So Let Me Tell You a Little Story

Director: Sam Huntley

Year: 2022

We meet Mary DeBoutez Zellmer Fenoglio in 2008. She is a loud, charismatic and complex woman in her sixties, born and raised in rural Kansas, USA. She has dreams; of becoming an artist and one day leaving Kansas. Living with her husband and surrounded by her herd of cats, Mary runs a vibrant roadside curiosity shop out of her front yard and builds giant eye-catching furniture. But rising gas prices have caused business to slump. We meet Mary’s friends, neighbours and close-knit family and learn about events that have impacted her life; the poverty of her upbringing, the death of her baby son, a domineering ex-husband and the effects of an abusive father. Against these odds she remains positive, energetic and hopeful. We return 10 years later to find Mary struggling to come to terms with what’s happened in her life in the intervening years. Her beloved husband Kenny has died, as well as her brother and sister, and her business has all but ceased to exist. Just when she’s at her lowest ebb, she’s introduced to Rusty, a local contractor, and the possibility of a new relationship gives her a glimpse of happiness that she thought had gone forever.

Director: Julia Fry

Year:

Using ideas from Carl Jung - exploring and accepting the inner world, Carolyn Abbate - analysis of dissonance to find the narrative voice - and Hilde Lindemann Nelson - using narrative to repair damaged identity, I filmed my process of creating puppets and recorded some of the thoughts that arose as I made them. I utilised emergent practice in the filmmaking, which meant letting go of preconceived ideas to let narrative arise in the moment. I wanted my puppets to unite, rather than fight in the traditional Punch and Judy manner.

Director: Virginia Heath

Year: 2027

A feminist musical documentary, an ethical telling of a true-crime story. An anti-true-crime documentary, the film is a bold, cinematic portrayal of a unique Irish singer-song writer Keeley Moss. Every song Keeley writes and performs celebrates the life of, and demands justice for, Inga Maria Hauser, a young German backpacker, sexually assaulted and murdered in Northern Ireland in 1988. As the facts of Inga Maria's case migrate from Keeley's meticulous blog into her songs, the Director ‘investigates the investigator’ to capture Keeley's fever dream of the intense week of adolescent freedom Inga Maria enjoyed, before she became a 'murder victim'. Through the prism of the Director's feminist gaze, and the actress-cast-as-Inga, Keeley and Inga Maria's personas blur, a rejection of the murder porn audiences are so fatigued by. Through the empathy the Director clearly feels for Keeley’s difficult adolescence and her subsequent obsessive mission, we feel the devastating impact Inga Maria's violent death had on two generations of her family and their anguish at the continuing lack of justice. Perhaps most remarkable of all, we discover the unexpected and profound gifts that Inga Maria has rewarded Keeley's dedication with.