Award-winning director Weijun Chen’s new series Law of the Dragon leaves China's cities and heads to the country to examine the impact of the massive changes in China's politics, economy and society on the judicial system in action. This series takes a fresh look at this vast and culturally rich country, examining how justice is served in rural areas so remote and isolated that the villagers have almost no contact with, and are deeply mistrustful of, the central government.
Principally following the austere Judge Chen as he travels around the rural and sparsely populated Xuan-en province, resolving the grievances of the residents and dispensing nuggets of Confucian-Communist wisdom, the series will immerse itself in what matters most to the people who make up much of China’s billion strong population. This is an insightful, refreshing but not rose-tinted look at how justice is being served at grass roots level in this vast and beautiful region.
Tells the story of an eight-year-old boy who aspires to be a hero and embarks upon a journey to prove his greatness - with unexpected consequences. A moving insight into childhood where fantasy jostles with reality as a young boy’s imagination transforms and empowers everyday life.
For different reasons Darryl and Lilly have ended up sleeping rough in the back alleys of London. Over the course of an evening, they find themselves tangled in an escalating problem that they quickly need to diffuse.
Tom, gardener at the big house, can talk to plants but not to women. When beautiful Polish au pair Hannah arrives for the summer, Tom falls for her catastrophically like the felling of one of the giant trees he cares for in the manicured grounds. Tom’s adviser in matters of the heart is young Harry, abandoned by the rich owners of the house to run wild in the gardens. Harry’s secret wish is for the Red Arrows to appear at the village fair: Tom’s is to win the heart of Hannah. Both seem impossible dreams until the whole village decides to lend a hand.
"A polyphonic meditation on time and urban space" (Sukhdev Sandhu, BFI 2012).
"If you let it, a street will grow" says a voice in this film-poem which offers a lyrical, painterly defence of the everyday and a celebration of multiculturalism, even as it poses questions about the process of regeneration.
Shot on location in the London Borough of Hackney, the film interweaves rarely seen archive, super 16mm and super 8mm photography. Slow, still shots of streets, parks, cemeteries and markets are juxtaposed with the East London paintings of Leon Kossoff, Jock McFadyen and James MacKinnon.
With a script based on poet, Michael Rosen's play for voices, a heightened soundscape mixes documentary with poetry, music, song and location recordings. As we slip between past and present, real and imagined, famous and unknown "the world comes to Hackney": From Shakespeare in Shoreditch, to a Jamaican builder, from an 18th Century feminist abolitionist to a Turkish barber, from Anna Sewell's "Black Beauty" to the Jewish 43 Group taking on Oswald Mosley in Dalston, the audience is invited to apprehend the city as fragmentary and multi-layered, "past in the present, present in the past."
Wreckers is an evocative, beautifully shot drama that examines the fragile relationship between truth, intimacy and betrayal. A married couple move back to his childhood village to start a family. Their relationship seems idyllic but a surprise visit from the husband's brother ignites sibling rivalry, exposing a savage past and the lies embedded in the couple's relationship.
In 2nd-Century Roman-ruled Britain, a young Roman soldier endeavours to honour his father's memory by finding his lost legion's golden emblem. Two men – master and slave – venture beyond the edge of the known world on a dangerous and obsessive quest that will push them beyond the boundaries of loyalty and betrayal, friendship and hatred, deceit and heroism.
Adapted from Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic novel "The Eagle of the Ninth."
In a small apartment in Buenos Aires, an old woman eagerly awaits the birth of her grandchild and all the joys of becoming a grandmother. However, horrific circumstances means she will be forced to wait over 30 years. Using real-life testimonials this animated-documentary raises issues of memory, repression and loss.
All Bertie Crisp wants is a quiet life in his seaside caravan home. However, when his devious wife Grace demands a baby immediately, he is forced to take matters into his own hands - with disastrous and hilarious consequences.
