A short animated documentary which investigates the commonly misunderstood mental health behaviour of voice hearing.
Small boxes that contain flip book style animation are presented to show the emotion that people who hear voices feel.
The documentary is experimental and expressive in its approach, where the positives and negatives combine to fully express the subversive nature of a misinterpreted and unacknowledged behaviour.
Essex boy Jim is so beautiful you’d think a Greek sculpture had just come to life. But, with no future in the cultural desert that is his small town and the prospect of fame, fortune and cultural stimulation beckoning in Soho, like many before him, Jim journeys to London.
On his first night, Jim is robbed and left penniless. He spends the night in an intricately made DIY cardboard box home with a homeless kid who suggests he join ‘The Raconteurs’ – a coterie of male escorts whose unique selling point is their encyclopedic knowledge of the arts.
What follows is Jim’s comic descent from unsuccessful escort, to artist’s muse and art authenticator – a journey complicated by a rare psychosomatic condition called ‘Stendhal Syndrome’ which renders him painfully oversensitive to art. Jim’s encounters with paintings by artists such as Caravaggio cause fainting and hallucinations. But while this condition threatens to bring about his downfall it might also open up new opportunities if Jim is willing to grab them.
Official Selection BFI Flare London LGBTQ+ Film Festival 2018 - World premiere
Hotshot Air Force pilot, Rick Janssen, is chosen for a military experiment that will create a human being capable of surviving the harsh environments of Saturn’s moon, Titan. The experiment is successful, turning Rick into a super-human, but it also creates deadly side-effects which threatens the life of Rick, his wife and family, and possibly humanity itself.
Jason Barker’s debut feature documentary A DEAL WITH THE UNIVERSE is a very personal chronicle of becoming a parent. Drawing on the filmed diaries made over the last ten years that document both Jason’s transgender journey as well has his parental journey. This film is groundbreaking in terms of it’s intimate insights into gender identity and new parenthood.
A tale of one North Korean's struggle to leave behind the homeland, this stylised documentary with exclusive access unveils the depths of loss, longing and legacy amongst a community of North Korean defectors who have escaped their homeland to live in the leafy London suburb of New Malden.
Official Selection CPH:DOX 2018 - In Competition Next: Wave Award - World premiere
Official Selection Sheffield Doc/Fest 2018 - UK premiere
Tekoa is a trendy hipster colony for Israeli settlers on the West Bank, where none of the controversial residents want to speak to the media. From the moment filmmaker Iris Zaki arrives, tension fills the air. She sets up a small pop-up film studio in the middle of the small town, and stays put for over one month in order to meet the young settlers face to face. A simple intervention, which creates a complex chain of reactions from those who eventually agree to talk to her. From a woman who in the middle of an interview admits to being a fascist, to another who has survived a knife attack by a young Palestinian – and has forgiven him. 'Unsettling' is made by Iris Zaki alone as a social experiment that highlights the contrasts and contradictions of the settlers' self-perception, but which does so in something as rare as an active conversation with them. A conceptual ploy that places Zaki's film in the field between artistic practice and political activism, and which reaches beyond blind criticism. (CPH:DOX brochure)
Official Selection CPH:DOX 2018 - World premiere
Examining the relationship between ourselves and the other species we share the planet with has opened up new ways to understand our place in the world. This film offers an attempt to give some of these new ways of thinking a cinematic form.
An essay based on a field trip to Wyoming's wild nature, in the company of the bio-philosopher David Abram and the two visionary filmmakers Emma Davie and Peter Mettler. And with an abundance of bison, moose and birds. Both form and thought are unchained in a film that ends up moving (far) beyond man's self-centred view of nature, and into a state of almost psychedelic receptiveness. As Mettler asks in a diaristic note: Are language and modern technology a barrier or an open door between ourselves and the world that surrounds us? And what about the medium of film itself?
Official Selection CPH:DOX 2018 - World premiere
The story of TED Prize-winner Sugata Mitra’s attempt to pioneer a new form of education, seen through the eyes of children in an Indian village and in a northern British town, whose lives are being transformed by his ideas. The film poses the question "What kind of education do children need in the networked world?"
Official Selection CPH:DOX 2018 - World premiere
A sombre and intimate portrait of notorious villain Freddie Foreman, now aged 85 and seeking a catharsis from his sins.
The former London gangster Freddie Foreman is the only one of his generation who survived the English underworld long enough to be able to tell the tale. And this is exactly what he does in 'Fred': Tells his story. Today, he is 85 years old and lives alone in a nursing home, allegedly with several murders to his name and with his memories intact. A long and critical interview with the East End boy who grew up in the turbulent era of the war and became one of London's most notorious gangsters in the 1960s and 1970s, when he hung out with pop stars and football players, is the thread running through Paul van Carter's self-reflective portrait of the criminal mastermind. A film that balances between true crime, deep journalism and colourful cock-and-bull tales from another era with Swinging London as its backdrop. The conversation with the charismatic Foreman unfolds against a richly detailed (pop-)cultural and historical background, where myth and truth meet – not least when he visits the set of the Tom Hardy film 'Legend'. Dark psychology and captivating storytelling in a masterful film. (CPH:DOX brochure)
Official Selection CPH:DOX 2018 - World premiere
A short documentary about the only helpline in the UK for gay farmers. Through a series of recorded telephone conversations and reconstructive visuals, the film uses the helpline as a lens through which to view the experiences of LGBTQ people in the British farming community. In a world that prizes traditional masculinity and in which ideas of ancestry are fundamental, being gay can be isolating. Candid, intimate and shocking, the film offers a snapshot of a group of people bound together by circumstance, but so often disconnected from each other.
Official Selection CPH:DOX 2018 - International premiere
Mary is a young woman in search of a new way of living. Constricted by the hierarchies of the day, Mary defies her traditional family to join a new social movement led by the charismatic Jesus of Nazareth. She soon finds a place for herself within the movement and at the heart of a journey that will lead to Jerusalem.
An authentic and humanistic portrait of Mary Magdelene, one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood spiritual figures in history.
