Projects matching: Just

Synopsis

Mr John is an untidy agoraphobic and television critic. He lives alone, and for the past two years has managed to get by without leaving his front door. He just about survives, but when an intrusive neighbour barges into his life, he is finally forced to face his deepest fear.

Synopsis

Faced with apathy and indifference by the criminal justice system, Chas 'Myna' Bird employs his only talent, mimicry, to obtain retribution against a gutless police informant who has brutalised his family. Innocently answering a friend's mobile phone, Chas quickly recognises an opportunity to gratify his revenge, while helping an old army buddy.

Synopsis

Middle-aged history teacher Barbara discovers that the beguiling Sheba, a new teacher at St George's, is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old pupils. Barbara quickly positions herself as Sheba's chief defender. However, all is not what it seems and, as Sheba soon discovers, a friend can be just as treacherous as any lover.

Synopsis

In this neo-noir thriller, police arrest a man for questioning over his neighbour's murder. Investigating cop Beatrice Kenosha enters a period of dark fascination with the mysterious stranger and his entangled, suppressed past - but only after he escapes her custody. It emerges, when he's on the run, that her suspect had been living as a recluse, shutting out the world and his tortured memories of a lost love.

Synopsis

An exploration into the relationship between a father and his nine year old son. The father, soon to be imprisoned, finds himself competing with a football star in absurd challenge to gain his son's respect and affection.

Synopsis

An exploration of the relationship between a father and nine year old son. The father is soon to be imprisoned and he finds himself competing with a football star in an absurd challenge to gain his son's respect.

Synopsis

One of Life's Players is an experimental short which I shot on Super8, a format that has intrigued me for a long time, it is based around a prose I wrote a few years ago. Written in the prose are a number of quite upfront and powerful statements. 'in the circle of life we co-exist with an assemblage of unadulterated attractions and fascinations'. Through the diverse and haunting beauty of film I wanted to depict images that an audience can relate to events in there lives and the surrounding world we live in. It has not plot and perhaps to some it might be hard to understand. One of Life's Players will be reminiscent of films such as Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992), Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1983) and Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929), which don't really have a traditional narrative drive. These experimental masterpieces rely on the use of stunning cinematography to allow the audience to create their own story. One of Life's Players portrays images such as an empty room with just a fireplace, and a photograph spattered with blood to depict how life can often take a turn for the worst. Sometimes a lifetime can often feel like the blink of any eye, One of Life's Players depicts this by using images like a young woman's eye, which transforms into an old woman's eye and other similar juxtapositions. Although some of the imagery isn't always blatantly obvious. I'm hoping perhaps One of Life's Players will fuel thoughts about how at times we as a fast moving species tend to take the planet and its abundant fascinations for granted.

Synopsis

When Sarah witnessed the murder of her father in a London back alley, her life was shattered. Moving far away from the city was the only thing that seemed to make sense. But moving your life can't always change your life. An overwhelming sense of loss has left Sarah's family damaged and divided. When the power fails during a muted New Year's Eve celebration in their remote mountain home, the family soon realises that something devastating has occurred. Vulnerable and alone, Sarah and her three younger siblings must learn to survive in a new and uncertain world. Struggling for food, insecure and reeling in a search for meaning, the family is yet to face its deepest challenge - the past.  

Synopsis

Inspired by the work of Edgar Degas the film captures Scottish Ballet Corps stretching, chatting, improvising and preparing in the wings. We are presented with a palpable sense of not just what it looks like, but what it feels like to inhabit a dancer's body.

Synopsis

An old house in London on a bitterly cold night. In the house, a crowd of people are gathered, young and old, their rapt attention fixed on one man, Simon Puritan, a medium. A man who talks with the dead. Simon picks a husband and wife in the crowd and tells the husband that their deceased daughter is in the room with them. The husband is in shock as Simon tells him things that only he and his wife could know, delivering the husband a message from his daughter - a message of hope and love from the afterlife. The husband is a changed man; the pain in his eyes has vanished. Later, in the now empty house, Simon meets the wife who pays him for the service he has just rendered. There was no daughter's visit from beyond the grave; Simon had manipulated the wife's grief in order to ease her husband's suffering. The whole thing is a set-up and Simon is the worst of all con artists. But fate is catching up with him. Later that night, Simon stands waiting on an eerily deserted Underground platform. Just before a train arrives, Simon spots something out of the corner of his eye. A scarred figure charging towards him. Everything goes black. And the mystery begins. He wakes up in hospital, seemingly healthy; but something has been triggered and his life will never be the same again. In the tradition of films such as The Sixth Sense; Memento and Donnie Darko, Puritan is an intelligent supernatural thriller which twists and turns, never letting the audience know its secret until the final moments of the film.

Synopsis

Raymond and Tagbo met when they were eight. Although from radically different worlds - Raymond (Rag) is from a single-parent West Indian home, while Tagbo (Tag) is the only son of middle-class Nigerian parents - they remain inseparable until the beginning of their teens when Social Services take Rag away from London. Ten years later, Rag returns to find Tag. They still want to be together. But now 23, their need has shifted into something more urgent and consuming. Other things have changed too. Tag is just finishing law school and discovering how hard it is to find a position. Tag also has a white girlfriend, and since her impressive credentials aren't even good enough for Tag's father, Rag doesn't stand a chance. Rag sees even less room for himself in Tag's life when Tag's friend Olisa flies into London. Young, rich and shady, Rag knows Olisa is trouble. When Rag and Tag are invited to Nigeria for Olisa's chieftaincy ceremony, Rag is determined to save Tag from his machinations. In this tale of family, friendship and love, everyone has to discover a definition of what these things mean to them. Then stake their future on it.

Synopsis

Selected for Cannes 2005, festival favourite Kim Longinotto's latest work (co-directed with Florence Ayisi) is a totally fascinating - often hilarious - look at the work of one small courthouse in south-west Cameroon. The two women at the heart of the documentary wouldn't be out of place in an Alexander McCall Smith bestseller. As the State Counsel and Court President, they dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair measure. The victims of crime - an abused child, a woman daring to accuse a man of rape, and another trying to end a brutal marriage in a society where divorce is taboo - are handled with fierce compassion. You'll feel like cheering when justice is served. (Sydney Film Festival)