Friday, February 03, 2006

Berlinale Entry: 37 Uses of a Dead Sheep


37 Uses of a Dead Sheep/Photo: Nikki Parrott

This UK/Turkey coproduction made it to Berlinale's Forum Section for 2006

Brief synopsis:Until 25 years ago, the Kirghiz tribe lived a quasi-Iron Age existence in one of the remotest places on earth. Now, having migrated an amazing five times, they live in Turkey, a tribe divided. Those over 30 pine for their nomadic history and the rugged mountains of their homeland; the young have a modern education and live in a world of pop music and internet cafés.
A feature-length mix of the ethnographic and authored documentary forms, the collaboration between distinctive director Ben Hopkins and the Kirghiz tribe makes this film a unique record of a unique people.

Format: DigiBeta
Year of production: 2005
Running time: 85 mins
Director: Ben Hopkins
Co-Producers: Natasha Dack, Nikki Parrott, Ben Hopkins
Editor: Marco van Welzen
Screenwriter: Ben Hopkins
Director of Photography: Gary Clarke
Music: Paul Lewis
Principal Cast: The Kirghiz tribe
Production Company:Tigerlily Films Studio 17 The Whitechapel Centre Myrdle Street
London E1 1HL, England
Telephone +44 (0)20 7247 1107
info@tigerlilyfilms.com
Sales Agent:Electric Sky 1 Clifton Mews Clifton Hill Brighton BN1 3HR, England
Telephone +44 (0)12 7322 4240
Fax +44 (0)12 7322 4250
info@electricsky.com
www.electricsky.com


Ben Hopkins
Born in Hong Kong in 1969, director Ben Hopkins always wanted to be a writer. He wrote his first poems at nine, a novel at twelve, and it was only following a trip to the Everyman Cinema in the leafy London suburb of Hampstead that he was bitten by the movie bug. Hopkins read Modern Languages at Oxford, directing his first play as an 18-year-old undergraduate and winning the Oxford Dramatic Society's Best Director Award. His Royal College of Art graduation film National Achievement Day won a string of awards. Hopkins has described his early short films as 'shite' but Robert Jones (The Usual Suspects) was impressed enough to produce his debut feature Simon Magus.

BEN HOPKINS FILMOGRAPHY
2000 The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz
1998 Simon Magus

Agent: Jane Fuller Associates, 10 Golden Square London W1R 3AF
Tel: +44 20 7494 2067
Fax: +44 20 7734 9147
Email: jfa@dircon.co.uk



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