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Best Cinema Documentary category
The films below were shortlisted for Grierson 2009 in
the Best Cinema Documentary category.
Nominated Film Image
Winner
Burma VJ
Production Cº: Magic Hour Films
Human Rights Watch Int. Film Festival
Director Anders Ostergaard
Producer Lisa-Lense Moller
Writers   Anders Ostergard, Jan Krogsgaard
Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to Burma’s video journalists who insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country despite risking torture and life in jail. Armed with small handycams they make their undercover reportages, smuggle the material out of the country, have it broadcast back into Burma via satellite and offered as free usage for international media.
Nominated Film Image
Nominated
The Age of Stupid
Production Cº: One Off Productions Ltd
General theatrical release
Director Franny Armstrong
Producer Lizzie Gillet
Executive Producer   John Battsek
Writerss Mark Lynas, Franny Armstrong, Emily James
'The Age Of Stupid' is the new cinema documentary from the Director of 'McLibel' and the Producer of the Oscar- winning 'One Day In September'. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar- nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching 'archive' footage from 2007 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?
Nominated Film Image
Nominated
Man on Wire
Production Cº: Wall To Wall in association with Red Box Films
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2008
Director James Marsh
Producer Simon Chinn
Executive Producer   Jonathan Hewes
Man on Wire is the extraordinary re-telling of Philippe Petit’s daring and illegal scheme to walk a high wire between New York’s Twin Towers in 1974. It tells the story of how Petit and his accomplices managed to rig a wire between the buildings which Petit then danced on, with no safetynet. Petit’s walk became known as “the artistic crime of the twentieth century.
Nominated Film Image
Nominated
Thriller in Manila
Production Cº: Darlow Smithson Productions
More 4
Director/Producer John Dower
Executive Producer Elinor Day
Writer   John Dower
Joe Frazier takes British filmmaker, John Dower, back to the most hyped boxing match in history. Frazier, now 63, takes British filmmaker, John Dower, back 33 years to the most hyped boxing match in history, and beyond. Frazier has never forgiven Ali for the racial taunting leading up to the fight in which he called Frazier 'gorilla' and 'uncle Tom' - the worst possible insult for a fellow black man.
shortlisted
Of Time and the City
Production Cº: Hurricane Films
Liverpool
Director Terence Davies
Producers Solon Papadopoulos, Roy Boulter
Executive Producers   Chris Moll, Lisa Marie Russo
Writer Terence Davies
Specially commissioned to celebrate the city’s year as European Capital of Culture, Of Time and the City is both a love song and a eulogy to the director Terence Davies’ birthplace of Liverpool. Combining archive footage of the city with a wonderfully rich music soundtrack and with voice-over narration by Davies himself, it is also a response to memory, reflection and the experience of losing a sense of place as the skyline changes and time takes its toll.
shortlisted
Rough Aunties
Production Cº: Rise Films
Belfast Film Festival
Director Kim Longinotto
True Stories: Rough Aunties, follows a remarkable group of women unwavering in their stand to protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa.
shortlisted
Shooting Robert King (formerly Blood Trail)
Production Cº: Blood Trail Film Ltd
Sheffield Doc/Fest 2008
Director Richard Parry
Producers Richard Parry, Vaughan Smith
The innocent, naive, kind, clumsy - none of these live long in war. Which makes Robert King's survival all the more remarkable. Listen carefully to the story of this dirty-faced angel from Tennessee. Then have him shot at dawn. The world is too ugly to allow such honesty to live... (Anthony Loyd)
shortlisted
sleep furiously
Production Cº: Van Film Ltd/Bard Entertainments Ltd
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2008
Director Gideon Koppel
Producer Margaret Matheson
Sleep furiously is set in a small farming community in mid Wales, a place where Koppel's parents - both refugees - found a home. This is a landscape and population that is changing rapidly as small scale agriculture is disappearing and the generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out. The film maker leads us on a poetic journey into a world of endings and beginnings; a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire.
shortlisted
Sounds Like Teen Spirit
Production Cº: Number 9 Films
London Film Festival 2008
Director Jamie J Johnson
Producers Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley
Writer   Jamie J Johnson
‘Sounds Like Teen Spirit’ is the warmly comic story of childhood, innocence, teen-dreams and singing off-key. Marrying the affectionate indie humour of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ with the charm and emotion of ‘Stand by Me’, ‘Sounds Like Teen Spirit’ follows the journey of four loveable underdogs to the world’s largest children’s songwriting contest; The Junior Eurovision, including all the foibles of growing up along the way.