Project Detail

Vagabond

Synopsis

This debut feature film, written, choreographed and directed by its leading man, the black dancer Rodreguez King-Dorset, shows a creative dance artist in a desperate search for identity in a white-dominated country.
The film depicts the lives of two boys in England in the 1980s, one a newly arrived African, the other an Afro-Caribbean, and highlights the ethnic tensions between their respective groups. The young black Briton, Lewis, has to face scorn and misunderstanding from his father when he tries to become a professional dancer. Lewis has a close friendship with the African, Ramsey, and a rewarding relationship with an Afro-Caribbean girlfriend, Maudi. His African friend is imprisoned for a killing he was forced into in sheer self-defence, and this only adds to Lewis’s confusion. He sets out to create a solo dance, which embodies some of his emotions.
Finally he shows himself being questioned by an external examiner in the final stages of his thesis for a DPhil. He makes a spirited defence of his views to a sceptical examiner and the film shows in flashbacks some of what is going on in his head as he formally protests to his examiner.

Details

Year: 2006
Type of film: Features
Running time: 64 min
Format: 16mm
Director: Rodreguez King-Dorset 1st Feature
Producer: Oris Egbunike
Editor: Mikkel Buda Svak, Jim Bambrick
Screenwriter: Rodreguez King-Dorset
Director of Photography: Gerry Vasbenter, Sam Goldie
Composer: Wayne Ellington
Principal cast: Rodreguez King-Dorset, Naomi James, Andati Ajinzea, Troy John
Contact: officeofrodreguezkingdorset@gmail.com

Genre

Black

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

Rodreguez King-Dorset

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The documentary film explores an unknown chapter in post South African liberation. In 1993, Lady Anya Sainsbury, a former principal ballerina at Royal Ballet in London, met Nelson Mandela at a party in South Africa. They both agreed for her to set up a dance scholarship programme at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London, which provided 23 of South Africa’s talented young dance students between 1995 to 2003, with the opportunity to follow their dance dreams. <br /> The film highlights the personal experiences of six of those dancers that subsequently met Mandela in London at a dinner party in Lady Sainsbury’s house in 1999, they are Mandela’s Dancers. <br /> The film combines archival dance photographs and video footage spanning over fifteen years, with excerpts from the student performances and candid recollections. Mandela’s Dancers is not about the triumph of the human spirit or any other of the top 10 favourite dance clichés. It’s about something far rarer and of vastly greater significance – it’s about real life. It’s about how Nelson Mandela changed the face of contemporary dance!

Rasta

Director: Rodreguez King-Dorset

Year: 2007

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri was the senior military and spiritual leader of the Mau Mau uprising. He led the armed military struggle against the British colonial regime in Kenya in the 1950s until his capture in 1956 and execution in 1957.

Drama

The Black Dance Movement in London 1730-1850