Projects matching: Mark Lewis

Synopsis

In the subterranean archive of the National Roman Legion Museum, where artefacts and imperial debris trace Britain’s imperial past, the possible first depiction of a Welshmen or “barbarian” becomes a catalyst to unsettle imperial narratives and surface long-suppressed voices.

Synopsis

In the stark beauty of 19th Century Snowdonia a young girl tries desperately to hold her home together. Struggling with her mother’s mysterious illness, her father’s absence and a ruthless mining company encroaching on their land. A growing darkness begins to take grip of her home, and the suspicious local community turns on Gwen and her family. Official Selection Toronto Intenrational Film Festival 2018 - Discovery - World premiere

Synopsis

Shot in Paris, São Paulo and Toronto, acclaimed Canadian contemporary artist Mark Lewis’ essay film captures the ever-changing textures of these cities through moving images of glass, light, shadows and reflections. Offering an homage to the city symphony films of the 1920s, whilst juxtaposing modernist architecture with the compositional structures of old master paintings. Toronto International Film Festival 2015 - World premiere

Synopsis

When two young lovers crash their car into a ravine in the remote mountains of Wales, they are plunged into a lost world. Dragged from the river by a mysterious figure, they are taken to a ramshackle farm, a place untouched by time. As events unfold we learn the explosive truth about the young couple’s past. More unsettling still, we discover the ghostly truth about Stanley, and the tragedy of the valley he once called home.

Synopsis

23 August 2008 consists of two shots. A brief opening shot, intercut with inter-titles, of the famous Al-Mutanabbi Street book market in Baghdad is followed by an unbroken eighteen-minute monologue, shot from a single, still camera position and simply recording the speaker’s words without interruption. In it, Faysal Abudullah gradually builds a portrait of his relationship with his younger brother, Kamel, and in the process evokes the lives of Iraqi intellectuals of the left, driven into exile in the early 1980s by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Faysal describes Kamel’s decision to return to Iraq in 2003, his work for the new Ministry of Culture and his tragic death at the hands of unknown assassins on 23 August 2008. While the film throws light on little known aspects of Iraq’s political history, primarily it is the story of the two brothers, of Faysal’s devotion to Kamel and their contrasting attitudes to exile and to life itself.

Synopsis

Almost everyone has watched a movie in which a person, viewed straight on through the windshield, alone or with passengers, drives a car for some distance. The memorable thing about the scene is that the driver seems to have almost no physical relationship to the vehicle and barely seems to be making any effort to operate it. It is no secret to anyone that what we are watching is a composite scene in which the exterior has been photographed previously and then projected behind the set-up in which the performers have been filmed. Mark Lewis has been fascinated by the technique of back projecting for years and has used it with startling and unusual effects in his work. In Backstory, Lewis invited the Hansard family, which has been instrumental in the provision and development of rear projection for hundreds of Hollywood productions over several decades, to tell (with humour and straight-laced directness) their own story of the heyday of the techniques and their decline and disappearance as they are replaced by new technologies and new tastes in visibility.

Synopsis

Cinema Museum comprises four nine minute shots of a tour guide leading us around the labyrinthine corridors of a vast private collection of movie ephemera. The guide’s soft, measured voice soothes the ear while our eyes gawp at a teeming archive verging on chaos. The camera sets out with the stealth of a Stanley Kubrick Steadicam shot, but it soon begins to drift. As the guide walks ahead, the camera lingers over drawers marked ‘Gulag Guns’, boxes of fanzine clippings, spare parts for projectors and bits of Art Deco signage.

Synopsis

An affluent young man arranges a threesome with a young chav from the local council estate and an ape from London Zoo.

Synopsis

Spring 1914 - Tom Evans invites best friend Edward Turncliffe to leave his fiancée behind in Oxford and visit his parents' estate farm in Carmarthenshire. He little knows that his father Josi has left his mother Rachel and for Miriam the local teacher, who is pregnant with his child. His daughter, 18 year-old  Catrin feels outraged and betrayed. But she finds her own passion for Edward. Emotions are laid bare as each searches for a way to unlock a captive heart in a rapidly changing world. A mixed language English and Welsh with subtitles.  

Synopsis

Spring 1914. Tom Evans invites fellow Oxford student Edward to holiday on his parents farm in Wales. But his father Josi has left wife Rachel for the local teacher, Miriam who is pregnant with his child. His daughter Catrin feels outraged and betrayed. When she finds her own passion for Edward, family emotions are laid bare and each searches for a way to unlock a captive heart. A brilliant ensemble cast empowers this stylish European film shot in Welsh and English seen through the eyes of the women Josi loves.

Synopsis

Daddy's Girl is a chilling psychological horror feature. Heavily influenced by cult Japanese horror, the film uses striking imagery to tell this dark, haunting story. Stephen (Richard Harrington) is a psychiatrist struggling to hold his life together. Enduring perpetual grief over the violent death of his beautiful wife, his life is fraught with pain and tragedy. Surviving only through his copious intake of prescribed drugs, Stephen is anxious to return to work. When a close colleague at the hospital takes pity on him and reinstates him as Duty Psychologist, Stephen is soon confronted with a troubled teenage girl called Nina (Jamie Winstone). With an obsession for cutting herself and a seemingly increasing blood-lust, Nina displays sinister behaviour which begins to push the boundaries of teenage angst. Are her actions merely a symptom of an unhappy home life or are they rooted in a much more sinister cause? Set in bleak and ominous locations, Daddy's Girl will drag you through seduction, manipulation, wilful betrayal and a haunting that refuses to desist. Daddy's Girl exploits the increasingly blurred distinction between psychosis and reality. It explores the fragile relationships between people and the explosive metamorphoses that comes with adolescence. It is a film that asks questions that you do not always want to know the answers to.

Synopsis

Davies has three minutes to live. His friend dies in agony and he knows that he's next unless he can find the courage to beat the system. Sci-Fi Western shot on location, starring Adrian Dunbar and Mark Lewis Jones.