1984, London: 7 year old Maria and her mother live in their own loving world built on sorting through bins and collecting shiny rubbish. One night, their world falls apart, and we join Maria a decade later, living with her foster mother. An older stranger, Michael, then enters their home, opening the door to past trauma, magic and madness…
Official Selection Venice Critics' Week 2023 - World premiere
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2023 - First Feature Competition
Political engagement spawned the wildest of wonderlands for Hong Kong’s creativity – but as a new law annihilates freedom of expression overnight, artists and creatives find themselves targets and their works disappeared. We race to preserve the creative uprising amid China’s crackdown.
In June 2020, the day after the National Security Law was imposed, the government started listing words, images, books, slogans, songs that were now deemed illegal - making so much that was ‘normal', forbidden.
Hong Kong Mixtape weaves in the personal story of San the director, as we immerse with these underground artists, including some of Asia’s most famous and iconic creators - rappers, dancers, performers, illustrators, stunt collectives - as they navigate this authoritarian new normal. We also follow San having to ask herself the same questions as the other artists; are you willing to risk a life sentence for your art? And if this the last time we can be home - what do we make now?
Official Selection Glasgow Film Festival 2023 - European Premiere
Das Institut für den reinen Tor, Menschheim, Germany, takes you “searching, exploring, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing, post-construction, under-construction, over-destruction, counting, measuring etc.” - with Dr Forschung (dismissed); Prof Suchen (in pseudonym); Fernando Pessoa (in 5 personas); James Joyce (in his multi-Finnegans) .
"It was life but was it fair?
It was free but was it art?"
James Joyce
"Because I am the size of what I see
And not the size of my height... "
Alberto Caeiro
"I am nothing.
Never shall be anything.
Cannot want to be anything.
This apart, I have in me all the dreams of the world."
Álvaro de Campos
During the winter of 1969, young boys started to disappear from the streets of Belfast, never to be seen again. By 1974, as the Troubles were reaching a bloody and vicious peak, five boys in total had vanished within a five-mile radius. Fifty years later, as the disappearances remain unsolved and families continue to search for answers, filmmaker Des Henderson (How to Defuse a Bomb) reopens these largely forgotten cold-cases, unearthing disturbing revelations in secret state documents to tell an extraordinary tale of abuse, trauma and potential cover-up.
Official selection Belfast International Film Festival and Irish Film Institute Documentary Festival 2023 - World premiere
A short film commissioned by Sadler's Wells to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hip-hop as an art form.
This piece, featuring dancer and movement artist Jamal Sterrett Phoenix, comments upon the freedom of expression found within Hip-hop.
A noir-ish tale centred around a packet of menthol Vogue cigarettes, moving between Sri Lanka and the UK. Intrigued by the allure of a mysterious woman and political espionage, our narrator finds herself enticed into an addiction.
Created with cut out animation using entirely painted fabric and embroidered parts.
Official Selection Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival PÖFF Shorts 2023 - World premiere
At Rodeston High School’s leaving do, Mo has one last chance to tell the girl of her dreams how she feels. Will she be able to tell her how she feels before it's too late with one eyebrow and an assortment of classmates who hinder more than help.
Rock band Stack of Corpses need a hit song and everyone thinks they know how to get one. Band members Bass and Drums hatch a plan to steal a dead rock star’s song from under his widow’s nose. Lead singer Brian and manager Larry think they have the answer too – turning to a Russian gangster for help. Caught in the middle is Keys, a classical pianist who literally fights off the competition to join the band before realising how lazy and feckless they all are.
Through six chapters, interspersed with advice from rock legend Richard O’Keefe, the band go from nobodies to superstars. But can they really hold onto their fame and how far are they willing to go to keep their secrets from coming out?
Beginning with the idea of self-destruction as an existential question, new psychedelia, and the loss of the self, this immersive artwork asks questions regarding life and how we choose to live. MY TRIP 2023 also explores the abyss of the technological underground, the endless information consumed every day and the feeling of apathy and dullness that this technology consequently produces.
Co-commissioned by Outernet Arts and BFI London Film Festival, the work features characters that have recurred in Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard’s practice for over 25 years in addition to new mutant personalities created in collaboration with Acute Art. The artwork, presented as a fully immersive multi-screen installation at Outernet Arts, questions how we choose to live and explores the endless information consumed daily through a striking visualisation of a psychedelic experience.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2023 - World premiere
An observation of the benefits system, NEXT IN LINE centres a refugee doctor who is seeking government financial assistance. At her job centre meeting she faces a harrowing decision – either she works as a cleaner or gets sanctioned.
