Three characters search for meaning in an urban weed. The Narrator pursues perdikaki to find the woman first seen picking it, yet as observations accumulate a shadow researcher emerges. Is Kyria’s knowledge being sought, or the Collector’s? And, other than the symbolic plant, do the other figures exist at all?
Orbiting 3D images of plastics are collaged with hand-processed 16mm film, including scenes from the demolition of the Parkesine factory in Hackney Wick, London, where the first semi-synthetic plastic was invented. Both flickering, contingent materials allude to the history of cellulose nitrate in the development of photography and film.
You might think America is a democracy, where freedom of speech and basic rights are guaranteed. But at its heart, there is a great injustice. Against all the odds several extraordinary citizens are banding together and fighting back for their basic right to clean water. Armed only with facts and their illnesses, they risk arrest to take on the might of industry and government. From Flint to the Navajo Nation, via Standing Rock, this is their story.
What price do the farmers of Punjab pay for the rice on our plate?
The north Indian state of Punjab was said to have produced enough food to feed the entire country during the Green Revolution. However, the overuse of chemicals introduced to enhance production poisoned the water with carcinogens and created an infertile soil addicted to chemicals. Just as the land is dependent, so are more and more farmers becoming addicted to drugs, which help them to work longer hours in the fields. The expense of the chemicals and drugs forces farmers to take loans from 'Arthis', the rich middlemen who increase their interest rates without warning. Over 50,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last ten years, by drinking the toxic chemicals that are murdering Punjabi soil.
A dissatisfied and alienated young woman finds momentary purpose when a strange self-help guide comes into her life. Although her life improves, when she unwittingly encounters the author in a pub she is faced with an unsettling realisation.
The story of Diva – a fading superstar preparing for a comeback performance at the 2065 'eSports Olympics' – and Geo, an AI with artistic yearnings. Set in a smoke-and-mirrors realm of fantastical architecture, sentient drones and snow-deluged jungles, AIDOL revolves around the long and complex struggle between humanity and Artificial Intelligence.
Fame – in all its allure and emptiness – is set against the bigger contradictions of a post-AI world, a world where originality is sometimes no more than an algorithmic trick and where machines have the capacity for love and suffering. Contemporary anxieties and fixations – the rise of AI, the formulaic dictates of celebrity, the hegemony of technological giants – are refracted through a quixotic prism. AIDOL is accompanied by a score composed and orchestrated by the artist.
Haruspex is suggestive of dark human secrets. The child makes a spirit guide that turns bad. In adulthood she understands that she is a mammal. She sees with creature’s eyes. The film employs the tropes of the uncanny to evoke a feeling of disquiet. The story is deliberately ambiguous, implicit of something that ought to remain hidden.
Between 2011 and 2015 UK adventurer Sarah Outen traversed the globe. For her expedition London2London: Via The World, Sarah was the engine, travelling by bike, kayak and rowing boat across Europe and Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America and finally the Atlantic.
Sarah’s incredible four-year odyssey saw her travel over 20,000 miles. As she migrated between cultures, climates and landscapes under her own power, Sarah’s inspirational voyage was followed by thousands, hooked on her infectious humour and love of life.
But travelling mostly solo, the trip took its toll, and the punishing elements, ticking clock and months of solitude pushed Sarah to the physical and mental brink. Woven out of hundreds of hours of footage from the expedition, Home intimately and unflinchingly captures Sarah’s journey: the kindness of strangers, the wonders of the wild, the savagery of the elements, the near-death experiences, the demons of her emotional trauma and PTSD, and her discovery of love for a farmer called Lucy.
Home is a story of heart and soul, of hardship and joy, and one woman’s trek towards true emotional acceptance.
A hybrid documentary about the decommissioning of a nuclear plant in Scotland. Concerned with landscape and time, myth and technology, the film explores the nature of ruins, and asks what environmental scars our generation will leave behind for the future.
Official Selection Visions du Réel 2019 - World premiere
A short poetic and experimental documentary exploring synaesthesia, a neuro-cognitive phenomenon where one or more senses are blended together. ‘My Dad Is Orange’ will take you on a multi-sensory journey where you can explore a world where it is possible to smell sounds or even taste colours.
A comical triptych featuring the most revered animal of all time – the human being – in its natural habitat. Watch how he interacts with the other animals around him.