Three films made from found footage, video diaries, performance and to-camera discourse. Music and narrative voiceover connect the chapters searching for subjectivity through various existential backdrops; from responses to love with addiction, pain and release, to a detective story set in Jaffa and Tel Aviv, and finally a dance across Europe in search of a happy ending.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Experimenta Strand -World premiere
Following artist Bill Drummond over two years of his 12-year World Tour: At work in Kolkata, India, and in Lexington, North Carolina, doing his self-imposed 'work' – building beds, baking cakes, making soup, shining shoes – to the variously amused, perplexed or annoyed reactions of those around him.
With shots of water supplied by volunteers around the world, International Waters is a poetry film about how we are all connected by water and it it to be valued because it will still be here after we have gone.
In the small town of Quaint, Bruce Levin owns a respectable B&B establishment. Sleeping around with various women behind his wife's back, he does not realise that his actions are soon to catch up with him in the form of a mysterious traveller, Sya.
This Science Fiction docudrama/mockumentary revolves around a dystopian future world and the possible consequences of today's actions. A young reporter highlights the issues a mind controlling drug has on the population and the moral aspects of a higher powers influence.
As this reporter begins to visit various individuals, the homeless and those about to loose everything trying to survive or thrive in this new world of "Recycling", he thinks on the right and wrong of what he records. But as he comes to the end of his investigations, visiting the person in charge of this new world he realises that things are much worse that what he ever imagined..
A personal portrait of British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran documented by Sheeran's cousin Murray Cummings. Following this modest performer’s creative processes, from an early-morning jam in the garden to a finished song, from the first chord to the honed lyrics. Whether observing Sheeran’s collaboration with producer Benny Blanco, the tension during a recording session at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, or paying a visit to Sheeran's first musical mentor at his old high school, Cummings gives voice to the people who know Sheeran the best. Drawing on photos and family, Cummings makes use of his own memories and the various stages of Sheeran’s development to create a portrait of a man obsessed by music. The film eschews the celebrity hype to concentrate on the intensive work on the current album in California’s creative quarter, providing us with intimate insights into the workings of this musician as he navigates between his own artistic aspirations and the demands of the music industry.
Official Selection Berlinale 2018 - Berlinale Special Gala - World premiere
In the Highlands of Scotland, a girl suffers the suicide of her best friend. In a town renowned for it’s growing suicide rate, she spirals into a mid-twenties crisis.
Witty and sarcastic, her manner is rapid and quick fire. If only someone could hear her hilarity. She can’t seem to connect with anyone and her awareness of mortality consumes her.
She forms relationships with various men in attempts to find herself again. She meets a man simultaneously enduring a mid-life crisis and she develops an anonymous connection with an old man over the phone who is at the end of his own life.
None of them give her the answers she needs and ultimately, she is left to confront herself, and what's truly haunting her.
Written and directed by Karen Gillan, this surreal coming of age tale is her love letter to her hometown.
“How can you be criminalised for being born the way you are?” asks George Montague, a 96 year old WWII veteran, beginning this documentary. His words echo through the film.
“ARE YOU PROUD?” meets key campaigners and investigates the organisations and events that have contributed to substantial progress within the western LGBTQ+ liberation movement, focussing on the history of Pride in the UK. It celebrates that progress, whilst exploring the controversial questions over the continuing relevance of the Pride march, and highlights the international battles still to be fought.
Combining archive footage, interviews, vox pops and reportage, the film guides us through the history of the Gay Pride movement in the UK. We meet founders of the Gay Liberation Front, founding members of Stonewall (The UK’s leading LGBTQ+ lobbying organisation), the organisers of various Pride marches across the UK, groups such as Black Pride, Trans Pride Brighton and Queer Picnic. The film celebrates the progress that has been made, we are also reminded of “the fact that there are an increasing number of people out there who feel emboldened in hating queers.”
How does memory work? How can experiences be handed down from generation to generation? How does the act of narration change the experience? Three young men and their grannies go on a quest for their historic and personal legacy. There’s the British spy with a bone-dry sense of humour, the Hungarian communist who survived the Holocaust and the German dancer whose look back turns out to be the most difficult.
Unlike many recent documentaries which focused on conversation and raised their protagonists on a pedestal of awe, the “Granny Project” takes a different approach: playful, not afraid of confrontations, sometimes silly and seconds later honest and emotional. An unconventional attempt of the grandchildren’s generation to ask, on a different level, questions that drove their parents to the streets in the 1960s. This film neither aims to be antagonistic nor accusatory. Instead it’s perhaps naive but no less necessary attempt to understand the other. When the three grannies sit around a table with their grandsons and various interpreters we realise that two things at least are necessary to really bring the past and present in contact: an honest interest in one’s opposite party and a good translation. (Dok Leipzig brochure 2017)
Official Selection Dok Leipzig 2017 - World premiere
A journey by train somewhere in Britain throughout the thoughts of various passengers in 21st century post-Brexit delving on the history of Britain.
There is a train of thought floating around between each passenger during the journey. The train journey is interrupted several times when the train has stopped, and the voice of the train driver is heard through the speakers. During the long and often agonizing and irritating sets of announcements by the train driver the passengers are forced to endure the agony of hearing his voice and what he is saying.
The protagonists are taking the shape of puppets and humans and they represent the diverse population of the United Kingdom.
'Relic 1' forms part of Larry Achiampong's Relic Traveller: Phase 1, a multi-disciplinary project manifesting in performance, audio, moving image and prose.
Taking place across various landscapes and locations, the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration.
