MASTER

Careworker Khal leads a life of extremes: at work he’s submissive to his demanding patient, Lawrence; in his spare time, he’s a bombastically aspiring performance poet, giving tips to his young mentee Bilal. But with his relationship with Lawrence under threat, and spurned by the woman he loves, Khal must go to extraordinary lengths to stop his universe from collapsing. This narrative short looks at the nature of control, and how people’s lives are often finely-balanced solar systems that can fall out of kilter at the slightest change of orbit. The aim was also to represent minority characters in a unique and non-stereotypical manner.…

No Mileage

Medellín, Colombia: events over the course of one tragic day play out in reverse-chronological order, as two teenagers come to terms with the repercussions of one mundane anticlimactic moment. A 15-minute narrative short, No Mileage premiered at Oscar-qualifying Huesca International Film Festival in June 2018. The title refers to the nickname gangs in Colombia give to virgins: ‘zero kilometres’, but with imperialist connotations. The film’s overriding aim and message is to present to Western audiences the ongoing damaging effects of patriarchy and post-colonialism on the wider society. Festivals: Huesca International Film Festival; Anonimul International Film Festival, Romania; Almaty Indie Film Festival (Winner, Best Short)…

A coat in Tarevci

In the misty village of Tarevci, Bosnia, a coat hanging from a line swings eerily in the wind. Bodyless and moving aimlessly, it presents a striking image: an analogy of both the rejection and consequent emptiness experienced by a recent failed love conquest, and the overarching dystopian feeling of a world full of disappointments. This is particularly symbolic with regards to the film’s setting: Bosnia is a country racked by countless broken promises and betrayals by those in power; Tarevci itself a Muslim enclave in the Serbian stronghold of Srpska – a misfit, outsider, begging to be worn and looked after.…

The Debris Field

The Debris Field (subtitle ‘Salvaging the Titanic in Word, Sound and Image’) is a multi-media event devised, written and performed by Simon Barraclough, Isobel Dixon and Chris McCabe. Our words are wonderfully enhanced and supported by original music from Oli Barrett (of the brilliant Petrels and Bleeding Heart Narrative) and new film from Jack Wake-Walker. Debuted at the BFI South Bank on April 14th 2012, 100 years to the night of the tragedy, the show offers a richly overlapping multi-media experience – a showcasing of five talented individuals, both as solo artists and as partners in collaborative alchemy.…

Ten Thousand Things

The flowing river of time is endless and inevitable – so why do people kid themselves into thinking their life stands still? This film presents a journey through a man’s collected moments, touching on many human issues including childhood, tradition, love and voyeurism. A poetic narration crafted from the words of Jorge Luis Borges accompanies. All the footage was shot on a mobile phone then recorded again off a laptop screen – this was to accentuate one of the film’s themes that technology, and in particular digital screens, seem to create barriers to reality. The narration was artificially constructed from a series of lectures by Borges about poetry. Single words and phrases were chopped up to create a new poetic…

The Passion of Peter

The Passion of Peter is an experimental film about a man who travels to Blackpool in order to complete a “bucket list” of things he wants to do before he, eventually, kills himself. Inspired by Germany’s postdramatic theatre movement, The Passion of Peter explores both the extent to which a performer will go in the name of art, and the discomfort an audience feels when watching them. Shot in a loosely Dogme 95 style in one day, and following the principles of the Aristotelian unities, the film makes a unique comment on a modern-day society that lauds the notion of ‘famous for the sake of being famous’. Current Status: In production…

A Bosnian Chronicle

A Bosnian Chronicle presents life in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina through a series of journeys across the divided country, revealing the richness and complexity of a place that has brought so much tragedy to our time and known so little peace. As in the work of Ivo Andric and his masterwork, Bosnian Chronicle, the film exposes through archive footage and original filming the immense beauty of the dramatic landscape with its eerie hilltop fortresses, alongside and in contrast to the corrupting and divisive machinations of those in power. In so doing, notions of time, the past, history, are shown to be enfolded within the present it created as any attempts to historicise the war in Bosnia, to consider it the…