Anna Helme

Still from promo for NATO

This is one from the archives. A 35 second promo for the Northern Arts Tactical Offensive, to be used at screenings and events (obviously, or quacking for details may be somewhat less effective). NATO was a collective in Manchester who did various subversive and situationist-influenced performances and other artworks, including the March for Capitalism and a spoof tourist guide to Manchester for the Commonwealth Games (2002), directing tourists to the alternative Blitz Festival of international grassroots underground culture, in the form exhibitions, street theatre, outdoor music, film nights and presentations. (more…)

Free Jazz (1min 31sec, 2009) is a short film about how far you can push music beyond its boundaries, before it breaks. Emile Ouiseau is an experimental saxophonist who plays such free music that his notes literally escape him. Can he re-capture his errant quavers in time?

John Maloney in Free Jazz (photo by Florence Holmes)

This is the first short I made at film school earlier this year, dedicated to my dear little H. I made it for his birthday, but then I gave him a fishing rod, which will no doubt give him more pleasure than this film ;{)

Update: Cutest quotes ever from H after watching the film “I love you and I hope you come back to you again, I loved the movie, Maisey plays the trumpet, I’m thirsty, I love all the bits that have Hunter in them, I want you to guess, I think it was, uh, love how you make movies, goodnight.” However, I can also confirm that the fishing rod still managed to trump it.
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Shooting in Prague for Undercurrents

This is a video produced by Undercurrents (directed by Paul O’Connor), the video activist production company where I worked in 2000-2001, of the IMF / World Bank protests in Prague, 2000. I was a camera operator for the event, following the pink and silver march, with my camera buddy, Flo.

It was quite an experience, being part of a huge mass of people from all over Europe and the world, converging to protest the policies of these institutions who put economic restructuring ahead of people and the environment, demanding that governments privatise basic services, build infrastructure such as dams without regard for environmental and social destruction and more in exchange for their development loans. Undercurrents was part of the independent media who came together around the prague.indymedia.org project to tell a broader story of the protest than the narrow, conflict-based news coverage in the mainstream press.