'The First Film' is filmmaker David Nicholas Wilkinson’s 32 year quest to prove that in October 1888 Louis Le Prince produced the world's first films in Leeds, England. Once Le Prince had perfected his projection machine he arranged to demonstrate his discovery to the American public in New York and thus the world. However on 16th September 1890, just weeks before he was due to sail to New York Louis Le Prince stepped onto the Dijon to Paris train and was never seen again. As no body was ever found no one could legally fight the Le Prince claim that he invented a camera that recorded the very first moving image. As a result, several years later, Thomas Edison and the Lumiere Brothers were to claim the glory and the prize of being acknowledged as the first people to pioneer film.
Louis Le Prince was never added to history books. But for one lone voice, who worked with him, Le Prince's name and his pioneering work was forgotten.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2015 - World premiere
When Shelly meets Rachel, two dysfunctional girls from radically opposed backgrounds set off on a collision course that will leave one of them shattered, the other re-born.
Set in the forsaken wastelands of Cheshire's little-seen urban overspill, 'The Violators' is a meditation on the meaning of home, and the potency and fragility of young girls' sexuality.
The story of a man with an incredible vision, who helped shape the modern world; Andrew Carnegie. Genius of iron and steel, founder of scientific philanthropy, builder of libraries and institutions, brilliant writer, social philosopher of capitalism and a utopian with an unfulfilled dream – that the 21st century would be a century of world peace.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2015 - World premiere
Residents of a fictional Welsh community share stories and poems of their life in their seaside town.
An adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ much loved classic of modern British poetry.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2015 - World premiere
A feature documentary on the forgotten roots of rap. The story centers around Jalal Nuriddin of "The Last Poets" and the forgotten influence of his seminal record 'Hustlers Convention', an album that changed the face of music and still resonates with meaning today.
Hailed by Grandmaster Flash and Chuck D, sampled by the Beastie Boys, Wu Tang Clan, and Nas, Hustlers Convention was the foundation for todays hip-hop scene. This film tells of one of music’s buried masterpieces: the missing link between soul power and hip hop, which gave its creator the right to claim his title as the ‘grandfather of rap’.
A live action and stop motion animation short film exploring the relationship, communication and personal struggles of a couple caught up in a silent conversation.
In the year 2065, Earths natural resources have been ravaged. A small two-manned space-craft has been given the mission to gather samples on a possibly inhabitable alternative to earth; Atlas 29D. The two astronauts are left stranded in space once their communication with Earth fails. Now, Atlas 3 has been launched. They've just picked up the samples and they are on their way home, when they pick up Atlas 1's signal. Rocket Man tells the story of Scout Kepler; one of the two lost astronauts of the Atlas 1. In the words of Elton John, he's a "Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone". We see clips of his log footage, mainly consisting of him talking to himself and pretending to host a radio-show, ironically, to stop himself from going crazy. We begin with Scout. We are introduced to him when he is already marooned in space, strung out in heavens high, hitting an all time low, talking to himself and slowly, steadily, going off the rails. We are then introduced to the crew of the Atlas 3: Jones and Tomkins. We are initially presented with the radio communication between Ground Control and Jones as she asks permission to investigate the Atlas 1. Throughout the film, we follow Scout, on his journey through loneliness, futility and eventually a kind of nirvana. However, simultaneously we are presented with Jones and Tomkins; the crew of the Atlas 3, as they discover the Atlas 1 and finally go inside and find Scout. It is only revealed at the end of the film, that these ship logs that we have been watching, from the Atlas 1, are simply footage found by Tomkins, on the abandoned spacecraft. When Tomkins reaches Scout, he has been dead for three days.
When two young lovers crash their car into a ravine in the remote mountains of Wales, they are plunged into a lost world. Dragged from the river by a mysterious figure, they are taken to a ramshackle farm, a place untouched by time.
As events unfold we learn the explosive truth about the young couple’s past. More unsettling still, we discover the ghostly truth about Stanley, and the tragedy of the valley he once called home.
By Our Selves documents a four-day walk made by the English Poet John Clare. Toby Jones, Iain Sinclair and a Straw Bear follow in his footsteps exactly 150 years after his death. En route they bump into Macgillivray, Dr Simon Kovesi and the wizard Alan Moore. Meantime the journey is narrated by Toby’s father Freddie, a maverick actor who featured in numerous David Lynch films.
John Clare's escape from Epping Forest; an epic march through hunger and madness, is an English journey to set beside 'A Pilgrim's Progress'. Andrew Kötting, hyperkinetic camper-van captain of Gallivant, sets out in hot pursuit, dressed as a Straw Bear. Father and son, Freddie and Toby Jones, are possessed by the spirit of Clare, and locked in Beckettian embrace: one all-voice and one all-mute.
The writer Iain Sinclair watches from the shadows, Alan Moore waits like a bearded figure of fate, in Northampton and Dr Simon Kovesi hands out the medicine.
Captured in lustrous black and white photography, they discover the only truth of the road; whatever our hopes and delusions, we are always By Our Selves.
Inspired by Iain Sinclair’s Edge of the Orison and John Clare’s Journey out of Essex.
Based on an early 17th century collection of fairy tales by Neopolitan author Giambattista Basile, the film weaves realistic and fantastical elements together in a dark exploration of classic tales.
From the bitter quest of a jealous Queen, to an Ogre thwarting the love of a young princess, to a mysterious woman provoking the passion of a King, these stories weave the beautiful with the grotesque, creating a stunning and unique work of gothic imagination.
Official Selection Cannes 2015 - In Competition
'The Survivalist' is the near future story of a man eking out a meagre existence on a secluded smallholding deep in the forest. When a starving woman and her teenage daughter discover his farm, his loneliness drives him to strike a bargain with them in return for bed and board. But as desire becomes stronger than necessity, the exchange becomes an uneasy, ongoing arrangement which threatens not only his carefully constructed world but also his life.
Wrongfully arrested, Marina is placed in the unfamiliar world of a prison cell. Spending four days on remand, Marina’s distress transforms as she is confronted by the bleak reality of the women she meets inside.
