The Big Melt
A brand new kind of heavy metal music, with moving pictures: 100 years of steel on film with soundtrack performed live and conducted by Jarvis Cocker at the 2013 Sheffield DocFest with a band made up of his favourite Sheffield musicians recorded live.
"Just like Billy Casper told Jud he'd "never work down t'pit" I vowed never to get in all that "Sheffield: Steel City" biz. But guess what? Looking at the BFI's awesome collection of steel-related films changed my mind. I only hope that we can pay proper homage to the extraordinary individuals featured in this footage. Our aim is to melt faces (& hearts) & to blow minds. With maybe a bit of smelting thrown in for good measure. The jesses are so off." Jarvis Cocker
Commissioned by BBC Storyville and BBC North in Association with the BFI using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Directors MARTIN WALLACE and JARVIS COCKER
A Crossover Labs/Lone Star Co-production
Lui Xiadong: Half Street
For six weeks in the summer of 2013, Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong immersed himself in a community close to the Lisson Gallery near Edgware Road to make paintings depicting the area’s people and places. Sophie Fiennes’ intimate exploration of the creative process behind the painter’s work accompanies the Liu Xiadong’s exhibition at the Lisson Gallery.
Directed by Sophie Fiennes
Watch an excerpt on Nowness
Frankenstein: A Modern Myth
From Boris Karloff to Mel Brooks, Frankenstein has fired the imagination of generations of artists who have created their own interpretation of this Gothic masterpiece. Written by 19 year-old Mary Shelley nearly 200 years ago, this was the first and greatest myth of the modern scientific age.
Frankenstein: A Modern Myth looks at some of these depictions, including Danny Boyle’s sell-out hit at the National Theatre, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. The film throws a startlingly contemporary light on Mary Shelley’s story of alienation and scientific hubris, and its enduring appeal for admirers like cult film director John Waters.
A co-production with the National Theatre for Channel 4
Directed by Adam Low
The Dreams of William Golding
The film reveals, for the first time, the extraordinary life of one of the greatest english writers of the twentieth century. With unprecedented access to the unpublished diaries in which Golding recorded his dreams, the film penetrates deep into his private obsessions and insecurities. His daughter Judy and son David, both speak frankly about their father's demons, and the film follows Golding from the impoverished schoolmaster whose first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published when he was forty-three years old, to his winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983.
Directed by Adam Low
A BBC Arena Film
REGULAR BLACK - The Hidden History of Wuthering Heights
In association with Professor Cassandra Pybus at the University of Sydney.
Director: Adam Low
“This film promises to enliven discussion of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in the way that Chinua Achebe did for Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Barbara Harlow, Louann and Larry Temple Professor of English, University of Texas
DVD available from the Brontë Parsonage Museum Shop
Alan Bennett and The Habit of Art
Alan Bennett's hit play for the National Theatre is built around an imagined encounter between the poet W.H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten in Oxford in 1972. This documentary feature looks at the extraordinary relationship between England's finest poet and one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner talk for the first time about their own collaboration and reveal how The Habit of Art changed from a simple two-hander into a many-layered play-within-a-play.
Produced in association with the National Theatre, Arts Council England and More 4.
2010 RTS Programme Awards Winner for Arts.
Directed by Adam Low
Arena: Harold Pinter – A Celebration
In June 2009, a group of Britain's leading actors gathered for one night only to perform a celebration of the work of Harold Pinter at the National Theatre. Arena: Harold Pinter – A Celebration is an extraordinary record of this unprecedented theatrical event.
Premiered in January 2010 at the BFI South Bank.
Produced in associtation with Judy Daish Associates and BBC Arena.
Centenary: The BP Story
A feature-length documentary about Britain’s largest company at the time of its 100th anniversary in 2008.
THE HUNT FOR MOBY-DICK
Taking Moby-Dick as his starting point, writer Philip Hoare goes in search
of the whale and the men who hunted it, from North Yorkshire to New England
and the Azores. In the process, he seeks the truth behind our
fascination with the whale - and perhaps discover the reality behind the
world's largest and yet most mysterious animals
A BBC Arena Film
The Strange Luck of V.S. Naipaul
Nobel Prize winning author, V.S. Naipaul gave us a rare opportunity to document his life and work.
A BBC Arena Film
Dance With A Serial Killer
Dance With A Serial Killer is the story of a murder investigation, told by the French detective who brought a horrific serial killer to justice
A BBC Storyville/France 3/SBS Co-production
The Pervert's Guide To Cinema
"Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire" - Slavoj Zizek
"A virtuoso marriage
of image and thought" - Variety
"An extraordinary reassessment of cinema" - The Times
A Mischief Films/Kasander Film/Amoeba Film Co-production
DVD Available from www.thepervertsguide.com
Searching
For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Alt country star Jim White’s quest for
the soul of the American south.
A Film by Andrew Douglas
“Dark, beautiful and weird stuff” David Byrne
A BBC Arena Film/Andrew Douglas Company Co-production
US Theatrical Release July 2005
DVD Available in the UK from Plexi
Film
DVD Available in the US from Image
Entertainment
Calling
Hedy Lamarr
The story of the legendary Hollywood diva who was
known as the most beautiful woman in the world.
A BBC Arena/Arte/Vienna Film Fund Co-production
with Mischief Films, Vienna and Hanfgarn & Ufer,
Berlin. Austrian and German
Theatrical release September 2005.
I
Am From Nowhere
A portrait of Andy
Warhol’s
family hometown in Slovakia.
A BBC Arena Film/Arte/Vienna Film Fund/ORF Co-production
with World Wide Pictures, London, Mischief Films,
Vienna.
Premiered at the Locarno Film Festival 2002. 2003
Grierson Award Nominee