Spring 2008, Helston, Cornwall. Local lad Alex Harrison prepares to dance for the first time in the town's Flora Dance, its annual celebration to welcome Spring.
In a small, remote mountain top primary school in the Kenyan bush, hundreds of children are jostling for a chance for the free education newly promised by the Kenyan government. One new applicant causes astonishment when he knocks on the door of the school. He is Maruge, an old Mau Mau veteran in his eighties who is desperate to learn to read at this late stage of his life. He fought for the liberation of his country and now feels he must have the chance of an education so long denied.
Moved by his passionate plea, head teacher Jane Obinchu supports his struggle to gain admission and together they face fierce opposition from parents and officials.
Full of vitality and humour, the film explores the remarkable relationships Maruge builds with his classmates some eighty years his junior. Through Maruge's journey, we are taken back to the shocking untold story of British colonial rule fifty years earlier where Maruge fought for the freedom of his country.
The First Grader is a heart warming and inspiring tale of one man's fight for what he believes is his right in order to overcome the burdens of his past.
We see Iraqi kids regularly in our media. Nearly always as part of the war, its victims, its adjuncts. But what about their imaginative lives? Inspired a bit by Night of the Hunter, Northern Irish Mark Cousins went to a small village in the Kurdish North, took a projector, some great movies and 3 small cameras to give to kids. The resulting film is about war, yes, but also about not-war: We hear of a fish called Bery who lives in a magical palace, and about a cow that farts. A child combs a dove's feathers in the gloaming. We meet a boy who 'gives his dreams to the mud'.
Some people are beyond help when it comes to meeting someone. An American Pie meets Male Bridget Jones.
Jamie, age 29 going on 12, loser, virgin, stumbles upon a group of misfits who meet every week above a pub in order to discover the secrets of love, relationships and finding the perfect partner. The Flirting Club. Is it the answer to what he is searching for?
Jamie has one month to meet a real girl otherwise he has to marry Laura 'the human pig' from next door. Inadvertently hampered by his best mate Bill, stuck with a schoolboy infatuation with his Hot Boss, two left feet and zero pulling skills an accidental encounter with his local flirting club, might just hold all the answers. The group of six, thirty-something singles and Miriam, their teacher who has an unusual approach to flirting success, seem unlikely to succeed. But as everyone knows the course to true love is never easy and the gang of misfits soon learn that getting it right is more about being yourself then trying to be someone else.
The resurrection of dead dogs in Russia in the 1930s. An unstoppable heart in the US half a century later. And now in London a hand-made heart attack. How a strange, paradoxical discovery is helping to save lives.
Won BEST VIDEO AWARD at the Vedere La Scienza Festival 2009 and screened at Rushes Soho Shorts, Scinema and other festivals.
Karen (Archie Panjabi) is resigned to a life of suburban ennui, the dreams of her youth a distant memory. On an autumn afternoon as she struggles to get her baby to sleep she is disturbed by a door-to-door Salesman (Christopher Eccleston). Desperate for adult companionship she engages with the enigmatic Salesman. He makes a claim that he can sell her something that will radically change her life; he offers Karen, an opportunity to fulfill long forgotten dreams and ambitions. But is Karen prepared to pay the price?
Victor’s an ageing actor, famous for his TV butler from years ago. Desperate for a comeback, he's secured an audition for a London gangster film, by 'superstar' director Eddie Brick. Little does Victor know, he's in for a series of humiliations that will test how badly he wants the role.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a fantastical morality tale, set in the present-day. Dr. Parnassus with his extraordinary travelling show ‘The Imaginarium’, offers to members of his audience the irresistible opportunity to enter their universe of imaginations and wonders by passing through a magical mirror. But Doctor Parnassus is also cursed with a dark secret. An inveterate gambler, thousands of years ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr Nick, in which he won immortality.
Centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr. Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his daughter reached her 16th birthday, she would become the property of Mr Nick. In this captivating, explosive and wonderfully imaginative race against time, Dr. Parnassus must fight to save his daughter and undo the mistakes of his past once and for all!
Platinum blonde Jheri Jones lives on a remote trailer park in Mississippi. She has two sons Brad and Trevor. They live happily togeher in their 16 wheel mobile home. But unbeknown to her neighbours Jheri has a secret?
Kevin Lewis never had a chance. Growing up on a poverty-stricken Council estate in London, beaten and starved by his parents, bullied at school and ultimately abandoned by social services, his life was never his own.
Even after he was put into care, he found himself on the streets caught up in a criminal underworld that knew him as 'The Kid'.
Yet Kevin survived to make a better life for himself. This is his heartbreaking and inspiring true story.
