Using double screen, the filmmaker juxtaposes her domestic family history with that of Nelson Mandela prior to his arrest. The artist considers the roles that personal and political histories play in opening up the narratives of a place.
Liliesleaf Farm, located in Rivonia South Africa, was the headquarters of the military wing of the African National Congress, (‘Umkhonto we Sizwe') in the early 1960s. Nelson Mandela lived at Liliesleaf under an alias. ‘Operation Mayibuye’ was an ANC undercover campaign of sabotage intended to bring down the apartheid government.
Ideas for the film originated with 8mm film footage and photographs of
Gaal-Holmes’ immigrant family at Liliesleaf. Her German and Hungarian parents had recently moved to settle in South Africa, and Liliesleaf became their family home for a short time in the late 1960s.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
Washed-up actor Richard Thorncroft peaked with hit 1980s detective show 'Mindhorn', playing the titular Isle of Man sleuth with a rather unique ability. As a captured MI5 Special Operative, Bruce Mindhorn's eye was replaced by a super-advanced optical lie detector, which meant he could literally 'see the truth'. Mindhorn escaped and fled to the Isle of Man, to recuperate in the island’s temperate microclimate, and became the best plain-clothes detective the island had ever seen...
Decades later, when a deranged Manx criminal demands Mindhorn as his nemesis, Thorncroft returns to the scene of his greatest triumphs for one last chance to reignite his glory days, professional credibility and even romance with former co-star/paramour Patricia Deville.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Laugh Strand - World premiere
The real-life episodes contributing to a devastating hate crime are powerfully told in one shot.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Debate Strand
New Year’s Eve in a Lesbos port. A filmmaker meets Noor, a young Syrian woman. They make a short film together with a phone.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Debate Strand - World premiere
A recreation and contemplation inspired by the 31-mile walk of refugee Abdul Rahman Haroun through the Channel Tunnel. On arrival to the UK Haroun was arrested under an arcane Victorian railway law.
The language in this bylaw, when juxtaposed against the physical and emotional feat of traversing 30 miles of the Channel Tunnel supplies the terrain for this film.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand
The North London band, Wolf Alice (who take their collective name from an Angela Carter story) have had a rise to prominence that might have been bends-inducing were it not for their tightness as a group.
In Summer of 2015, the deliciously dark, hook-and-riff-filled sound of their debut album, My Love is Cool inspired NME magazine to crown it, “the debut of the decade”.
Director Michael Winterbottom joins the band on the road, capturing sixteen different gigs and daily life backstage. The resulting tour film, which records the tour from the point of view of a new member of their crew, is a refreshingly unusual one with unexpected twists; revealing the relentless, sometimes unglamorous graft of playing loud, hot, physical music, night after night. But the film also mesmerises, offering a structure that reveals more, at every stop on the road, of the nuanced musicality of the full band, and the bewitching talent and charisma of front woman, Ellie Rowsell.
Official Selection Berlinale 2017 - Generation 14plus
By shooting through the take-up reel of a 16mm film projector, this experimental nature documentary remediates the iconic landscape of the American south-west to unnerving effect.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Short Film Competition - Experimenta Strand
A multimedia feature film about gentrification in Brixton, London, incorporating fiction, documentary, performance art, photography and animation.
Nina, is a young stifled artist who returns to her community after a long absence - she is soon painted as a symbol of gentrification. As she struggles with her own complicity, she embarks on a mission to create a piece of art that can bring her community together.
Real life testimonies from people directly affected by gentrification in Brixton are woven alongside the story of Nina's journey, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Debate Strand
A mysterious woman travels through the threatening territory of film noir and the enigmas of philosophy.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand
A well known gothic horror film is re-appropriated, re-animated and given another life via the filmmaker's 16mm laboratory. Visually hovering between the conscious and unconscious, the film’s frame lines shift between lucid imagery and unfocused narrative.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
A classic interview with Helen Mirren from 1975 is performed as a song by Kathryn Elkin, backed by a choir of associates and friends whom she corrals into chanting in loose harmony.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - World premiere
