Sarita Siegel has produced and directed award-winning documentaries and dramatic features for over 10 years. Including associate producer on “The Real Dirt On Farmer John” and writer, director, producer on ”The Disenchanted Forest” a National Geographic film narrated by Brooke Shields. Sarita was special guest at the Arts Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Interdisciplinary Arts Residency program, where she held a rough cut screening of her latest documentary "Fire Burn Babylon".

Fire Burn Babylon: 57 mins | UK | Documentary | 2010

A cautionary tale of how Montserrat’s Rastafarians adjust to life in England after a volcanic eruption devastates their island. Forced to leave their Caribbean paradise where they live in spiritual retreat, they evacuate to London which they see as an oppressive concrete jungle and the heart of ‘Babylon’. Opportunities in music, employment and personal lives present themselves, yet success and self-realisation seem to be just beyond their grasp, as they pitch between enjoying the thrills of the city and committing to the temperance that Rastafari extols.

The city’s currents begin to sweep them further and further from their core values and collective identity, and they drift deeper into troubled lives. They reinvent themselves as 'rude-boy' rappers and small time hustlers on the nightclub circuit.
Will their dreams of celebrity be realised before the law catches up with them?
Can these ‘mighty-lions-of-Judah’ remain true to their spiritual identity?

Written, directed and produced by Sarita Siegel, and executive produced and co-produced by Malcolm Moore.
An Alchemy Films production in association with Planispheres.

Finalist Africa World Documentary Film Festival, St Louis, USA 2011
in competition Aruba International Film Festival 10 -16 June 2011
Bronze Palm Award, Mexico International Film Festival 2010
Making A Difference Award, Honorable mention COMMFFEST AWARDS, Toronto Canada 2010

OFFICIAL SELECTION
DocuWest International Documentary Film Festival, September 2011, Colorado, USA. The HBO funded New York International Latino Festival 16-21 August 2011 which Sarita has been invited to attend. Aruba International Film Festival 10 -16 June 2011 when it screened in competition in their Caribbean Spotlight series which Sartia attended. It received special mention and Johnathann Demme said he had huge prasie for it, as reported in Screen International. Inaugural Open City London Documentary Festival 16-19 June 2011 followed by a Q&A, London East End Film Festival May 2011, WorldFilm Festival of Visual Culture, Tartu, Estonia 2011, Wisconsin Film Festival 2011, San Diego Black Film Festival, 2011, Africa World Documentary Film Festival, St Louis, USA 2011, Black History Month, London 2010, International Women’s Film Festival, Miami 2010, Portobello Film Festival 2010, Jamaica Reggae Film Festival 2010, Aspekty Film Festival Poland 2010, Mexico International Film Festival 2010, COMMFFEST AWARDS, Toronto Canada 2010. (updated 12.07.11)

The independently financed production has picked up its second international award at Commffest - the Global Community Film Festival. Now in its 5th year the festival was held in Toronto, Canada in September 2010 and Sarita's film was given honourable mention with a MADA award. Selected by a jury panel, the handcrafted awards are given to filmmakers whose work demonstrates the ability to make a difference. The Festival engages in a dialogue of social issues and cultural exchange through the powerful language of film in all genres. Its main objective is to bring communities together to increase awareness and understanding that we are more alike than not. (updated 15.10.10)

Selected for the Bronze Palm award at the Mexico International Film Festival, May 2010. Invited for screeening at the 5th Women’s International Film & Arts Festival (WIFF) in Miami USA 23rd March - 3rd April 2010 - A unique, cultural event featuring films, visual and performance arts and other artistic expressions by women. Also screened in the run up to the Black Filmmaker (bfm) International Film Festival (IFF), in October 2009 as part of Black History Month showcase in London. The festival is the leading and longest running platform for Black World Cinema in the UK which features narratives, documentaries and short films from the UK, Africa, the Caribbean, the US, Canada and Europe. A sneak preview was also shown to a sell out audience at the East End Film Festival, Genesis Theatre, Mile End in London in 2009. Described as a brave and honest piece of filmmaking a lively Q & A followed with the filmmaker Sarita and participants Lyndon, Ishaka and Makabius. (updated 20.02.10)

Rhyme and Reason: | Documentary Feature | 2011 | UK

“We are the memory of mankind: by the spoken word we bring to life the exploits of kings for younger generations” – Mamadou Kouyate.

An exploration of the cultural, political and social inspiration of global rap poetry and its roots in ancient oral traditions. From Polynesia to Mexico and from Africa to the East End in London, we celebrate how spontaneous poets use rap to express their own stories, in their own cultures. We learn how spoken art traditions and social commentary have become a vital part of youth identity. By unraveling links to the past we discover that rap is much more than the provocative entertainment marketed by corporate music publishers.

Our desire to articulate our place in the world, remains as valid today as it did before the written word.

Developed with the assistance of the European Documentary Network with the support of the MEDIA Programme.
Selected by the UKFC and Skillset for the UK Producers Lab on European Co-Productions at the Berlinale Co-production Market in 2008.

International co-production in development with Alchemy Films, Sarita Siegel and Planispheres

In The Footsteps of Elephants: 52 mins & 80 mins | UK USA | Documentary | 2012 | Format: HD

Kathi Austin, UN investigator and one of the world’s foremost authorities on arms trafficking, seeks to understand the causes of human-elephant conflict. A guns-for-ivory trade investigation which uncovers the profound and far reaching effects of conflict on individual elephants and elephant culture. Drawing on nearly a century of scientific research documenting the behaviour of elephants in Africa we are encouraged to reflect on how the history of violence and conflict has lasting repercussions for individual and cultural survival — both of elephants and humans and how and our fates are intertwined

A parallel story of two cultures who once lived together, are now caught in conflict. Racked by one of the worst droughts in decades, the Turkana tribe in northern Kenya and Uganda have been forced from their traditional migratory pastoral lifestyle to a largely sedentary existence, farming on marginal lands. At the same time, the elephants of the area have seen their traditional migration routes closed off by human settlement and their cultures and social hierarchies decimated by the ivory trade and conflict with their human neighbors. This film chronicles the tensions and overlapping stories of these two cultures, both on the verge of extinction and both caught in much larger webs of climate change, global trade, and war. In the end, where once the Turkana people migrated in the footsteps of elephants now both elephants and humans will have to find new ways of living together on a changing planet.

Selected for development with the assistance of the European Documentary Network and the DocLisboa International Documentary Film Festival. In early 2009, after securing funding from the University of Wisconsin and private equity, a trailer was shot in Africa on HD. The production has also secured the support of Save the Elephants Foundation, founded by one of the world's foremost authorities on the African elephant, Iain Douglas-Hamilton. The documentary is being produced with Gregg Mitman who established the film festival ‘Tales of Planet Earth’ and a new environmental filmmaking course. He is also a professor and respected historian of science and medicine, and wrote one of the definitive books on natural history filmmaking “Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film”.

In the Footsteps of Elephants' is one of a series of works-in-progress which were screened as part of Tales From Planet Earth three-day festival 6-8 November 2009. Tales creator and co-Producer Gregg Mitman was in attendance for the international panel discussion on the alarming phenomenon of climate change refugees. The TfPE festival showcases environmental films from around the world at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. (updated 30.11.09)

International co-production in late development with Alchemy Films and Planispheres. Directed by Sarita Siegel. Producers Gregg Mitman, Malcolm Moore and Sarita Siegel. Executive producer Judith Helfand, DP - Adrian Warren, Editor - Greg Snider.

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Alex Woods completed a screenwriting and producing MA at Westminster University in 2009 and previously worked as a writer, director and producer on comedy pilots with Fugitive Films "The Krays", BBC cult hit "Operation Good Guys", including commissions for the BBC and Granada as well as writing and directing a pilot for a televison comedy series, "The Ideas Mechanics". Alex Woods attended the Banff Film and Television Festival with the backing of PACT and UK trade Partners in 2003 and won a place on the prestigious Banff new players pitch in 2004.

Lost In Montreal: Comedy Feature Film | UK Canada France- International Co-production

A Parisien banker has reinvented himself in Montréal, Quebec, only to have an old buddy and ex-slacker flat-mate pay a visit over the weekend of the proposal to his trophy bride. The action takes place in Montréal, Quebéc and over an impromptu hunting trip at the family lodge in Mont Tremblant.

Malcolm André, 35, Parisien Banker, has reinvented himself in Montréal, Quebéc, having closed the door on a disastrous chapter of his past, epitomised by the relationship with an old slacker flat-mate and childhood buddy, Gilbert Bonhomme. Seven years on and his life is now unrecognisable from the old. He is part of an Anglophone social elite, having leap-frogged into High Society by means of a cleverly engineered career progression, via a Canadian subsidiary to a prominent job with the prestigious merchant bank of the legendary, William Skelton. He dates the stunning ingénue, Victoria Skelton, curator in indigenous Inuit art at the, Musée National des Beaux Arts du Quebéc.

A fabricated pedigree has helped oil the wheels of his reinvention, and placated his future father-in-law, an elitist snob. He now boasts Breton Ancestry and a period at a posh preparatory school in the Scottish Highlands, where he brushed shoulders with British Royalty.

So comprehensive has been the change of persona, that he is now courted by the same upscale men’s magazines (Esquire, GQ), the pages of which he so eagerly devoured during the period of his reinvention. He is due to give an exclusive interview over the bank holiday weekend at the Skelton family hunting lodge and wildlife reserve in the Laurentian mountains, Mont-Tremblant, and has cleverly scheduled it to coincide with his proposal to Vicky with the presentation of a priceless, Inuit-engraved engagement ring.

However, after years in the wilderness, Gilbert has won a round-the-world ticket and $1,000 cash in a beer-gut caption contest and is eager to drop in on his old buddy on the North American leg of his tour. Malcolm receives a call from a payphone at Trudeaux airport.

On location in the magnificent surroundings of Mont-Tremblant, over an impromptu hunting trip, Malcolm’s remodelled persona is unintentionally dismantled by his well-meaning chum. One by one the Skelton family members take a shine to the affable stranger, shedding their own hang-ups along the way. Victoria’s twin, Sabrina, a wild-cat, makes a dramatic entrance with her sister’s ex but quickly falls for Gilbert, the catalyst for their reconciliation. Gilbert becomes Bill Skelton’s confessional, as he confides his guilt-ridden past, and the betrayal of his late-wife, Rose Skelton, whose remains reside in a porcelain pot in the hunting lodge. Victoria herself starts to crumble, as she starts to suspect that she is little more than a trophy bride, as she watches Malcolm unfold.

Malcolm’s increasingly manic efforts to be rid of his buddy serve only to culminate in his own exposure on the afternoon of the magazine interview, as he desperately tries to set the seal on his reinvention. It is only after he has been completely stripped bare and reconciled with his buddy that Victoria is able to truly fall in love – and accept a proposal from the real Malcolm.

UK Canadian French co-production in development with Redwood Film, Alex Woods writer and Planispheres. Executive producer, Malcolm Moore.

Section 18 - Renegade Retirement Cop: Comedy Feature Film | UK Netherlands Microbudget

Early morning. We are on a run-down council estate in South East London. Once notorious, St Joseph’s Estate is now strangely crime-free.

Detective Constable Jeffries, 59, a loose-cannon, jaded, prone to bouts of self-destruction, demoralised after a long and un-distinguished career, has been partnered up with the new transfer, Detective Constable Schater, 25, disdainful, an aloof intellectual and smug careerist.

Jeffries is on the last day of his service and decides to rip up the rule book and trash the flat of a well-known local fence simply in order to let off steam.

In so doing he unwittingly unearths a scam involving a land grab engineered by an unwholesome property magnate, Daly, 60, a former two-bit loan-shark, whose thugs are systematically enforcing loans on the estate in order to repossess properties and sell off the land to clear the way for an urban generation programme.

They discover that the conspiracy goes all the way up to their eminent Borough Commander, Chief Superintendent Darling, 59, Schater’s idol, who is also retiring. Unlike Jeffries he has a future lined up, a career in politics built on the back of a successful and celebrated crime initiative.

Trapped by, The Serious Firearms Squad in a derelict tower block on a cold winter’s day, mistaken for the real villains and labelled, ‘cop-killers’, the only thing that is guaranteed for these two misfits on their road to realisation is a painful and unpredictable ride.

Comedy mayhem meets, ‘Die Hard’ on a South East London housing estate.

UK microfeature in development with Redwood Film, Alex Woods writer, Brian De Vore writer director and Jeffrey de Vore director producer and with Planispheres and Executive producer, Malcolm Moore.
Story developed by Alex Woods and Brian de Vore. Alex and Brian met during a Screenwriting MA at the University of Westminster. Brian De Vore and Jeffrey de Vore are brothers who produced the short, ‘Heist’ which debuted in competition at the Netherlands Film Festival 2009 and a Official Selection for the Zero Film Festival 2009 in Los Angeles USA. Graduates from the, Netherlands Film and Television Academy (NFTA), they are currently working in Amsterdam in the film & television industry.

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Christian Solimeno is a upcoming producer and an award winning actor, screenwriter and director with the UK based La Famiglia production company. His acting credits include the films "Highlander" "The Source", "Dario Argento's Third Mother" and "Tuesday". Cristian's written and directed plays for the theatre group Firewater Productions. Additional writing credits include "Tame" for Channel 4 and he has directed programmes for Channel 4. Cristian's latest short film "Love" won best short film at Gijon.

This Is What It Is | Feature Fim | Drama | 94 mins | UK

This is what it is reflects on love from the male side of the fence. Cass a self-confessed nostalgia junkie tries to come to terms with losing the great love of his life Kelly. Set over eighteen months we follow Cass as he at first struggles with the separation and the constant reminders of Kelly. His friends on the other hand do what friends do...drag him back out on the town. Six months later and Cass is bitter and out of control as he pursues every girl he comes into contact with. His memories of Kelly are fading fast. Finally 18 months have passed and Cass has a new lease of life and a new girlfriend and all is going well until he bumps into Kelly and is forced to realise that he is living a lie.

"An engaging example of cinema at its most emotive. Solimeno is definitely a director who walks the talk". Billy Chainsaw, film critic.

A feature film directorial debut, nearing the end of post-production with La Famiglia. Written, directed and produced by Christian Solimeno, cinematography by the award winning Bruce Melhuish, executive producer, Malcolm Moore. Other La Famiglia films are "Mash Up" the international acclaimed short film written and directed by Jesse Lawrence, Screen International Rising Star (business and legal affairs, Planispheres). "Not Here Now" an experimental short film that plays with narrative structure. "Forgot Me Vest" a wonderful insight in to Britain's Amateur Boxing told from within the world famous Fitzroy Lodge and finally the highly acclaimed documentary series "Don't Hate Me Because..."produced for Channel 4 television.

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Benjamin Craig is making his debut as a producer with an original story by Gavin Boyter.

Sparks and Embers: UK micro budget feature | UK | 2011

A non-genre romantic comedy in the vein of Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” duoAnnelise Hesme French actress is attached to play the female lead 'Paris', 'Moliere', and 'Alexander' best known in the UK as the face of France in the recent Renault Clio 'England vs France' TV commercials. Kris Marshal is attached to play the male lead.

In late development early pre-production. Gavin Boyter writer and director, Benjamin Craig producer Cinemagine, executive producer Omar Todd, business and legal affairs, Planispheres. The London based production company Cinemagine is set to raise the budget with an EIS and private equity. Investors are in first position until they have recouped their investment, then once recouped they share in the producers split of the film's returns.

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Viv Fongenie wrote and directed his first feature, “Let's Stick together”, which won several prizes - including Best Film - at international film festivals around the world. In 2002 Viv was invited to Canada by the British Council as an emerging British director and has worked on film scripts with the BBC, FilmFour and the UK Film Council.

Ollie Kepler’s Expanding Purple World: Feature Fim | UK | 90 mins | 2010 | Format: HD

An independent feature film which has at its heart a human story of genuine social significance. Compelling, moving, at times hilarious, ‘Ollie Kepler’s Expandin Purple World’ is a blistering account of a young man’s descent into madness and emergence from it. Distinctive and daring, Viv’s script is generating an exceptional response from the industry with actors, agents and production executives being won over by its freshness, warmth and sheer originality.

An impressive cast was assembled including Bafta and Golden Globe nominee Cathy Tyson, star of the hit film ‘Mona Lisa’ and multi award-winning TV series ‘Band Of Gold’ and Ed Hogg, selected by Screen International, the industry’s leading trade journal, as one of the rising stars of tomorrow. Ed starred alongside Carrie Fisher in the US set feature film ‘White Lightnin' which screened to critical acclaim at Sundance in 2010.

The film was selected for competition for the Michael Powel Award for new British Features at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010. Planispheres assisted developing the business plan as well as during pre-production and post-production.
Viv is also developing a new feature with Margaret Matheson at Bard Entertainments and L.A. based producer Sean McKittrick, producer of the cult classic ‘Donnie Darko’.

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Nancy Cohen is a writer, director and producer whose first film was the award-winning documentary "My Dinner with Abbie", which premiered at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, the JungForum in Berlin and the AFI in Los Angeles. The film went on to win best in the catergory "Struggle for Human Rights and Justice" at Vermont Earthpeace Documentary Festival.

Invited to attend Berlinale, the first Annual Berlin Talent Campus, Nancy's work has featured at international film festivals around the world and broadcast on both side of the Altantic by Channel 4 and PBS. Finalist for the 2006 Tribecca Film Festival, winner of the New York Public Library, Martin Luther King "I have a Dream" essay competition, and finalist for the Roy Dean New Zealand Writing Grant.

Planispheres - a potential UK co-production partner for current and future productions. By bringing together creative talent and the business side of the industry Planispheres assists filmakers realise their commerical potential and help navigate the production finance deal