Project Detail

Colours of the Alphabet

Synopsis

A beautiful, inspiring and bittersweet story about language and childhood in Africa.
Steward, Elizabeth and M’barak are three first time school pupils in rural Zambia who struggle to make sense of an educational system where the language they speak at home is different from the language used in the classroom. Moments of perplexed incomprehension, both comedic and tragic ensue, as the children slowly come to terms with the fact that their tongue is no longer their own.
At a time when nearly 40% of the world’s population lack access to education in their own language, this documentary offers an intimate and moving insight into a global phenomenon from the unique perspective of three innocent children.

Details

Year
2016
Type of film
Features
Running time
80 mins
Format
hd
Director
Alastair Cole 1st Feature
Producer
Nick Higgins
Editor
Colin Monie, Nick Gibbon

Categories

Production Status

Production Company

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

Iorram (Boat Song) Iorram (Boat Song)

Director: Alastair Cole

Year: 2021

The first feature documentary entirely in Scottish Gaelic, IORRAM (BOAT SONG) is an immersive and poetic portrait of life in the Outer Hebrides, as the islands and the language face an uncertain future.<br /> <br /> Archive sound recordings of ghostly voices, stories and songs from the last century are mixed with stunning footage of daily life in the islands today, on land and sea, to create a lyrical and playful dialogue between past and present, and between sound and vision, set to an original score composed and performed by award-winning folk musician Aidan O’Rourke.<br /> <br /> IORRAM began as an experiment to make a cinematic film entirely composed from archive sound and contemporary moving images. The sound archive at the heart of this project contains over 30,000 pieces of previously untranslated and largely unheard Scottish Gaelic recordings, representing a treasure trove of cultural history and memories which deserve to be heard.<br /> <br /> Making documentaries from archive film footage is a long established practice, but there are also vast riches in sound archives around the world, which are gradually being digitized and restored, and represent a valuable resource for filmmakers interested to explore the relationship between past and present, and between the ears and the eyes. If cinema has historically prioritized vision over sound, IORRAM marks an ambitious effort to redress the balance, and provide audiences with a new and deeply satisfying kind of cinematic experience.

Spacewoman Spacewoman

Director: Hannah Berryman

Year: 2024

A landmark feature documentary about astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the Space Shuttle.<br /> Eileen’s incredible journey starts with her smalltown beginnings, sees her smash through many glass ceilings, and culminates in four dramatic space shuttle missions, the last being possibly the most dangerous and most important of them all.<br /> At its heart the film is the moving human drama of one family, where a mother’s extraordinary career takes us straight to the big philosophical question of what is the level of acceptable risk in human endeavour? <br /> This film celebrates Commander Collins’ trailblazing NASA career which opened the way for women to become spacecraft pilots and commanders, and proved a perfect riposte to a previous generation of male astronauts who thought there was no place for women to lead the way in space. <br /> Official Selection DOC NYC 2024 - World premiere<br /> Official Selection CPH:DOX 2025 - European premiere

64 Days | the crowd and its leaders 64 Days: The Insurrection Playbook

Director: Nick Quested

Year: 2025

Documenting the January 6 assault on the US Capitol - Filmmaker Nick Quested was embedded with the Proud Boys, and other far-right groups during the months leading up to the insurrection, capturing exclusive footage of figures including Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes that was used as evidence in hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, and as part of their larger investigation.