Photography by Andrej Vasilenko

Nick Papadimitriou goes for long walks, often for days at a time, in an ambitious effort to “hold my region in my mind.” He is comforted by what he sees as the rejected buildings and spaces of London, the “overlooked” places, that lack the care and attention he himself felt he had found wanting in his own early life. Filmmaker John Rogers’ portrait piece ‘The London Perambulator’, about the self-styled Deep Topographer and his loving study of  liminal spaces, started ‘The Invisible City‘ day at The Hub in Kings Cross Read the rest of this entry »

Timothy Albone, Lucy Martens | 2010 | UK | 85 min.

In just a few years, the Afghan cricket team has risen from the sport’s lowest ranks to phenomenal success in the highly competitive international arena.

Garnering a ‘Best of the Fest’ nod from Edinburgh this year, this is the remarkable and inspirational story of coach Taj Malik Aleem and his team, who became the sport’s unlikeliest heroes during a triumphant campaign culminating in the crucial World Cup qualifier in South Africa.

Executive prodcued by Oscar-winning director and cricket enthusiast Sam Mendes, Out of the Ashes follows the squad over two years as they go from playing in their shalwar-kameezes on rubble pitches to battling their way around the globe and up the international league tables. In a country more often associated with war and rigged elections, their incredible journey is an absolute joy to behold.

+ Q&A with directors Lucy Martens and Timothy Albone, producer Leslie Knott and Cricketing legend Bill Allen OBE

‘Best of the Fest’, Edinburgh International Film Festival

“Puts a human face to a nation that many have turned their back on…”  Sam Mendes, Exec Producer, Out of the Ashes

“Uplifting, fascinating…  An intriguing and extremely watchable film.”  Screen

“Filmic gold…. Remarkable” Sunday Times

“The real-life contemporary Cinderella story of how Afghanistan’s ragtag cricket team rose up through the sport’s international ranks is charmingly recounted in Brit-made docu….This often humourous pic is ultimately more about people and passion that it is about the game itself.” Variety

Producers: Leslie Knott & Rachel Wexler, Bungalow Town Production Ltd

Barbican, Cinema 1, 18:30
7 December 2010

Tickets: Standard – £8.50 online (£10.50 full price) / Barbican Members – £6.50 online (£8.50 full price) / Concessions £7.50 (subject to availability) BOOK HERE

Roberto Orazi | 2009 | Italy | 61min

Winner of the prestigious Premio Ilaria Alpi 2010

A shocking inquiry into the global human organ trade that lures vulnerable donors into illegal operations with false promises of jobs or money, then smuggles their organs via criminal networks to corrupt medial officials and clinics.

H.O.T. exposes the mediators, the organ hunters and smugglers, talks to surviving donors, and interviews the surgeons who claim they know nothing of the crimes they commit.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion with leading transplant consultant Geoffrey Koffman and Director of Organ Donation and Transplantation, Sally Johnson, and chaired by Patrick Hazard, Director of the LIDF

Geoffrey Koffman
Geoffrey Koffman is a consultant transplant surgeon of 25 years experience and Head of the Renal Transplant Units at Guys Hospital and Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital, London. He has served as Secretary of the British Transplantation Society, and supervises the largest living donor programme in the UK.

Sally Johnson
Sally joined NHSBT in September 2008. Previously she was Programme Director responsible for achieving clinical reconfiguration across four South East London Acute Hospital Trusts. Before that she was CEO of Enfield Primary Care Trust for six years. She has also led reviews of seven Ambulance Trusts in South East England and of the NHS contribution to the 2012 Olympic Games.

DocSpot
20 October 2010, 18:30
Barbican, Cinema 1

Tickets: £8.50 online / £10.50 full price; Members £6.50 online / £8.50 full price; Concessions £7.50
subject to availability BOOK HERE

Noel Chanan | 2009 | UK | 40min

In 1983 poet Ted Hughes and American printmaker and sculptor Leonard Baskin, his collaborator for many years, took part in an unrehearsed audio recording in which they talked about their long-standing friendship and the nature of their collaborative work on illustrated books of Hughes’s poems.

The outcome of the recording by renowned filmmaker and photographer Noel Chanan is a lively, entertaining, and revelatory documentary where Hughes and Baskin explore in intimate detail the genesis of such key works as CROW and CAVE BIRDS.

Includes previously unseen photographs, extensive illustrations of Baskin’s dramatic prints and sculptures and readings by Hughes himself.

+ Q&A with Noel Chanan, poet Tom Paulin, Nicholas Penny (Director of the National Gallery), and Nicholas Spice (London Review of Books)

The Artist and the Poet will be preceded by the short film THE GHOSTVILLE PROJECT

Tim Daly | 2009 | UK | 12min

This short documentary was shot in October 2009 on the remote Cowal Peninsula in the West of Scotland. It details arts collective Agents of Change’s transformation of the abandoned village of Pollphail into an open air art gallery. The brutalist 1970s concrete structures had never seen human inhabitants. The site was originally constructed ostensibly as a base to house workers needed to construct concrete oil rigs, but the plan was subsequently abandoned, and now it is ideally suited to the separate styles and methods employed by the collective. Drawing inspiration from the marked contrast between the architecture and the surrounding landscape of rolling hills, forests and lochs, the artists worked for three days through challenging physical conditions to produce foreboding yet hauntingly beautiful artwork all over the site. The viewer is rewarded with a unique insight into the world of the graffiti artist and an opportunity to experience the creative process behind such a huge undertaking.

18:30 / 17 November 2010
Barbican Cinema 1

Tickets: £8.50 online / £10.50 full price; Members £6.50 online / £8.50 full price; Concessions £7.50; Under 15 £5.50
subject to availability BOOK HERE

For three years, LIDF has explored and showcased some of the best documentary films from around the world. Now, we’ve decided to delve deeper into the true meaning of ‘documentary’ and explore this method of real life story-telling through other media.

Photographic and radio documentaries will be included in this year’s programme, increasing the scope of material we exhibit and the range of  practitioners we work with. Professionals from the film, photography and radio industries will join our panels, lead workshops and participatory events, and contribute new voices to our ‘conversations in documentary’. Highlights so far include Documentary Photography workshops with Magnum photographers, and a photographic treasure-hunt in and around the streets of Bloomsbury.

What’s more, the festival will now run for 16 days (23 April – 8 May) that’s twice as long as last year, so you’ll have plenty of time to get involved. Look our for further event details and very special announcements coming soon!

© Olivia Arthur/Magnum Photos

The 64-minute Isolation is a mixture of telling clips and camera shots as Directors Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore follow ex-soldier Stuart Griffiths around the country interviewing fellow ex-servicemen about their experiences since leaving the army, mostly after injury. Shot in extreme clarity and focus, uncomfortable notes rising as a disconcerting, disconnected voice matter-of-factly lists the detritus of modern life, following with the disturbing fact that ‘it’s easy to disappear among them’. We creep slowly into the subject matter; ex-soldier Stuart Griffiths travels seemingly through the night and into day, interviewing homeless and dispossessed ex-soldiers. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Space Tourists’ by Christian Frei won this year’s Best Documentary Director Award at the Sundance Film festival, and this eclectically structured piece highlights both the dream of mankind to reach the stars and the divisions that exists between rich and poor as represented by their aspirations in connection to that dream. The film mainly tells the story of Anousheh Ansari, a wealthy businesswoman who ploughed $20million of her own money into an 8-day stay on the International Space Station, and, to a lesser extent, that of Charles Simonyi, co-creator of Word and Excel, who is twice visitor to the Station and well versed in the practices of space training. Following them, literally picking up the scraps of their experience, are the inhabitants of rural Kazakhstan, building shepherding hides and selling scrap from the pieces of the rocket engines that fall, spent, to the ground after the rockets take off from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Read the rest of this entry »

15:00 Sunday 6 December 2009 at Tricycle
Followed by a panel discussion with Stephen Wilkinson (Assistant Director of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at the London Metropolitan University) and Stephen M. Hart (Professor of Hispanic Studies at University College London).
Tickets: £8 (£6.50 Tricycle Members)
Box office: 020 7328 1000
www.tricycle.co.uk

Whilst the international press speculates on the imminent death of Fidel Castro and the Cuban community of Miami is already celebrating his funeral, on the island the condition of his health is a state secret. But the umbilical cord that ties every Cuban to the revolution is beginning to be severed, and a new energy is emerging in the country.

Read the rest of this entry »

Worth Abbey from the BBC TV Series 'The Monastery'. Photo: worthabbey.net

Documentary as a genre has become a staple of television programming. Every evening, audiences can expect to see anything from the drinking habits of British teenagers to radicalisation in the Muslim community. Although varied in content, the form and presentation of these films has become convergent. It is not only the constraints of the slot, being a national broadcast and thus speaking to a general audience, but also the way they are constructed. There is a standardisation occurring in the narrative arc and the use of music. How can an audience engage with a topic if the frame is predictable and rigid? And is there room for authorship by the filmmaker given the constraints set by commissioning editors?

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Beauty
Thursday 26 November, 19:00

The LIDF continues its open-ended, audience-led, events at the new Cinephilia West. Unlike other screenings, here we dispense with the panel format and discuss the evening’s theme in an informal, improvised way. We will look at documentary film as it straddles the worlds of reportage, anthropology, activism, photography and mass-entertainment.

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