Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

10 years ago there was a Rock and Roll band called The Fury.

Feted by Music Industry insiders, lauded by their fiercely loyal fans, they were tipped by many to be the breakout band of 1997.

10 years later, their debut album remained unreleased. The band split up.

Rock and Roll Stole my Soul is a retrospective documentary that looks at the rise and fall of The Fury. Archive footage of the band ten years ago is combined with interviews of the band in 2008 to tell the story of how the band that could have had it all ended up with nothing.

Synopsis

In the jungles of Borneo, an Iban father on the cusp of old age begins a river journey to seek medical help for his sick child. Along the way, the boy is troubled by recurring visions of a strange figure who appears on the river bank. As the journey progresses, father and son are drawn inexorably to a final encounter with the mythical 'transformed' shaman who dwells deep inside the jungle.

Semangat was made by working closely with one Iban longhouse community from Sarawak, Malaysia with whom the story was devised and filmed. Set in the jungles of Borneo, the basis of the film explores the conflict that exists between ancient animist beliefs and modern approaches to illness. The main protagonists of the film are a real father and son, and a retired shaman from this community.

Semangat is a micro-budget hybrid docu-fiction film funded by The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, The UK Film Council/CTBF John Brabourne Award and Screen South. It has been produced under the creative guidance of award winning filmmaker, Pawel Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love). It has been co-produced with The National Film and Television School.

Synopsis

Separado! Odyssey to a Parallel Universe.

Star Trek meets Buena Vista Social Club in this psychedelic western musical as Welsh pop legend Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) takes us on a pan continental road trip in search of his long lost Patagonian uncle, the poncho wearing guitarist Rene Griffiths.

In 1880, following a controversial horse race that led to an unresolved death, Gruff Rhys' family split as Dafydd Jones took his young family to join the burgeoning Welsh community in Patagonia, South America. There was to be no contact between the families for almost a century when in 1974 Rene Griffiths arrived in Wales with his Latin infused Welsh love songs and became an over night sensation.

Director Dylan Goch follows Gruff Rhys on a tour that takes in the theatres, nightclubs and desert teahouses of Wales, Brazil and the Argentine Andes as he discovers what became of his family, the Welsh Diaspora and its musical legacy.

Synopsis

The small UK town of Hebden Bridge, where film-maker Jez Lewis grew up, is a beautiful and quirky rural idyll. But while it is paradise to many, it is purgatory to others. In the twenty years since he left, dozens of Jez's old friends have died young, many of them through suicide and drug overdoses.

Beginning with a personal quest for understanding, the film moves into a year-long drama of human tragedy and redemption as Jez re-bonds with his oldest friend Cass.

Coming to terms with his own imminent mortality, Cass attempts to lift himself out of the cycle of self-destruction he has lived amidst for so long. Around this emerges an intimate study of a place claimed to be the funkiest town in Europe, but which harbours an undertow of lethal hedonism and disillusionment. As young people continue to die by their own hands, a maelstrom of conflicting values throws up unexpected truths about the human condition, whilst Jez finds himself drawn inexorably into the action.

Filmed among friends, with absolutely unrestricted access, Shed Your Tears And Walk Away is a searingly authentic portrayal of a marginalised and overlooked people who seem to have lost their survival instinct.

Synopsis

A fast-paced documentary populated by a charismatic and often surreal cast of characters, Shot in Bombay goes beyond the tinselly glamour of 'Bollywood' to explore the industry's darker sides. With unprecedented access to a star-studded Bombay gangster movie, the film reveals an edgy metropolis, where fiction regularly blurs into reality.

Synopsis

A cochlea implant is a surgically implanted electronic device which can make it possible for the profoundly deaf to hear sound. However, the use of cochlea implants is controversial. Two families both with deaf children, one has decided to have an implant for their son, the other has not, Why?

Synopsis

What made more money than the entire American movie industry through the 50s and 60s? Pinball.

Special When Lit rediscovers the lure of a lost pop icon. A product of the mechanical and electrical age, the American invention swept the world and defined cool.
 
Now it is relegated to a nostaglic footnote deserving a better fate. This feature length documentary joins the fans, collectors, designers and champion players from across the globe who share a world many of us didn’t know still existed.

Synopsis

This is entertaining and controversial film about something that fascinates us all - even if some of us are loath to admit it – Fame. This film explores the psychological reasons behind the unstoppable rise of the power of celebrity, the media’s need to capitalise on it, and reveals its impact on the world as we know it.

Celebrity has reached into every corner of our world. It has come to dominate the media and many of the choices that we make in our lives. We are watching a generation of children growing up captivated by the world of celebrity and the desire for fame, and this documentary asks the question of what the consequence of that may be.

In this film it is the stars who are the extras, we glimpse Jude Law and Mick Jagger, but it is the faces in the crowd whose stories we follow, the focus being on the ordinary people who have been swept up in the celebrity machine and the deep psychological reasons behind their obsession. Crucially, the film examines how the media is enhancing the spell of celebrity, and it explains how vast media corporations are profiting from manipulating our inescapable human instincts.

Synopsis

On a winter's night in 1980, American servicemen stationed at an RAF base, witnessed some 'unexplained lights' in Rendlesham Forest. The incident has since become Britain's most famous UFO mystery with abounding rumours of conspiracies and cover-ups. Some argue that the incident was a hoax whilst others believe that the forest is a doorway to another dimension.

Maintaining a balance between celebration and criticality, this film revisits the forest, thirty years later, in search of similarly 'inexplicable' events.

Synopsis

Mavis, an eccentric 100 year old woman is fed up with living so long. Traveling to visit her 99 year old brother Bill, who lives in a care home, she contemplates her future, revealing issues we all inevitably face.

Synopsis

Team Qatar follows the journey of five Middle Eastern teens from the world’s richest country as they are initiated into the cutthroat subculture of competitive high-school debating.

Guided by the 22 year-old former president of the Oxford Union, they direct their immense curiosity and ambition towards mastering the arcane strategies of British parliamentary debate. They are determined to show they are not closed-minded extremists – and even more determined to win.

Quirky and endearing, entertaining and informative, the film offers an entertaining window onto the rapidly growing global culture of the Arab world and its relation to the West.

Synopsis

The Dust Never Settles is composed of footage recorded during a fourteen month, 50,000 km road tour of Australia with a soundtrack by The Dirty Three.

Placing fascinating, often humorous encounters with the unconventional individuals who inhabit some of the country's most remote areas against a wilderness of unimaginable magnitude, the director transcends conventions of traditional documentary with her impartial approach and distinctive visual style.

The Dust Never Settles is a rare document of the endlessly diverse landscape and culture of a continent, and a unique record of contemporary Australia.