News

Algorithms, the award-winning documentary about India’s young blind chess players, directed by Ian McDonald and produced by Geetha J, has now been nominated for a Grierson Award in the Best Newcomer Documentary category. The Grierson awards are the most prestigious documentary awards in the UK.

Algorithms will vie with The Joy of Logic by Catherine Gale, Last Chance School by Marc Williamson and The Man Whose Mind Exploded by Toby Amies. The documentary follows three boys and a champion player turned pioneer over three years and uncovers the fascinating but largely unknown world of Blind Chess in India.

Algorithms will have its Us premiere on 20 September at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival, followed by a theatrical release in Los Angeles and New York City in October.

The Grierson awards will be announced in London on 3 November.

Algorithms is produced under the banner AkamPuram from Kerala, India, and is...

★★★☆☆Descartes believed that nothing ever existed, that everything his mind told him was a lie, and cinema is of course a standing recourse for memory and the unresolved tensions that plague the unconscious. Film's representation of loss and the yearning chasm for its fulfilment trumps all other attempts at Socratic discourse within other art forms. Maybe it's the flickering layers of doubt and presence that enables us to concurrently exist in the here and now while mentally searching for our past within the confines of our memories. In Toby Amies' The Man Whose Mind Exploded (2012), we observe the growing friendship between seventysomething Drako Oho Zarhazar and his visual amanuensis.

The 11th Brighton Film Festival, Cinecity, will open Nov 14 with Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. The festival will close with Richard Ayoade’s The Double.The festival runs through Dec 1 at venues including the Duke Of York’s Picturehouse and Dukes@Komedia.Screenings will include festival hits like A Touch Of Sin, The Rocket, Ilo Ilo, Stranger By The Lake.British films will include Leviathan, Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition, and Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman. Brighton-based dire

The 11th Brighton Film Festival, Cinecity, will open Nov 14 with Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. The festival will close with Richard Ayoade’s The Double.

The festival runs through Dec 1 at venues including the Duke Of York’s Picturehouse and Dukes@Komedia.

Screenings will include festival hits like A Touch Of Sin, The Rocket, Ilo Ilo, Stranger By The Lake.

British films will include Leviathan, Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition, and Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman. Brighton-based directors...

The Man Whose Mind Exploded

Directed by Toby Amies

Drako Oho Zahar Zahar is an enigma of sorts, having survived two comas, two nervous breakdowns and two suicide attempts, emerging on the other side with his life intact yet his mind forever shattered into uncollected fragments. This documentary’s ostensibly crude title, The Man Whose Mind Exploded, refers to the destructive effect Drako’s comas have had on his memory. Each day he awakens, vaguely aware of who he is, where he is, though uncertain of what may have come before. His small apartment has no bare walls, littered with photographs pasted atop of one another and dangling from the ceiling like postcards suspended in air; to him they are the stars of his inner universe, an external roadmap of the visual memories and synaptic connections no longer present inside his mind; to others, including long-suffering nephew Marc and director Toby Amies,...

Even as the Edinburgh International Film Festival presses ahead up north, the nation’s capital is not – and never has been – content to sit complacent on the cinematic front. The East End Film Festival, founded in 2000 and expanding year on year ever since, returns from 25 June to July 10 and once again boasts a remarkably strong lineup. Awards to dish out include Best Film, Best Documentary, Best Short Film and the Eeff Short Film Audience Award, from an eclectic jury that features the likes of the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, Wu-Tang Clan head honcho RZA, and Armando Bo, winner of last year’s Best Film Award for his directorial debut El Ultimo Elvis.

Things kick off in celebratory fashion with the Opening Gala at the Art Deco Troxy in Limehouse on 25 June, where Mark Donne’s less-than-celebratory The UK Gold will have its world premiere. The documentary looks at recession-era Britain...

While Sheffield Doc/Fest is known for its MeetMarket and great European (especially British) and American industry presence, the festival has also developed an exciting digital media program (which has made its way into the festival's tagline) and a capable main slate of films.  Five films, four of them world premieres, one of them a new gallery installation currently on display in Sheffield, made quite the impression on this writer; here's the list of the five Sheffield discoveries: "The Man Whose Mind Exploded," Toby Amies Though Drako Zarhazar, the aging subject of Toby Amies' tender film, has lost his memory after two road accident-induced comas, his wit is sharp and his interest in young men with big cocks is still robust.  "That's my favorite picture!" he often exclaims, pointing to a man naked from the waist down, dressed in a tux from the waist up.  In one of the film's most tender moments,...

Pussy Riot, Uri Geller: Sheffield Doc/Fest 2013 line-up The United Kingdom’s Sheffield Doc/Fest 2013 kicks off on June 12, featuring 27 World Premieres. Topics range from "psychic spy" Uri Geller (Uri Geller and Vikram Jayanti’s The Secret Life of Uri Geller — Psychic Spy) to shale mining (Lech Kowalski’s Drill Baby Drill), from the science behind Planet Earth’s fast-approaching climactic armageddon (David Sington and Simon Lamb’s Thin Ice: The Inside Story of Climate Science) to the life and times of international professional thieves (Havana Marking’s Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers). Below are a few Sheffield Doc/Fest 2013 highlights. (Photo: Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer.) Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin’s Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer follows the Pussy Riot trial in which three of the band’s members stood accused of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” following a performance staged at Moscow...