Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

The Kogi civilization still survives hidden on Colombia's highest mountain. They believe they are guardians of the world. Their leaders are trained from infancy in darkness to connect with 'aluna', cosmic consciousness. They perceive 'black lines' that connect special sites essential to life. In 1990, convinced that we were destroying the earth, they sent a warning through a British film-maker and then withdrew. They have realised that we have ignored the warning and the world is in danger. So they recalled the film-maker and instructed him to film their demonstration of these connections, using 400km of gold thread.
People who have no wheel or writing travel to England for the thread, and discuss dark energy with a leading astronomer. But as their journey goes on they realize that the film-maker has no idea what they are trying to demonstrate and their own arguments are treated as fantasy. So they change tack, taking us up into their mountain to show exactly what they mean, and then coming down to join forces with leading scientists who recognize that they are communicating important cutting-edge knowledge.

Synopsis

Lifelong drifter Christopher Ellis has made his home on a small island off the west coast of Scotland. For six years he has lived in virtual isolation, being the only inhabitant of the island and rarely returning to the mainland.

Every winter Christopher journeys on foot to his home town of Leeds to earn a month’s wage as a pot washer in an Italian restaurant - enough for him to live off for the next year.

My Island is a portrait of one man’s lifelong pursuit of independence. A proud, self-defined tramp, Christopher Ellis challenges modern expectations about settling down, instead finding a simple pleasure in living hand-to-mouth in reflective seclusion.

Synopsis

Mystic Fighters will take your breath away with a strong
cinematography based on a character driven narrative and you will
discover the deadly art of stick fighting in Trinidad & Tobago like no one has approached it before.

It takes you into a world beyond preconceptions where the poorest becomes the man of knowledge and the guardian to one of the eldest traditions based on the interaction between man and nature.

Synopsis

3 Continents, 4 barbers, 1 story... The Fade is an intimate portrait of four barbers across the world over a week in their lives. The observational documentary reveals a portrait of their lives and shines a light on the profession barbering. Set in Ghana,Jamaica, USA and the UK the film interweaves their stories and examines the polarized opposites of the locations. Creating an international dialog of the colorful lives of four men who do they same thing in different time zones, with very different realities.

Synopsis

We are responsible for our dreams. This is the ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis – and fiction cinema. The makers of THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA return with THE PERVERT'S GUIDE IDEOLOGY. Philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizek, and filmmaker Sophie Fiennes use their inventive interpretation of moving pictures to present a compelling cinematic journey into the heart of ideology – the dreams and collective beliefs that shape our political, social and cultural life.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2012 - World premiere

Synopsis

Over the past decade, labia surgery has increased by a staggering 500%. Centrefold is a unique animated documentary that takes an innovative and balanced approach to this controversial topic. Created by award-winning filmmaker Ellie Land and funded by the Wellcome Trust, visit www.thecentrefoldproject to find out more and join the debate.

Synopsis

Unprecedented access to the twentieth century's most revered war photographer. Don McCullin worked for The Sunday Times from 1969 to 1984, at a time where, under the editorship of Harold Evans, the newspaper was widely recognized as being at the cutting-edge of world journalism, with Don as its star photographer. During that period he covered wars and humanitarian disasters on virtually every continent and the prominence given to his photo essays coincided with one of the most remarkable periods in the history of photojournalism.
With extensive input from Sir Harold Evans, McCullin not only explores Don’s life and work, but also how the ethos of journalism changed during his career. Using the Sunday Times as an example, it compares the strictly ‘hands off’ approach of proprietors like Lord Thompson, who took pride in the fact that he did not want commercial considerations to censor his editors’ from printing what they wanted, to how the newspaper’s independent character changed once it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch, and the pursuit of advertising revenue became paramount, and with it, the inevitable obsessed with fashion, status and celebrity.

Synopsis

1968 Film Group produce Featurette on the 'Battle of the Somme' filmed on location in Picardie, Northern France, across 2010/11. Using image and sound the film captures the landscape today where thousands perished and are still missing.

Synopsis

In a place where killers are celebrated as heroes, these filmmakers challenge unrepentant death-squad leaders to dramatize their role in genocide. The result is a surreal, cinematic journey, not only into the memories and imaginations of mass murderers, but also into a frighteningly banal regime of corruption and impunity (TIFF 2012).

Synopsis

Joyce Brand is 78 and she is a campaigner. From defacing buildings to chaining herself to chairs, Joyce is fearless in facing up to injustice she sees in the world, and wishes more of us were too.

Synopsis

To a soundtrack of their unique ‘Russophone Bolsha Nova Folk n’Roll’, Sasha Ilyukevich and the Highly Skilled Migrants take you on a rollercoaster of comedic chaos and heartrending disaster as the self-(dis)organised tour of the former USSR goes from bad to worse. When Sasha eventually takes his wounded pride of musicians back to his childhood home in Belarus, the stage is set for an unexpectedly moving finale.

Synopsis

THE SEPARATION LINE exposes a British border shared by hundreds of civilians and members of the Armed Forces. Between 2007 and 2011 the small English market town of Wootton Bassett became the site for the British repatriation ceremonies and during an eighteen-month period between February 2010 and August 2011 all the repatriation ceremonies that passed through the town from 2010 to 2011, including the concluding ceremony in August 2011 were filmed. Filming alternative aspects and perspectives to that of documentaries and regular media coverage, the work shares an experience of the repatriations that has not been presented nationally or internationally.