Projects matching: ISO

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

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

Yoman's Dance, a contemporary London story, investigates how a young Senegalese man with a lack of English, copes in the cosmopolitan metropolis. The central theme of the story is Yoman's battle to overcome his inability to express and articulate. Not naive to the difficulties of moving to a new and foreign city, and armed with a complex history and optimistic attitude, Yoman is well able to meet the many challenges that face him. However, the constant wear of misunderstanding climaxes with the failure of his first short lived encounter, which leads to a final sense of isolation.

Synopsis

Richard, a struggling artist in the midst of a breakdown that has left his career and his love life in tatters, attempts an ill-conceived insurance fraud and gets caught. He is sentenced to 120 hours of community service in lieu of jail. His assignment: to act as a 'caregiver' for Jane, a young woman confined to a wheelchair due to a rare degener-ative neurological disorder. Jane turns out to be anything but a timid and helpless paraplegic. Sheepish Richard finds his charge sarcastic, profane and mischievous, and as uninhibited as he is repressed. At first, Richard is convinced that he's the wrong man for the job, but he and Jane soon settle into a truce that blossoms into a deep and mutually supportive friendship. Then Jane shocks Richard by announcing that it is his responsibility to help her achieve her fondest, most impossible wish: to experience, along with the rest of humanity, the joy of sexual intimacy ... a request that forces Richard into a tailspin of conflicting feelings and wild adventures.

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

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

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

Synopsis

A film to restore your faith in the world, with a tale of quiet charm and astonishing depth from industry veteran Alison De Vere. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

British filmmaker John Akomfrah imagines the lives of a black man and woman who appear in a sixteenth-century drawing by German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer (TIFF 2012).

Synopsis

In the wake of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, a mother prepares a feast to celebrate the release of her eldest son from prison. The family's youngest son goes on the hunt for the one ingredient they can’t afford, encountering his neighbours' varying positions on the recent uprisings. With compassion and gripping realism, Reem Morsi gives voice to the emotional legacy of this historic event (TIFF 2012).