Jamie Rhodes

This is a Radio Play set in rural Ireland. It is a tragic love story told as a mystical folklore tale, based on the true events of a strange and macabre fatality. The story unravels the mystery from the point of view of the various animals in the ecosystem that a buried corpse supports. The BBC has a monopoly on radio drama in the UK, and their radio drama broadcasting schedule is programmed two years ahead. I find this incredibly frustrating. I want to change this. First I will create a platform for new radio drama to reach an audience. This story will become the first Live Radio Play. It will be read by actors behind a black screen in a dark cinema, with background noises and atmospheric sounds played live. The audience will experience the story in the deeply immersive environment that Radio Drama can achieve.

I set up this charity, The Homeless Film Festival, through which I work with homeless people to develop stories and write short films. My colleagues then shoot the films that the homeless people write, and we screen them in cinemas nationwide alongside major feature films in a bi-annual film festival. The project has become an international one and helped me build a network with filmmakers from all over the world. The project is aimed at creating short films to raise awareness of the issues around homelessness, whilst offering training and experience to homeless people and young volunteers.

Four Walls is a short film I was commissioned to write about the effects of anti-social behaviour on council estates. The film is intended to be shown in schools and community centres as part of a wider educational project. Find out more here: http://www.fourwallsfilm.co.uk/

Tommy Code is the product of a collaborative effort between a wide range of creative practitioners and the many young people within the scheme. Tommy Code is a darkly humorous tale of one boy harbouring a Bond inspired facade and his relationship with his friend Charlie. Set in the year 1967, it is a quirky tale of a summer in Tommy’s life, and required the young people to research the era to find out what would matter to a teenage boy at that time. Shot on the Sony EX 1 with a Red Rock system, it captures the detailed set built by the young people, in stunning quality. Donkey Stone Films were the practitioners on this project, and worked alongside contributors from local universities and creative industries. Tommy Code is the result of the amalgamation of skills apparent in the young people within The Propel Project and a symbol of how the project achieves its goal in unifying young people through the medium of creative arts.

The films in this section were written by young people. I ran a course of screenwriting workshops in numerous primary and secondary schools around Nottingham, as part of a Creative Partnerships project aimed at raising literacy skills. The scripts that the young people wrote were then filmed by my colleagues and I at Donkey Stone Films and screened in the Young Screenwriters Festival at the Broadway Media Centre in Nottingham. The official Young Screenwriters Website: www.youngscreenwriters.com

The film is an almost theatrical interpretation of John Cooper Clarke's The House On Nowhere Street poem. The accompanying visual narrative tells of a man in his dying moment, regressing into his memories as the narrator describes them. The sound design emphasises elements of each verse, while the visual story suggests a man perhaps victim to his own lifestyle. The film was one of three winners of the Audience Award at Manchester's Version Film Festival.

The first feature film from Donkey Stone Films. Using a combination of archive footage and present-day interviews with the characters from the 80's b-boy scene, NG83 documents the rise and fall of break dancing culture in 80's Britain.