Projects matching: Don Boyd

Synopsis

Documentary filmmaker Mark Cousins follows in the footsteps of DH Lawrence in a road-trip through Sardinia.
London Film Festival 2014 - World premiere

Synopsis

An epistolary feature film: a cinematic discourse between a British director Mark Cousins (the celebrated film maker and historian) and an Iranian actress and director Mania Akbari (famed for her work with Abbas Kiarostami and in her own right as a director) which extends the concept of "essay film" with startling confrontations in the arenas of cultural issues, gender politics and differing artistic sensibilities.
A unique journey into the minds of two exceptional filmmakers which becomes a love affair on film.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014 - World premiere

Synopsis

Filmmaker Mark Cousins goes to Albania for five days, and films what he sees. He discovers that the movie prints in the country's film archive are decaying. In investigating this, Cousins begins to encounter bigger questions about the history and memory of a place. Perhaps a country whose 20th Century, dominated by its authoritarian ruler Enver Hoxha, was so traumatic, should allow its film heritage to fade away? Perhaps a national forgetting should be welcomed? Influenced by the films of Chris Marker, Cousins' film broadens to consider the architecture of dictators and the great icon paintings of Onufri. In the past, when cartographers knew little about a country, they wrote on it Here be Dragons. Albania was, for decades, one of the least well know countries in the world. Cousins' road movie meditation takes the advice of Goethe: "If you would understand the poet, you must go to the poet's land."

Synopsis

Theirs is, at heart, a love story: Andrew and Jeremy met each other at Bromptons Club, a legendary gay bar in Earls Court, London. Despite a considerable age gap (Andy is 49, Jeremy 69) and stark social differences, they fell in love and began sharing their lives together. Five years later, in May 2004, they got married at an emotional and intimate Town Hall ceremony.

Andy is a retired bus driver from South London, handsome in that rough and roguish way. Jeremy is an English professor -  cute, fussy, vivacious and clearly from a patrician world. Both men experienced painful early struggles with their sexuality. Jeremy had a failed marriage to a woman, followed by a misguided attempt to 'cure' himself. Andy cruised public washrooms and indulged with much promiscuity - gay bars, drug addiction, crime, prison and rehabilitation. Jeremy has literary connections and moves in a sphere of chic dinner parties, poetry readings and gay picnics. Between their homes in London and their exploits in Palm Springs and Hollywood, we get to know these likeable, complex and sensitive men in a way that is rare in movies - which is to say we begin to care deeply about them and their relationship.

Synopsis

Sandeman (Richard Harris) is the biggest and most feared crime lord in the economically depressed and ravaged city of Liverpool. But an unexpected event is about to cause his kingdom to crumble. For when his beloved wife Mandy (Lynn Redgrave) is shot dead in a mugging incident, Sandeman is convinced it was really premeditated murder.

Consumed by grief and determined to learn the truth behind his wife's shocking death, Sandeman's rage only agitates other long festering rivalries and bitter resentments. And most of those emanate from inside his close-knit family.

Broken and at a loss without Mandy, Sandeman decides his time is up and hands over all the money from his illegal empire to his three daughters. However, ex-drug addict Jo (Emma Catherwood), the youngest and Sandeman's favourite, has already turned her back on the family business and doesn't want anything to do with the dirty money. Brothel owner Kath (Louise Lombard) is the eldest daughter and she wants more than her fair share. Together with corrupt Detective Sergeant Puttnam (Aidan Gillen) she puts a revenge plan in motion that has a devastating impact on the entire family. Football club owner Tracy (Lorraine Pilkington) knows her father is expecting a mystery shipment from Amsterdam and intends to become a major player in the huge deal at whatever the cost.

And that cost is going to be great for everyone. From Kath's husband Dean (Paul McGann) and her young son Boy (Reece Noi) to Tracey's sadistic spouse Jug (Jimi Mistry) and investigating Customs and Excise officer Quick (Tom Bell)- no one will remain untouched by the jealous, dangerous and lethal enmity erupting between the Sandeman sisters.

Synopsis

Lucia is a film set in 1998 which uses the essential elements of Walter Scott's plot to present a drama about a beautiful young woman who indulges her love for a handsome singer despite her brother's cynical plans to marry her off to an alcoholic American tenor whose rich parents have promised to provide the money to save Hamish's magnificent but crumbling Scottish stately home (called Lammermoor!).





Don Boyd, the film's writer and director, has interwoven into this contemporary tale two elements which allow him to draw on Donizetti's music and the historical context of the story. Kate Ashton is a very talented soprano and Hamish decides to present 'Lucia di Lammermoor' in celebration of his sister's wedding to Oliver. As the protagonists in the film rehearse and present the music, the principal contemporary characters (Kate and Sam) reinforce their passion for each other through the fantasies and dreams they experience as a natural extension of their work as performers. These are manifested dramatically in the historical imagery of Scott's novel. While the movie progresses, the audience is invited to shift seamlessly between reality and fantasy, real characters and performers, contemporary and historical situations. So much so that the distinctions become irrelevant. The audience is quite literally seduced into absorbing a contemporary drama which is outrageously laced with twentieth-century dance/house music, eighteenth-century situations, nineteenth-century Romantic classical music and witty modern cinematic imagery. In that sense, Lucia is like no other movie made before.

Synopsis

Leicester, 1972. T-Rex are chewing up the charts and Jack, a mixed race teenager with a lot more than schoolwork on her mind, has a hectic month of growing up to do. This is coming-of-age, Midlands-style: forget the Prom, corridor passes and making out at the drive-in. Think Baked Alaska, the Colgate ring of confidence and sneaky cigarettes behind the bike sheds.


When we first meet Jack it's the day of her first period and just four weeks before she has to run the race of her life for a place on the county athletics squad. Convinced she is champion material, her bullish PE teacher, Mr Loughborough, is piling on the pressure to train hard, and buys her a long-coveted pair of swanky red trainers to demonstrate his commitment.


But a 13-year-old's life is not just one long 200 metres: Jack shines in academia and art class as well as on the track, and she's got her eye on a rather handsome classmate called Steven Green. Sex, 'frigging' and the big 'V' are the subject of every school bus seminar and playground pow wow. And Jack's mum Vivian is determined to keep a beady eye on her daughter's new-found interest in matters carnal. Vivian is also convinced her daughter is about to be offered a cocktail of class A drugs on every street corner.


While on a school cross-country run up to the local tourist trap and nookie spot, Jack is approached by Spanner, a David Cassidy look-alike with a nice line in cannabis consumption and floppy hair. He introduces Jack to the delights of getting slowly wasted in the sun. Meanwhile Jack's best friend Maxine sets her pal up in a garage tryst to do the deed with Steven Green and his spotty mate Poor Bastard. But the three of them are disturbed by a local policeman. By now determined to throw off her cumbersome virginity, Jack steals a handful of contraceptive pills from her mum's bedside cabinet and finally gets together with Spanner...