Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

In 1971, after being rejected by Hollywood, Bruce Lee returned to his parents’ homeland of Hong Kong to complete four iconic films. Charting his struggles between two worlds, this portrait explores questions of identity and representation through the use of rare archival interviews with loved ones and Bruce’s own writings.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - World premiere

Synopsis

Described by Nkiru as what a relic finding of a Detroiter’s public access TV watching patterns which make up the constellation of Techno might be, BLACK TO TECHNO, through a visually rich and diverse collage of intersecting narratives, conceptual frameworks, archival references and original imagery, asserts Techno not just as a musical gesture but as a philosophical, sonic and anthropological one; a model for the overcoming of alienation, the undoing of oppositions: between the individual and the means of production, body and tool, soul and machine.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020 - Perspectives - World premiere

Synopsis

Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - US Documentary Competition - World premiere

Synopsis

Before Alice found Wonderland, and before Peter became Pan, they were brother and sister. When their eldest brother dies in a tragic accident, they each seek to save their parents from their downward spirals of despair until finally they are forced to choose between home and imagination, setting the stage for their iconic journeys into Wonderland and Neverland.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - Kids - World premiere

Synopsis

When 80-year-old independent farmer Willis travels to Los Angeles for an indefinite stay with son John and his family, two very different worlds collide. Mentally declining Willis is abrasive, caustic, and funny, bringing old wounds from the past and years of mutual mistrust to the surface.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - Premieres - World premiere
Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2020

Synopsis

A loving 16mm ode to Scottish poet and avant-garde filmmaker Margaret Tait. Artist filmmaker Luke Fowler circles her Orkney home surrounded by red tulips and buzzing insects, visits her films' locations, and zooms in on her notebooks of ideas. We also listen to Tait's poem 'Houses', about what it means to feel at home.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Futures - European premiere

Synopsis

The visuals created for Kamasi Washington’s modern jazz classic 'Hub Tones' invoke ideas of Amiri Baraka’s Nation Time and the immediate ecstatic connection Nkiru had to the rhythms of 'Hub Tones'. The main inspiration behind the film comes from a traditional ceremony called Oboni from the Ikwerre tribe - Nkiru’s tribe by heritage - whereby through repetition of movement and instrumentation, those in the material realm (this realm) go through a process of channelling divine ancestral connection into the spiritual realm. With each transmission and changing tone of the music, those taking part go deeper and deeper into a hypnotic and transcendent state until reaching a climax in the spiritual space. HUB TONES is a visual and spiritual ode to this experience.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Perspectives

Synopsis

LOOK THEN BELOW was filmed in Somerset, a place transformed into a coloured, mist-enveloped island in an oily ocean with a cave basking in a subterranean glow. Time seems to stand still there.
After SLOW ACTION and URTH, this is the final part of a trilogy developed with American SF author Mark von Schlegell.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Future - Ammodo Tiger Short Competition - World premiere

Synopsis

When British aid worker Hana returns to the ancient city of Luxor, she comes across Sultan, a talented archaeologist and former lover. As she wanders, haunted by the familiar place, she struggles to reconcile the choices of the past with the uncertainty of the present.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - In Competition - World Cinema Dramatic Competition - World premiere

Synopsis

The starting point for this video piece is an image of artist Maryam Jafri's sculpture 'Anxiety', that has been turned into a stock photo for licensing on a major photographic agency's website without the artist's prior knowledge or permission.
A voiceover traces the work’s trajectory from a readymade sculpture for sale at an art fair to a stock photo for licensing online and finally, to a video commissioned by a Kunstahalle, a space meant to guarantee the autonomy of art. The work reflects upon the role of originality, artist labour and copyright in our culture of sampling and remixing.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 -Bright Future

Synopsis

Once upon a time, the Venezuelan village of Congo Mirador was prosperous, alive with fisherman and poets. Now it is decaying and disintegrating - a small but prophetic reflection of Venezuela itself.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - World Cinema Documentary Competition - World premiere

Synopsis

Quiet and demure Joseph (Ben Whishaw) leads a modest life in London, shuttling between his solo apartment and the airport where he forms part of the security team. His birthday goes unnoticed by his colleagues and only mildly celebrated by his irritable parents. Something seems to be simmering in Joseph just under the surface. It only takes a few strange incidents to unlock his impulse to go on a reckless, frantic, and unbelievable journey through the streets of the city as he determines that boundaries and niceties will no longer govern his life.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - World Cinema Dramatic Competition - World premiere
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Panorama - International premiere