9^th BRITISH FILM FESTIVAL

This year’s British Film Festival features the best and brightest works in the contemporary British cinematography. We are delighted to offer our audience all possible genres starting with comedy and psychological thriller to documentary drama with all variety of topics: music, social problems, family relations, and, of course, love.

FEATURE FILMS

SPECIAL GUEST OF THE OPENING CEREMONY

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FIVE BRITISH SHORTS

3 March 2011, 7:30 pm - Cafesjian Center for the Arts, Special Events Auditorium

PRESENTED BY BARS MEDIA DOCUMENTARY FILM STUDIO

Vardan Hovhannisyan - Director/Producer
Arman Yeritsyan - Director
Inna Sahakyan - Director/Producer

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MADE IN DAGENHAM

The inspirational and feel-good story of Rita, a feisty factory worker who took on the biggest corporation in the world, Ford Motors. What started as a dispute over pay leads to an uprising amongst the women workers of 60s Britain that changed history.
Sally Hawkins stars in this vibrant slice-of-life comedy directed by Nigel Cole.

THE ARBOR

The Arbor is the powerful true story of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar and her troubled relationship with her daughter Lorraine. Andrea wrote honestly and unflinchingly about her upbringing on the notorious Buttershaw Estate. When she died, tragically at the age of 29 in 1990, Lorraine was just ten years old.
The Arbor catches up with Lorraine in the present day, also at 29; ostracized from Buttershaw and now in prison, serving a sentence for manslaughter for the death of her son. Whilst in prison and undergoing rehab, Lorraine is re-introduced to her mother's plays and private letters and as she reflects on the parallels in their lives.
Clio Barnard, began recording audio interviews with Lorraine Dunbar, other members of the Dunbar family and residents from the Buttershaw Estate over a period of two years. The material was edited to form an audio 'screenplay' which forms the basis for the film as actors lip-synch to the voices of the interviewees.

PINK SARIS

'A girl's life is cruel...A woman's life is very cruel', notes Sampat Pal, the protagonist at the centre of Kim Longinotto’s latest foray into the lives of extraordinary women.
Sampat Pal, like many others, was married as a young girl into a family which beat her often. But unusually, she fought back, leaving her in-laws and eventually becoming famous as a champion for beleaguered women throughout Uttar Pradesh. For desperate young women, like fourteen year old Rekha and Fifteen year old Renu, she is the only hope.
Pink Saris is an unflinching and often amusing look at these unlikely political activists and their charismatic leader. In extraordinary scenes, we watch her launch herself into the centre of family dramas.

ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

A journalist, whose family was killed by the Khmer Rouge, spends a decade making friends with the people who perpetrated the Killing Fields. He obtains ground-breaking accounts from the notorious Brother Number Two and grassroots killers and gains a new and terrifying perspective on the genocide.
But the truth he discovers comes at a price.

SON OF BABYLON

April 2003, three weeks after the fall of Saddam. A journey through Iraq, a troubled land where no one knows what lies ahead. On hearing the news that prisoners of war have been found alive in the South, a curious young boy Ahmed and his obstinate grandmother set out to uncover the fate of the boy's missing father, one of the many soldiers who never came home since the Gulf War of 1991.
As the grandmother struggles to accept an awful truth, Ahmed retraces the footsteps of a father he never knew. This is a journey that will not only connect them to the past, but will determine their lives forever.

SUS

1979: Election Night - a police interview room. Delroy's pregnant wife has been found dead in a pool of blood and he is brought in as the chief suspect. With all the evidence stacking up against him Delroy continually refuses to confess. He suffers a night of callous humiliation at the hands of two racist coppers, both high on the impending Conservative landslide victory. More concerned with the outcome of the election than establishing the truth they resort to brutal interrogation. The country wakes up to a new dawn with Margaret Thatcher as the new Prime Minister and Delroy's world is changed forever.
From the writer of British classic 'The Long Good Friday’ and based on a true story, Sus is a powerful cry against institutional racism. It pulls no punches in its depiction of a corrupt system that fails to protect the very people it should protect.

ALL SHADES OF GREY

Two Eritrean girls enchant with fragmentary tales of escaping their country, telling us what feels like living as a child refugee, alone in London.
An intimate portrait, highlighting the emotional fallout of political conflict, commissioned as part of 'Kick Islamophobia' campaign.

ON THE RUN WITH ABDUL

Abdul is a symbol for a problem that Europe does not want to deal with. A young refugee stuck on the coast of France alongside dozens of others, trying to catch a boat to England. Abdul lives from day to day without any rights. Home is a distant memory. Abdul’s involvement with the film puts him at risk, requiring the filmmakers to make a decision to try to protect him.

EXHALE

Joel, at 17, has been diagnosed as HIV positive. He decides, very prematurely, that he'd rather face it alone, than have to face this 'embarrassing' disease with anyone else. As he spends his first night over at Chris' house, his fears help heal their fragile and vulnerable relationship.

TENDER

When Liam 'wins some money on a scratch card', Alisha is suddenly interested. And for a while life outside home is good for Liam. But when he uses the money to try and solve his Mum's problems, things get worse for everybody.

MOMSTER

Momster is a dark fairytale about a young girl entrapped within a skyscraper. Her only escape comes from her larger than life imaginary friend, whom Emily creates from her deceased mothers sketch book.

BARS MEDIA DOCUMENTARY FILM STUDIO

Bars Media Documentary Film Studio was established in 1993 by Vardan Hovhannisyan, who began his career as a frontline filmmaker covering hotspots in the former Soviet Union.

Bars Media has had recent global success with the documentary A Story of People in War and Peace (www.warandpeacefilm.com). This multi-award winning film is a co-production between Bars Media, the BBC, ARTE, WDR, and YLE. The film follows director Vardan Hovhannisyan as he seeks out the soldiers with whom he had served on the front lines of the Kharabagh war in the early 1990s, in order to find out what had become of them 12 years later. The film raises ultimate questions about the human costs of war and how it changes one's life forever.

Recently the studio produced the documentary The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia, an international co-production with NHK, ITVS, YLE, SVT, TVP and TV Estonia. The film tells the story of two of Armenia's most celebrated tightrope dancers, both in their late seventies, who must search for an apprentice to take over this ancient art form, or face having it lost forever.

Bars Media is also developing documentary films in Africa, Russia, Afghanistan, and at the North and South Poles. One of studio's current projects is a humorous documentary, or more accurately, Donkeymentary about Lamu Island in Kenya, a place with 24,000 people, 6,000 donkeys, 2 cars, and a donkey racing champion who has no donkey of his own.

SARAH ROSS, UK