Projects matching: Jones

Synopsis

It is March 1997 after eighteen years of Tory rule, Britain is at a political cross-roads. The prime minister of a beleaguered government decides to go to the country in a vain attempt at persuading the electorate that his party is worthy of a fifth term in office. Meanwhile, one William Davies, widower and retired quarryman, has arrived at a cross-roads of his own. A lifelong socialist, he feels angry and resentful towards a government that has all but abandoned him in his old age. Having been persuaded by his children to buy his council house in the booming eighties, he discovers that this selfsame government, which made such a virtue of home ownership some ten years earlier, now expects him to sell the property in order to pay for his care should he ever have to go into a nursing home.

When William Davies walks out of his council house one morning, he is putting into action a desperate and hair-brained scheme which he thinks will outflank the system. But things go badly wrong when the old man realises that he has made a terrible mistake. As election day approaches, William Davies and his family learn some home truths - about one another and about their true feelings for home.

A film which addresses the subject of home and, in particular, one family's differing perceptions of it. The story is set in the remote Welsh-speaking heartland of north west Wales and takes place during the weeks leading up to the general election of 1997, when the Conservative party is finally removed from power after eighteen years in government.

Synopsis

An urban comedy which features drug barons, pom dealers and aspiring DJs - and an unfortunate case of canine mistaken identity.

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Set in the United States at the height of the Cold War in the fifties, One Of The Hollywood Ten examines the personal struggle and triumph of Herbert Biberman, a film director, in his crusade to continue his filmmaking career in the face of the McCarthy-led Blacklist. At its most personal, Biberman's story is a compelling drama of individual perseverance and familial sacrifice and, at its most political, a conspiracy thriller and ever-relevant testament to societal paranoia and hate-mongering.

The film opens by establishing the historical climate - anticommunist paranoia, Congressional persecution of 'unAmerican activities' and friends informing on friends - that pervaded the early years of the Cold War in Hollywood and beyond. In detail, the various reactions of members of the film community to persecution is explored, from the high-profile trip to Washington, D.C. by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in support of those persecuted that ended in his famous recantment, to the varying tactics of those not so readily remembered in pleading either the fifth or first amendments, or merely pleading to not be asked to speak at all. At the centre of this maelstrom is Herbert Biberman and his wife, Academy Award-winning actress Gale Sondergaard, who refused to name names and who stood by their acknowledged communist beliefs. For this, Biberman was cited for contempt of Congress, becoming in the process one of the 'Hollywood Ten', and was sentenced to serve jail time in a federal prison in Arkansas.

Act two evolves from the more familiar contextual elements of the Blacklist in the first act, to follow Herbert and Gale's attempts to restart their film-making careers on Herbert's release from prison. Herbert, unable to be re-instated to the Director's Guild of America, an organisation he co-founded in the thirties, resolved to strike back in the only way he knew possible: by making a film: The Salt of the Earth.

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A dream within a dream within a dream within a crash.

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Dedication. Commitment. Consummation. A High Priestess of Pain and her Devoted Disciple immerse themselves in Holy Slaughter. Tastes Like Tuna brings you the edited highlights.

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The morning after the night before, a rapid spiral of increasingly disastrous telephone conversations chart the certain ruin of young Phil's day as he attempts to fib his way out of one scrape after another.
 

Synopsis

Light satiric drama about the chaotic pleasure of relationships. The young caretaker, Johnny, sees himself as a non-believer in love, until he bumps into a French girl, Marie, under a bed!

Synopsis

In this new film, starring Lee Evans and Kathy Burke, the Martyns, to outsiders, are the kind of people that you'd cross the road to avoid, but though they're the family from hell, once you get to know them you can't help but love them.

Robert Martyn (Lee Evans), an unemployed but optimistic loser, lives with his adoring and long-suffering wife Angie (Kathy Burke). They have two children - Katie, their heavily pregnant fourteen year-old daughter, and angelic Little Bob, their eight year old son who worships his Dad.

Everyday he wakes up thinking that things will turn out better for him and his family, and that one day he'll win one of the competitions he's always entering. All he wants to do is give his wife and kids everything they really deserve.

When Robert discovers that yet again he hasn't won the 'Dream Holiday' of a lifetime, a competition in his local newspaper, he finally snaps. He decides to take the law into his own hands; if he can't win a holiday, he'll just have to steal one!

Synopsis

Annie-Mary is an awkward and secretly rebellious 20 something still living at home in a village in the Welsh valleys with her womanising widowed father. Moral support comes from the odd collection of characters who make up the population of the village but it takes a series of calamities with unexpected silver linings before Annie-Mary can finally stand up and claim her freedom. Very Annie-Mary is a joyful, poignant film about striking out against the odds, and winning in the most eccentric way.

Synopsis

Melancholic postcards of beautifully ugly places, old age, anger and bewildering complacency.

A dance film about what it's like to be a Welsh Boy.

Synopsis

Three years ago, Lawrence Ledbetter, a brilliant, but crooked accountant had a get-rich-quick plan that needed a run-down town and a set of corrupt local businessmen and officials. One day he walked into Weyback.

Every phase of the town's regeneration scheme made The Fellowship, as Lawrence called the Weyback fraudsters, richer and were soon laundering Russian Mafia money, Then, Lawrence left town with half The Fellowship's and all of the Russians money.

Now Lawrence is back in town and with the Fraud Squad circling, the Russians wanting their money and The Fellowship's new leader wishing the obvious imposter dead. He just about manages to keep one step ahead, surviving car-crushing plants, deep river mud, shoot-outs and strangulation. He finds comfort with a night club chanteuse but then finds himself on the wrong end of her gun when the wedding in the bedding goes badly. Led to him by a crazy ex KGB mole and armature ballon strangler, the Russian hit man and his rubber-suited female colleague, Lawrence finally realises what must be done and enlists them in the dead of night under Weyback's new motorway, to serve justice so Lawrence can once again leave Weyback for good.

Synopsis

An intriguing mixture of moody film noir and modern-day western, Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? is the third feature from Pilton Pictures after the controversial The Priest And The Pirate and romantic comedy Happy Ever After. Trading on genre cliches of cheating hearts, two-timing friends, avenging angels and the iconic influence of Clint Eastwood, it is laced with a dark humour that lends a distinctively Scottish flavour to some quintessential American ingredients.

'I think it's very European in the way it was shot, but quite American in the way it deals with narrative,' explains writer/producer/director Hugh Farrell. 'It is a kind of hybrid - a sort of haggis-noir western. I also think people will find it very funny and respond to the talent of first-time actress Sam Tonks.'

Devised, rehearsed and shot in a breathtaking eight weeks, the project brought together a dozen first-time actors to work on fleshing out a script, developing their characters and testing the storyline. Shot in 16 days, it made the low budget its aesthetic, seeking creative solutions to financial obstacles.

'People have embraced the Dogme school of film-makers as a breath of fresh air and a different response to the sometimes overwhelming industrial process of making films,' says Farrell. "We've found an energy and immediacy in that kind of highly condensed, pressurised way of working that we chose.'