The story of whisky has been told many times. But this film takes a different view, showing how it has been shaped by geology and climate, by tales told on the side of the road and in the corners of pubs. Whisky is a product of folklore and myth, of music and alchemy, of chance rather than design. This is the twisting, shifting and multi-layered tale.
In this journey through the lesser-known parts of Scottish whisky culture, we follow spirits writer Dave Broom on his quest to gain a deeper understanding of his national drink. While whisky has never been as popular, it is often seen in the context of being a brand which sits outside people’s lives. It’s often thought of as a drink which speaks of the past rather than engaged with a dynamic present.
Dave has been writing about spirits for over thirty years, but whisky is his particular passion and a subject on which he has many strong opinions. This film traces his journey back to the roots of whisky and show how it is an integral part of a wider Scottish culture, rather than just a product.
Barbara adjusts to her new life behind bars, her crimes start to haunt her. Her new cellmate Evelyn is about to start an obsessive and ghostly friendship with her, one that Barbara cannot escape from...
A woman gets stuck in a lift with the engineer that's fixing it, only to discover it's the man she had a one-night-stand with just a few weeks before. As the awkwardness manifests, it becomes clear they both have very different interpretations of the events that unfolded that night.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Love Strand
Kit, a young British Vietnamese man, returns to his birth country for the first time in over 30 years. He was just eight years old when he and his family escaped Saigon as 'boat refugees' during the Vietnam-American war. No longer familiar with this country and unable to speak his native language, Kit embarks on a personal journey from Saigon to Hanoi, in search of a place to scatter his parents’ ashes. Along the way he meets his estranged family and falls for Lewis, an American whose father had fought in the war.
During his travels, Kit finally starts to connect to the memories of his parents and his own roots.
Official Selection Karlovy Vary International Film Festival - World premiere
Working with artist Neil Ferguson, filmmaker Peter Bromley visits the homes of Marcel Duchamp and Gustave Flaubert. They explore their art and literary works partly through the performance of art actions.
Filmed in London, Varengeville sur Mer and the City of Rouen.
Ed and Alice, trapped together in a lift. Ed has just attempted suicide and his life is slowly bleeding away. Alice has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and is torn between her desperate phobia of blood and her overwhelming desire to save his life.
Ex-paratrooper Jack Bishop is adjusting back to civilian family life whilst trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter. Whilst Jack was away fighting he felt guilty for not being around for his little girl whilst she was growing up.
SOLDIERS OF EMBERS follows Jack into an exciting dramatic story of brotherhood and vengeance.
Through the journey of the film we see how Jack goes from kind caring family man and changes into a dark, vengeful character due to the hell and tragedy that he is put through. By the end of the film we see how one decision that Jack made could have bought a completely different outcome.
You might think America is a democracy, where freedom of speech and basic rights are guaranteed. But at its heart, there is a great injustice. Against all the odds several extraordinary citizens are banding together and fighting back for their basic right to clean water. Armed only with facts and their illnesses, they risk arrest to take on the might of industry and government. From Flint to the Navajo Nation, via Standing Rock, this is their story.
Artist, activist and performer Jess Thom, who has Tourette's syndrome, conducts a revealing investigation into one of Beckett’s most intense monologues, ‘Not I’, in which she asks the audience to reconsider issues of disability, representation and social exclusion.
This film is radical in its asking of exciting and novel questions about the portrayal of disability in the arts and the exclusion of disabled people as cultural and creative producers. Jess moves past the reverence that surrounds Beckett’s work and makes it accessible to everyone, while raising questions about cultural curation, who has access to theatre and who can perform it.
What price do the farmers of Punjab pay for the rice on our plate?
The north Indian state of Punjab was said to have produced enough food to feed the entire country during the Green Revolution. However, the overuse of chemicals introduced to enhance production poisoned the water with carcinogens and created an infertile soil addicted to chemicals. Just as the land is dependent, so are more and more farmers becoming addicted to drugs, which help them to work longer hours in the fields. The expense of the chemicals and drugs forces farmers to take loans from 'Arthis', the rich middlemen who increase their interest rates without warning. Over 50,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last ten years, by drinking the toxic chemicals that are murdering Punjabi soil.
An inside look at the emergence of the ‘pickup’ industry - a business where self-styled seduction coaches travel the world, charging a small fortune to teach men skills they claim will guarantee them success with women.
It can be a highly lucrative occupation, with many companies earning millions of dollars each year. But, it is also an industry rife with controversy and scandal; several teachers have been deported from countries for their contentious methodologies, and pickup businesses are often the subject of fierce public criticism.
Despite this, men the world over collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars to attend seminars, download online courses and have one-on-one coaching sessions with instructors they feel can give them the dating life of their dreams. In the minds of students, many of these instructors become more than just teachers - they become idols.
From the glossy exterior, where courses are packaged as self-improvement, to the dark underbelly of sexual assault, pyramid scheme marketing and secret collusion, this documentary pulls back the curtain to reveal a world that is fascinating and horrific in equal measure.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - Making Believe - World premiere
