Our films pursue a new disjunctive space of thinking – new forms of participation, en-voicing and staging – across film, theatre, art and scenic design. In this we are indifferent to genre
We don’t trust in fiction or documentary alone. Rather we see how fiction and documentary might expose the expectations of each other and therefore the cinematic truth.
We seek to challenge how professional producer and non-professional performer talk to each other and collaborate; we want a new cinematic commons; a cinema that makes space for voices that are not merely licensed to speak; voices that are insistent, unreasonable, that speak without consent, without request, ‘without measure’.
We want a political cinema from below that does more than bear witness
Upcoming Projects
The Verge is a 35-minute film based on a treatment of a short play by John Roberts. It is set in a funeral parlour and consists of an extended soliloquy/lament by a middle-aged black woman, Magdalene, for her adopted white brother, Thomas, who lies on a bier in the space. The form and structure are Greek-classical (Pericles, Aeschylus); the lighting and décor minimalist; the language, poetically inflected, working class.
Magdalene, distraught and unconsolable, calls up the painful memory of her brother and the love of her dead mother, her grief finding expression in wild cries of pain and intense shaking movement. Her 12 years old daughter Pauline twice enters the funeral parlour with a message from her father to stop and join them in a waiting car. Magdalene, however, persists eventually being forced to leave by two police officers called by the funeral director. Her refusal to leave the space is a last attempt to reclaim the love that had been so strong between her, her brother and her mother and then had been lost between them.
The work extends our interests our interest in the experimental, anti-naturalistic possibilities of theatre-as-film. In this respect the film explores forms of non-naturalistic staging. All footage will be shot on set under artificial lighting.
Casting
Casting and shooting in the Birmingham and the West Midlands we are currently seeking Magdalene. Magdalene is a “middle aged” black woman, she and her fraternal sibling are the first generation of their family to have been born in Britain
This role requires a certain emotional intensity, theatrical timing and sense of movement however, we are not concerned with experience or resumés only the ability to carry the role.
If you are interested either submit your demo reel here or register for casting calls here