The Shooting Gallery returns to Channel 4 with stellar cast

21 July 2014

Channel 4’s short film strand The Shooting Gallery is returning for a six week run starting midnight tonight (Mon 21st July) and will showcase nineteen brand new films from some of the UK’s most exciting new film-making talent.

This latest series will feature a variety of multi-award-winning short dramas, with stellar cast attached, including Stephen Berkoff, who narrates Spencer Brown’s modern day fairy tale, The Boy with a Camera for a Face, Ray Winstone, who stars in a reflection on Repton Boxing Club and Ewen Bremner, who features in Daniel Jewel’s Drone.

The series also includes an episode celebrating The Lost Art project, the Tate-Channel 4 collaboration, involving a set of nine micro-documentaries which tell the stories of some of the most famous pieces of art of the 20th century that have been lost, stolen, erased or destroyed.

The strand has been curated with the assistance of a number of partnership organisations, including Shorts International, The British Council and the British Urban Film Festival and provides the hottest new talent with a mainstream TV platform known for creative risk-taking.

Film-makers including Scotland’s Neil Hartop (Rabbit Punch) and London-based Jane Gull (Sunny Boy) will have their shorts featured in the same new talent showcase that launched the careers of Shane Meadows, Clio Barnard and Andrea Arnold.

The Shooting Gallery was commissioned by Susie Wright, Development Manager, Channel 4.

Susie said: “The Shooting Gallery epitomises Channel 4’s passion for supporting and nurturing new talent. It’s a unique opportunity in broadcast for film-makers at the early stages of their career to have their work shown to a network audience and for a network audience, many of whom might not frequent the film festivals, to find the work of some of the UK’s most promising new film-making talent. We’re confident that these names will become more and more familiar in the future.”

Episode Info:

• Ep. 1, The Shooting Gallery: The Boy and the Worm - two surreal award-winning shorts by some of the UK's most exciting new directing talents. Written and directed by Spencer Brown's film The Boy with a Camera for a Face is narrated by Steven Berkoff, and stars Jaimie Boubezari, as a boy who is born with a camera where his head should be. Worm, written by Matthew James Wilkinson, stars Tom Basden, Robert Glenister and Jeany Spark. Shortly after burying his father, Philip meets him again in the form of a worm, directed by Bert & Bertie.

 

• Ep. 2, The Shooting Gallery: The Noble Art – two short films exploring the noble art of boxing. Repton fashion photographer, Alistair McLellan directs as Ray Winstone reflects in Repton Boxing Club. Written by Ryan Pickard. Starring Ray Winstone and Ryan Pickard. Rabbit Punch is a BAFTA-winning coming of age piece, charting the changing friendship of two young boys. Written and directed by Neil Hartop and starring Ryan McCutcheon, Scott Brown and Dave Pickering

• Ep. 3, The Shooting Gallery: Modern Tales – the darker side of the modern age is explored in two more shorts. Drone is a thought-provoking drama about a morning in the life of a drone operator, starring Ewen Bremner and Two and Two, a darkly original allegory about the absurdity of tyranny, in which a maths lesson takes a sinister turn. In Farsi with subtitles. Directed by Babak Anvari, who co-wrote with Gavin Cullen, it stars Bijan Daneshmand, Ravi Karimi, Pouyan Lotfi and Kourosh Shirazi.

• Ep. 4, The Shooting Gallery: Lost Art - is set of nine micro-documentaries telling the stories of some of the most famous pieces of art of the 20th century that have been lost, stolen, erased or destroyed. The films are a collaboration between the Tate and Channel 4, and were directed by -Susan Doyon. The films include the return of a piece of art stolen by the Nazis, a brief glimpse inside the Art Loss Register and the wrapping of the Reichstag. 

• Ep. 5, The Shooting Gallery: The Trouble with Banks - the dark worlds of banking and politics are explored two brand new films: On this Island: Matthew Hammett-Knott’s satirical vision of Modern Britain (in association with the British Council) starring Michelle Valley and James Norton and Incorporated : a new film from Nick White about the seedy underbelly of the banking world, starring Luke Harris, Amy Shiels and Dominik Kracmar.

• Episode 6, The Shooting Gallery: Under the Skin – these two films explore how hard it is to be a teenage boy and break from your surroundings. In Sunny Boy, a young boy forced to live in darkness because of a rare skin condition, longs to be a normal teenager just once. Written and directed by Jane Gull and starring Darren Kent and Lewis Nicolas. In Driftwood, a talented young swimmer, tormented in his home life, must overcome his demons to fulfil his ambitions. Written and directed by James Webber, starring Sam Gittins, Neil Maskell, Daniel Norford and Brandy Doubleday.

Ends.