Projects matching: Sophie Fiennes

Synopsis

In a derelict mansion on the outskirts of London, we witness eight actors - four Macbeths and four Lady Macbeths - work in pairs to investigate Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy.
Sophie Fiennes' richly detailed and immersive film offers privileged access to the vital experience of making theatre with pioneering practitioners Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod of the ground breaking international theatre company Cheek By Jowl.
Cheek by Jowl is the international theatre company of Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod. Its landmark productions, performed in more than 50 countries in the 44 years since the company was founded, have influenced the creation of theatre and the experience of audiences the world over. Actors including Adrian Lester, Tom Hiddleston, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, David Morrissey, Gwendoline Christie and Matthew MacFadyen all developed their talent working with Cheek by Jowl in their early careers.
"The setting of Twyford Abbey is dramatic, but Shakespeare’s text is also haunted by the ghosts of actors and audiences who have passed through it, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future." Sophie Fiennes
Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 - World premiere
Official Selection International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2024 - International premiere

Synopsis

'Four Quartets' names four landscapes that serve as the basis for four interwoven meditations on the nature of time, faith and the quest for spiritual enlightenment. It is one T.S.Eliots's final great poetic works and its questions, imagery and reflections retain their power and resonance today.
Early in the Covid pandemic Ralph Fiennes set himself the challenge of committing 'Four Quartets' to memory. This cinematic adaptation, filmed shortly after the conclusion of Fiennes original stage production, is an exquisite rendering of Fiennes' tour de force performance, seamlessly transposed from stage to screen, featuring the landscapes in the poem.

Synopsis

Filmed in a derelict suburban shopping mall, the film features an ensemble of disabled and non-disabled dancers and is a re-imagination of a performance of the same title by Stopgap Dance Company.
Official Selection Sheffield Doc/Fest 2018 - World premiere
IMZ Dancescreen Award 2019 -Winner - Best Screen Choreography Over 15 Minutes

Synopsis

An electrifying journey through the performance, private and public worlds of pop cultural icon Grace Jones. Jones’ bold aesthetic echoes throughout as director Sophie Fiennes creates a powerful cinematic experience, contrasting musical sequences with intimate personal footage and reaching beyond her iconic mask.
The film includes unique performances of her iconic hits 'Slave To The Rhythm' and 'Pull Up To The Bumper' as well as more recent autobiographical tracks, 'Williams' Blood', 'This Is' and 'Hurricane'. These personal songs link to the film’s narrative that follows Grace on a holiday road trip across her native Jamaica where the story of her traumatic childhood are uncovered.
Her stage is the fixed point to which the film returns, with 'Love Is The Drug' acting like an aria, bringing the film to its final and most touching scenes, including an encounter with French photographer Jean Paul Goude, father of Jones’ son Paulo and creator of her iconic album covers.
This is a Grace we have not seen before, someone who reminds us of what it is to dare to be truly alive. In all her apparent contradictions, Grace Jones may appear an exception, but she is also a point of identification: she is the exception that proves the rule.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - TIFF Docs - World premiere

Synopsis

What started as a home movie became a committed project when Josh and Devorah found themselves unable to conceive. An endearing if ironic journey gets serious when life-threatening complications emerge. Their relationship is tested to the brink as they confront birth, death, love and loss all at once. A creative documentary about becoming a parent... and how to reconceive yourself.
Fiction director Josh Appignanesi turns the camera on himself and his wife as they undergo the ordeal of becoming parents in the era of man-children and assisted reproduction. Faced with fatherhood, Josh spirals comically into an envious career funk. But life-threatening complications emerge - the couple are tested to the brink, confronting shattering losses.
A portrait of our generation going through a revolution in reproduction - forced to find new ways to think about ourselves as creative beings. With contributions from writers, filmmakers and thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, John Berger, Darian Leader, Zadie Smith and Sophie Fiennes.
Universal yet still taboo, a film for everyone who has children, wants them, or still feels like a child themselves.

Synopsis

We are responsible for our dreams. This is the ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis – and fiction cinema. The makers of THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA return with THE PERVERT'S GUIDE IDEOLOGY. Philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizek, and filmmaker Sophie Fiennes use their inventive interpretation of moving pictures to present a compelling cinematic journey into the heart of ideology – the dreams and collective beliefs that shape our political, social and cultural life.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2012 - World premiere

Synopsis

OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer's alchemical creative processes and renders a film journey through the universe of Kiefer's studio estate, La Ribaute, in the South of France. This strange, sprawling village extending over 35 hectares combines working studios, a network of tunnels, caves, underground pools, a crypt and an amphitheatre.
Shot in cinemascope, the film enters into direct contact with the materials Kiefer employs to build his works – lead, concrete, ash, acid, earth, glass and gold. Here creation and destruction are interdependent.
Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2010 - World premiere
Official Selection Toronto Film Festival 2010

Synopsis

Described variously as, "a tour de force of Zizek's fascinating interpretations of fine cinematic moments," and "a rare documentary of unabashed intellectual aggression," this collaboration between director Sophie Fiennes and philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizek represents the first film in a trilogy. Fiennes inventive direction places Zizek within the film moments he is analysing. He is "a genuinely interesting thinker" and "Oh what a brilliantly entertaining host Zizek turns out to be." The brings Zizek's post Freudian psychoanalytic interpretations to some of the more celebrated work in the history of cinema, including David Lynch, Tarkovsky and Hitchcock.
Official Selection Sydney Film Festival 2006
Official Selection Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2006
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2006

Synopsis

As much documentary as it is religious art, as much religious art as it is rock and roll, as much rock and roll as it is rhetoric and as much rhetoric as it is cinema.
This unique, kaleidoscopic film is "a richly cinematic experience" inside the lives of worshippers from the congregation of The Greater Bethany Community Church, (now The City of Refuge), in South Central Los Angeles. Bishop Noel Jones, (brother of Grace Jones), is both shepherd and rock as the film weaves between community life, gospel song and his electric church sermons.
Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2002 - World premiere
Official Selection Locarno Film Festival 2002
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2002