UK Competition: You're Obviously In The Wrong Place
Thursday, 20 January 2022
Image: Play It Safe, Mitch Kalisa, 2021
Ever feel like an outsider? Returning to a homeland we no longer recognise, brief periods of just-passing-through or subverting the structural discrimination of the Hollywood studio system; this programme take us all over the world and explores universal themes of trauma, transience and transformation. With new work from Michelle Williams Gamaker (House of Women) and Christopher Manning (Jamie, Isha).
Curated by Varun Raman
Masquerade
Olive Nwosu
14'
2021
Nigeria
Seeking healing, a woman must return to Lagos, the city of her birth.
The Bayview
Daniel Cook
18'
2021
United Kingdom
On the North East Coast of Scotland, an extraordinary family have turned the previously derelict Bayview hotel into a place of respite for international fishermen when they come to land. This film is a glimpse into this unlikely home and the transient guests who pass through it.
The Bang Straws
Michelle Williams Gamaker
17'
2021
United Kingdom
The Bang Staws considers the violent mechanisms of 20th Century Studio Films and takes Anna May Wong as its starting point to revisit the casting discrimination that she experienced throughout her Hollywood career.
Nowhere
Christopher Manning
20'
2021
United Kingdom
A young Palestinian woman reunites with her long lost brother in Tel Aviv, discovering the unimagined truth behind his exiled existence. Co-produced by Cannes-winning production company Majdal Films and starring Ophir Award-winning actress Mouna Hawa.
Play It Safe
Mitch Kalisa
13'
2021
United Kingdom
Jonathan is out of place in his middle-class London drama school. Pigeonholed for a role as a Black hoodlum in a classmate’s play and coaxed by his teacher to take the typecast part, Jonathan decides to demonstrate to his peers their prejudices, during a class role play exercise.
Play it Safe is a story about implicit bias: unconscious racism by those who think of themselves as above prejudice, but whose conditioned racism is just as impactful as those who wear their intolerance proudly. Jonathan’s realisation that he is not in a liberal safe-space, but that his seemingly well-intended classmates hold entrenched stereotypes, reflects the real stories of countless drama students across the UK.