisters’ lives are connected to the ownership of Howards End, a beloved country home. An adaptation of E.M. Forster’s 1910 compelling study of one woman’s struggle to maintain her ideals and integrity in the face of Edwardian society’s moribund conformist values. A classic novel of class relations and changing times in Edwardian England. Cannes 2016 - Cannes Classics

Synopsis

All the fun of the fair, as a pair of conjoined twins wrestle with their sideshow reality, dreams of fame and each other. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

Based on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Derek Jarman's nearly wordless visual narrative intercuts two main stories and a couple of minor ones. A woman, perhaps the Madonna, brings forth her baby to a crowd of intrusive paparazzi; she tries to flee them. Two men who are lovers marry and are arrested by the powers that be. The men are mocked and pilloried, tarred, feathered, and beaten. Loose in this contemporary world of electrical-power transmission lines is also Jesus. The elements, particularly fire and water, content with political power, which is intolerant and murderous. THE GARDEN was originally screened in the Forum programme of the Berlinale in 1991, garnering an OCIC Award - Honourable Mention. Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Forum Archival Constellations

Synopsis

A mythic recreation of the private world of the black artists and writers such as Langston Hughes who formed the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The film switches from archive footage to a stylized version of the jazz and blues era of Harlem to explore white society’s barriers against black homosexuality and self-imposed ‘discretion’. Official Selection Berlinale 2016 - Panorama Teddy 30

Synopsis

In London, four very different people team up to commit armed robbery, then try to doublecross each other for the loot. Official Selection Berlin Film Festival 2020 - Berlinale Classics

Synopsis

Mona Hatoum left Beirut in 1975 for a short visit to London. When war broke out in the Lebanon she found it impossible to return. In this video, letters from her mother in Beirut, written in Arabic, move across the screen. They are read aloud, in English, by the artist. Hatoum's mother is also heard, speaking openly about her feelings and sexuality, accompanied by images of her in the shower. Hatoum's video suggests exile and displacement. She has said it also challenges 'the stereotype of Arab women as passive, mother as non-sexual being'.

Synopsis

Young men find themselves scattered and defencelessly exposed to a merciless sun. Their gaze moves off searchingly into the distance. Deserted places appear to offer vague promises of refuge. On a prison wall, an explosive image of desire emerges, full of hope for freedom. Constantine Giannaris relishes in mixing light and colour with the textures of Super 8 and video footage to express the thoughts of the poet Jean Genet. Greatly affected by the AIDS epidemic, he addresses the desire for love as well as the threat of isolation and death in a restless cinematographic delirium. Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Panorama 40