Projects matching: David Lister

Synopsis

Summer 1997 in a small Scottish village, where each day seems like the last and nothing ever happens. A strange, cosmic event will disturb Julianne's monotonous daily life.

Synopsis

1870s. South Africa. Life goes on as normal at the farm on the slopes of a Karoo Kopje. Fat Tant Sannie (Karin Van der Laag) looks after her charges, the sweet Em (Anneke Weidemann) and the independent Lyndall (Kasha Kropinski), with a strict Biblical hand. It was Em’s late father’s dying wish.  Gentle Otto (Armin Mueller-Stal), the farm manager, runs the farm and cares for Waldo, his son. Waldo (Luke Gallant) is bright and is busy designing a model of a sheep-shearing machine that he hopes will make them all rich.

Things change when the sinister, eccentric Bonaparte Blenkins (Richard E Grant) with his bulbous nose and chimneypot hat arrives. This stranger believes that Tant Sannie is wealthy - after all she owns a farm - and it’s not long before he’s thrown the narrow-minded but simple woman into an amorous whirl. But his motives are all too obvious to the children and he makes enemies of them. And, worst of all, he connives to get Otto fired by lying to Tant Sannie. Defeated, Otto returns to his room where he dies of a broken heart.
 
While Tant Sannie’s heart’s awhirl, he’s cruel to the children. He ransacks Otto’s room looking for the pile of money he thinks he has stashed away. He creates a reason to give Waldo a thrashing to within an inch of his life. He destroys the model of the sheep-shearing machine. 

However, Lyndall prepares for battle. She suggsts that their cousin, Trana (Elriza Swanepoel), comes to visit. She sets a trap for Bonaparte.

Bonaparte is under the impression that Trana is even wealthier than Tant Sannie. He plans her seduction in the front room, without knowing that Tant Sannie is within earshot, He’s exposed as a fraud and has to make an undignified exit from the farm, chased by Tant Sannie, a delighted maid, Waldo’s dog and Oswald the ostrich who knew all the time that Bonaparte was a thoroughly bad egg!

Synopsis

Tom Nightingale, a famous author of children's books, has been unable to write since the death of his wife over sixteen months ago. Closed off emotionally, the only joy in Tom's life is reading fairy stories to his eight year old daughter, Melissa.

Unbeknownst to Tom, each night while he reads these stories, Crystal, a real fairy, is also listening, enjoying the stories as much as Melissa. One night, during story time, Crystal is thrown from the windowsill. Chased by the family dog, she crashes straight into a tree. Her tiny fairy body morphs into human size. Regaining consciousness, Crystal has no idea who or what she is. When she knocks on Tom's door, she's suffering from amnesia. Fairy amnesia.

Synopsis

Adopted as a baby and taken to England, Daniel Meeks returns to the town of his birth in search of his real family. He finds himself embroiled in a fight for the ownership of the town and to free the soul of the late Lucius Meeks, Daniels great, great grandfather.

Regarded by the town as an evil gun-slinger, Lucius had an affair with the fiancée of Joshua Carter, the town's owner, and shot them both dead in the street during an argument over land rights. Lucius' ghost appears to Daniel to clear his name and allow him to rest in peace.

Daniel quickly adapts to 'life out West' and goes on to discover the truth about his discredited gun-slinging relative, picking up clues along the way which help him to track down his real mother too.

Synopsis

The battle between good and evil will be stronger and harder than ever.

Every hundred years, the evil sorceress Morgana returns to claim Fingall's talisman from Merlin with which she intends to destroy the world. For the last fourteen hundred years she has failed - now she intends to conquer all.

Young Ben Clark is unwittingly thrown into this ancient battle when his family moves to a new town and he befriends his elderly magician neighbour, 'Milner'. Ben has a natural talent for magic, and wants to learn all he can from this old man.

Ben carries the same scar as the original staff bearer fourteen hundred years before him and both Morgana and 'Milner' see this as a sign that this time the battle between good and evil will be stronger and harder than ever.

Ben must make his own choice between good and evil as he is drawn into battle and must draw on his own spirit and magic to decide which path to follow and hence, the fate of the world as we know it.

Synopsis

Like all the films produced by Peakviewing, Pets is an adventure intended for the whole family. Josh Grolman and Jenna Dover star as a brother and sister who get embroiled in a battle over a truck full of stolen gold bullion while their parents are meeting the bank manager in a last-ditch attempt to save their farm from foreclosure. The children call on the unlikeliest of allies -- their pets -- who club together to see off the crooks and save the day.



Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the film is that it was shot over just six weeks at the end of last year. That the film features a cast of talking live and animatronic animals makes that breakneck shooting schedule all the more remarkable.



"Babe had something like a year, but we had to keep the schedule down for budget reasons," says director David Lister. "The animatronic animals made a big difference. They are a lot more controllable than real animals, who tended to squabble amongst themselves. It really worked best when we had a live animal and an animatronic puppet. It's quite a stylised film -- the animals talk, so you have to suspend disbelief -- but we used lots of primary colours in the design and occasionally went for unusual camera angles to heighten that stylised sense."



Since then, Lister has shot two further films for Peakviewing: Dazzle, a romantic comedy about a fairy with amnesia, and spooky story The Meeksville Ghost.