HONG KONG BLUE: Mike Marlowe is a UK photographer who - after traumatic frontline news work in Ukraine in 2014 - decides to seek a less serious life by joining the London paparazzi. In 2019 a 'working holiday' in Asia leads him to Hong Kong, just as that city state comes under increasing pressure from the Chinese government, pressure that provokes huge pro-democracy demonstrations. Mike's interaction there, with the locals - including wannabe and free spirit Susan - puts both of them in the spotlight... and in danger.
After receiving a marriage ultimatum from a woman he's not sure he truly loves, Rob is up against the clock to realise he should stop looking for the fabled 'Miss Right' and learn to see what's right in front of him.
Cotton is a plant with connotations that far surpass its delicate white flowers, bringing to mind issues of enforced labour, of exploitation and of colonialism. Yet the very crop for which Creole women were forced into labour, offered a form of herbal resistance: cotton root bark could be used as birth control. Herbal knowledge carefully gathered and held, was used amongst the women to defy a lineage of servitude. Beneath the inherent violence of the slave economic system, we find quiet resistance and moments of deep, loving rebellion. IF I COULD NAME YOU MYSELF (I WOULD HOLD YOU FOREVER) is in memoriam of this legacy.
Artist Film Commission for HOME, Manchester, March 2021
In this wryly observed piece, the filmmaker and his cranky father finally head to the neglected home where his grandparents once lived. Like the chalet itself, the men’s relationship is long untended. Sorting through the dusty relics proves to be an emotional task.
My grandmother was a T'ung-yang-hsi. It is a tradition of pre-arranged marriage, selling a young girl to another family to be raised as a future daughter-in-law.
The audiences may glimpse the past, imagine women's situation in our times, and look forward to striving for real gender equality in the future.
Official Selection Hot Docs Festival 2021 - World premiere
Prudence was put away – in a mental hospital, for ‘her own good’. She’s been there since 1920 and it’s now 1965. She tells her story to the wall every day while she struggles to stay sane.
SPEAKING IN SILENCE gently explores the experience of Selective Mutism from within. Selective Mutism is an anxiety disorder, through which the sufferer is unable to speak in many social settings. Extending far beyond shyness, the silence becomes an insurmountable wall to the outside world. A wall built on fear.
Told from the filmmaker’s perspective the documentary forms a time traveling poem-come-warning of the challenge to agency faced in the condition. The story is addressed to Saarah, a young Londoner struggling with the shifting challenges of mutism as she moves into adolescence. A fellow voiceless soul that the filmmaker encountered just in time.
A filmmaker delves into the world of online sex workers by becoming one herself using a false persona on OnlyFans. Realising it's not as straightforward as she first thought, she begins pushing her own boundaries to attract followers. But will it ever be enough?
Seeking to escape his alcoholic-depressive father and the constant humiliation and bullying at school, Arthur Braxton finds peace and first love in a deserted Edwardian bath house inhabited by a beautiful water nymph, Delphina.
Unbeknownst to Arthur, Silver the pool's depraved custodian keeps its enchanted waters alive with the ritual sacrifice of children and Arthur is set to be his next victim.
Arthur Braxton must dig deep and overcome his fears to face up to Silver, the only way to end this cycle of killings; free Delphina, and save himself from his own personal demons.
THE EARTH ASLEEP discovers hidden truths and forgotten histories about the 2011 Great East Thoku earthquake and tsunami, the most powerful disaster ever recorded in Japan. The documentary includes invaluable archive research, testimonies, ceremonial rites, spiritual beliefs, bringing a sensitive understanding of loss and trauma. Image, poetry and music intertwine in an evocative rhythmic montage of archive and original visual elements, with a score beautifully rendered and inspired by Japanese instruments, and a poem on-screen highlighting the role of the metaphor, to mark the 10th year commemoration of the lost and missing people.
The Earth Asleep is commissioned by HOME, Arts Council England and The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Supported by University of Salford.
