DOCUMENTARIES
SCREENING
Block 1 – Wednesday 26 June – 10.00
COMMUNITY CINEMA
64 High Street
Ramsgate CT11 9RS
PASTURE & STORM
(UK)

SYNOPSIS
A short documentary that follows a programme which caters for disabled musicians playing to their strengths to collaborate on newly composed pieces. Honing in on pianist Nicholas who due to having no right hand is an accomplished left-handed musician
Writer/Director/Producer: Chris Frazer Smith
Cast: Sadie Harrison, Nicholas McCarthy, Sophia Benton
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Chris Frazer Smith is an acclaimed portrait and people photographer & director shooting commissioned and non-commissioned photography & film, on location and in the studio. He has been a D&AD judge and continues to mentor & lecture students both on photography and film.
PASSION, PURPOSE & PARKINSON
(UK)

SYNOPSIS
A painter, photographer and musician tell the story of how they overcame the physically debilitating Parkinson’s Disease and managed to continue pursuing their creative profession despite the adverse challenges presented to them in life.
Writer/Director/Producer: Olz McCoy
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Olz is a young and emerging film director from London. Aged only 24 his films have been featured on BBC News, Piccadilly Circus and screened at the BFI twice. His films are powerful, meaningful and emotional, driven by the belief that film is the best medium to entertain and educate. With skills in directing, cinematography and editing he has worked with the likes of Coca-Cola, JP Morgan and YouTube to create commercials and music videos. He has his sights set on a ‘Best Director’ Oscar, and he is currently in production on his debut feature.
SHAKING HANDS WITH THE DEVIL
(UK)

SYNOPSIS
This short documentary follows wildlife photographer and Parkinson’s sufferer David Plummer as he travels through Kenya to meet those who have been marginalised, stigmatised and persecuted for having Parkinson’s Disease.
Writer/Director:/Producer: Olz McCoy
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Olz is a young and emerging film director from London. Aged only 24 his films have been featured on BBC News, Piccadilly Circus and screened at the BFI twice. His films are powerful, meaningful and emotional, driven by the belief that film is the best medium to entertain and educate. With skills in directing, cinematography and editing he has worked with the likes of Coca-Cola, JP Morgan and YouTube to create commercials and music videos. He has his sights set on a ‘Best Director’ Oscar, and he is currently in production on his debut feature.
RESILIENT WOMEN
(Argentina)

SYNOPSIS
Resilient Women (2023, 13 min.) is a documentary about the theater workshops that took place in penitentiary unit nº 52, in the city of Azul, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The testimonies reveal that artistic practice helps women to deal with the difficulties of prison life; shows how acting becomes a way to improve coexistence and communication between the inmates, in addition to changing their mental state and paving the way and dreams of a better future.
Writer/Director: Maria Sol Aranda
Producer: Elcio Cabral Melo
Cast: Fernanda Rios, Analia Varela, Liliana Alsina
MEET THE DIRECTOR
María Sol Aranda has a degree in Film, TV and Video from UNICEN, Buenos Aires. In 2023, she released her first documentary Mujeres Resilientes (Resilient Women), which was awarded best short documentary on human rights at RDIFF in India.
She is a partner in Pirambeira-Mar Produtora, where she produced Amigos do Bairro and Vida de Cinema.
She was assistant photographer and assistant director on Cadê Heleny? an animated short film that won awards at recognised international festivals, and directed the children’s short films: Vitz, Isso Não É uma Pipa and Os Portais da Imaginação. In Argentina, he was assistant director on the feature film Pinamar, and cameraman on the TV programme Atado con Alambre.
THE INSIDE SINGERS
(USA)

SYNOPSIS
A choir of half inmates and half outside volunteers practices once a week in preparation for their biannual concert. And a formerly incarcerated member of the choir tries to get back into prison to see the concert.
The Inside Singers is a documentary about the power of music — how it can change the way people who are incarcerated see themselves.
Director: Daniel Kolen
MEET THE DIRECTOR
For more than a decade, Daniel Kolen worked in film, TV, and advertising as a Producer. From PBS documentary programming on aging and retirement, to CNBC documentaries on financial crime, to political advertising for candidates nationwide, to a scripted feature that premiered on Showtime, Kolen has worked on large-scale, big budget productions with national and international distribution. He now works in education, while filming and editing for small and medium-sized organizations.
CLEVELAND
(USA)

SYNOPSIS
A short documentary that follows my Uncle Rob as he returns to Cleveland, Ohio. The city he grew up in and the first place he was out as a gay man during the AIDs epidemic in the 1980s.
Writer/Director/Producer: Lily Daroff
Cast: Rob Daroff, Jr.
MEET THE DIRECTOR

QUEER FIGHTERS OF UKRAINE
(UK)

SYNOPSIS
When their country and their community comes under attack, non-binary artist and filmmaker Angelika Ustymenko aka Rebel Queers resolves to document the experiences of queer Ukrainians during wartime. On the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Angelika begins a new phase of their documentary project, collaborating with Huck Docs to collect queer soldiers’ reflections after a year of war and exploring the many forms of queer resistance.
Directors: Angelika Ustymenko and Alex King
Producer: Angelika Ustymenko
MEET THE DIRECTORS
Angelika Ustymenko (they/them) is a Ukrainian non-binary artist and filmmaker. Determined to support their community and continue queer resistance, they have been documenting the experiences of queer people in the context of war, releasing Ukrainian Queer Fighters for Freedom (2022) and Queer Fighters of Ukraine (2023). Following their short Margot (2019), in 2023 Angelika wrote, directed and crowdfunded Before Curfew, a fictional story of queer romance unfolding over one day in wartime Kyiv, which premiered at Sunny Bunny LGBTQIA+ Film Festival.
Alex King (he/him) is Senior Editor at Huck Magazine. Formerly, he was a freelance journalist and documentary producer based between Athens and London, covering humanitarian issues, activism and alternative culture. He writes for international publications such as The Guardian, Dazed, Huck Magazine, Vice and Novara Media. He is creative producer with independent documentary collective Perfidious Productions and produced Athena Skates for Red Bull, Still, Moving for Nowness and the debut feature doc Tight: The Rise of Indian Bodybuilding is forthcoming in 2024.
TRUDO VERTICAL FOREST
(UK)

SYNOPSIS
A direct descendant of the iconic building in Milan, the Trudo Vertical Forest in Eindhoven is the first tower in this series of buildings to be dedicated to Social Housing. The film recounts the design process that Stefano Boeri Architetti put in place with the desire to make accessible this architectural typology, whose character of “exclusivity” has always been – using the words of its designer himself – a “limitation “for both its diffusion and its success. The film gives voice to the rich team that created this urban, architectural and social experiment, and also to that of the young apartment tenants, who today inhabit this tower, which is unique on the international scene. They are the real protagonists of this journey.
Writer/Director: Stefano Santamato
Producer: Paolo Soravia
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Born in 1989, Stefano graduated with a masters in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Milan in 2014 and later trained at the Cfp Bauer in Milan as a documentary filmmaker.
From 2018 he has been working as a freelance filmmaker for the Milanese video production company The Blink Fish and Stefano Boeri Architetti while elaborating a close study on the relationship between architecture and audio-visual media.
His short film Troiane (2020), documentary that establishes a parallel between Euripides’ tragedy and the 2018 Vaia Storm, was screened and awarded at several international film festivals. He is working on his first feature film “Basilico, L’infinto è là in fondo” (2023) a documentary about the work of master of architectural photography Gabriele Basilico.
SANDCASTLE
(Switzerland)

SYNOPSIS
Join a courageous potter wasp on an enthralling journey! Witness this fascinating insect’s tenacity and perseverance as it navigates its dangerous realm teeming with challenges and predators.
The secrets of its hidden world are revealed in this short documentary.
Writer/Director/Producer: Roman Willi
Narrator: Rachael Charles
MEET THE DIRECTOR

THE LAST DROLL TELLER
(UK)

SYNOPSIS
Join Mike O’Connor as he goes back in time to recount the Cornish tale of the last Droll Teller, Anthony James.
Director: Zoe Smith
MEET THE DIRECTOR