Projects matching: Roz Mortimer

Synopsis

This is a ghost story. A series of uncanny events lead The Seeker to a forest in Poland where she meets a distraught elderly woman who hands her a note written in Polish that she cannot understand. Returning months later with an interpreter she hears the story of The Deathless Woman, a Roma matriarch who was buried alive in the forest by German soldiers in 1942. The Deathless Woman draws us from the scene of her death to other sites of Roma persecution. She hovers above the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau on the night the Roma revolt against their Nazi captors. She glides under the lake in Várpalota where 118 women and children were massacred in 1945. She passes through the burnt-out house in Tatárszentgyörgy where neo-Nazis murdered a Roma family in 2009. She even crosses into the virtual realm and enters the digital landscapes of the Internet, encountering hate speech and video games where players are invited to gun down unarmed Roma as they run through the streets. The film interweaves The Deathless Woman’s ghostly narration, The Seeker’s journey of discovery, fantastical re-imaginings of buried secrets; and documentary testimony from witnesses to atrocities against the Roma in Poland and Hungary. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

A forensic examination of memory and place. The hidden history of the Roma Holocaust told through the testimony of five witnesses and survivors. Seventy years after the event they are still living next-door to the mass graves…some marked, but others long forgotten amongst the forests and wheat fields of Poland.

Synopsis

Whilst on a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy the artist meticulously recorded her experience through photography, text and video to create an installation that takes us on a disembodied journey through the labyrinthine gardens and ruins overlooking Lake Como. The passage of time, light, and people is central to this work where location and landscape become devices to explore enclosure and isolation - both physical and psychological states. Intersecting paths open out into seemingly impossible locations, mysterious doors set into the rock reveal secret passageways, and as the cicadas call, a sense of languor gives way to obsession and an unravelling of sanity. In collaboration with Robert Arnold. Available as a single split-screen film or a 2 channel installation.

Synopsis

We think of the arctic as a pristine wilderness, and when scientists went to collect breastmilk from Inuit mothers, they were expecting to find the purest milk anywhere on earth. But the levels went off the scale. The milk of the Inuit mothers was loaded with chemicals migrating from the south. Set in the wilderness of the Canadian Arctic, Invisible tells the story of how man-made chemicals are building up in our bodies and being passed from mother to child in the womb and through breastfeeding. It is thought that these hormone disrupting chemicals are causing havoc with the reproductive systems, neurological health and immune systems of animals and humans across the planet. Today scientists cannot find a single woman anywhere in the world who does not have chemicals such as flame retardants in her breast milk. In this beautiful and thought-provoking film, artist and film maker Roz Mortimer takes us on a hypnotic journey to the high arctic. Featuring throatsinging performances from Tagaq, medieval texts and epic scenes of contemporary Inuit life, this film resists conventions of science documentary and questions how we live in the world today. Filmed entirely on Baffin Island, Nunavut, in the communities of Iqaluit and Qikiqtarjuaq.   Website: www.wonder-dog.co.uk/invisible

Synopsis

An ironic look at the way newspapers report children's deaths, accidents, bad mothers, angry fathers and the bogeyman. Based on the film maker's archive of newspaper clippings, these are terrible stories that make great copy. With an inventive mix of still photography and live action, the film sweeps around Britain to create a chilling comment on death, news reporting and the family.

Synopsis

In this eerie and moving documentary a woman takes us on a strange and fabulous journey through the deserted seafront of Southend-on-Sea, whilst a narrator tells the tale of the great flood of 31st January 1933.

Synopsis

An erotic, witty and disturbing film. An intriguing mix of fact and fiction. A suburban housewife peels back the veneer of her perfect home to lead us on a fabulous journey into the subterranean world of worms.