No Room For Manoeuvre

No Room for Manoeuvre

Final Cut completed

We are overjoyed to announce with heartfelt thanks to all the many people who have been involved in the production, that the final edit and sound design of this 58 minute feature documentary was completed in July 2018. We will now be concentrating on the film's distribution.

Directed by Nicolette Burford de Oliveira
Camera by Peter Davis, George Hines, Tiziano Mainelli, Wade Buffalo, Eugene Smith,
Azim Qizalbash, Tania Freimuth, Linda McDonald Cairns, Andrea D Farnocchia, Daniel Gal, Sebastian Wray, Massi Guelfi.
Audio by Daniel Golan, Ben Archard
Editors: Massi Guelfi, Marcelo Vianna, Nicolette Burford de Oliveira, Andrea D Farnocchia,

This film is about inspired and inspiring young people in London who have either witnessed or experienced some of the difficulties that commonly confront young people whose lives unfold in challenging social environments or institutions. The film focuses on how young people use creative and critical thinking and other forms of expression (e.g. poetry, art, martial arts, music, photography and the development of business enterprises) to engage in constructive and enduring positive lifestyles. The film focuses on their personal, inner journeys, what their work means to them, and the relationships which helped them explore and develop a positive sense of self and inter-personal relatedness. It explores how their aspirations and successes evolved and how they arrived at the ideas and messages they seek to convey through their work and life projects.

The young people’s talk and creative input in the film coalesce upon themes including society generated sources of anger and conflict; conflict management and the pursuit of peace and happiness; homelessness; racism; stereotypes, social representations and projections; social exclusion; perseverance; the law; the London riots; inter-personal relationships and the functions of music and the arts.

The film does not systematically uncover the problematic circumstances that have afflicted its young subjects. Nor does it ‘show case’ their talent or entrepreneurial projects. Instead, it gives them an opportunity to use their creative resourcefulness to explore personal or controversial issues and their own strategies for dealing with them constructively. One of the film’s purposes is to transcend stereotypes and give young people a platform for expression and reflection of their selfhood and provides a source of inspiration to other young people struggling to find a way out of actual or potentially negative and punitive situations. Moreover, it seeks to give people in positions of authority new perspectives on how young people appraise forces in society that constrict the life course options for young people either in a material way or through hindrances instigated by negative social representations and projections.

Some of the young people featuring in the film have not themselves been caught up in extreme destructive circumstances but have witnessed from close quarters the dilemmas of others who have. They include a girl who is a karate black belt and peer-to-peer counsels young people caught up in gang violence and a young Asian boy rapper who talks about why he resisted pressures to deal drugs, this being just one of several things that he talks about. Others have spent years in and out of reform institutions or come from traumatising family backgrounds. Yet others were victimised and/or classified as failures within the education system. The film does not go into the personal backgrounds of its protagonists, the vignettes of whom are embedded in a background overview of some of the major issues adversely impacting inner-city youth.

Our subjects include a body painter, an inventor, two poets, a song writer/singer, a peer-to-peer counsellor and karate black belt, two rap artists, a story writer, and a few young people with highly articulate and dynamically conveyed ideas on societal and political forces affecting things such as homelessness, race issues and conflict.

A Human Being's Effort and Attitude Matters

Against a background of economic austerity and deluge of negative mainstream media representations of inner-city youth, this film shows young people who have invested effort and found the inner strength to overcome obstacles and seize opportunities to make the transition from negative experiences to constructive outcomes.

Art and the Art of Living Matter

The film focuses on how young people creatively, intuitively and with critical reasoning manage to come out of times of trouble with a strengthened sense of self-worth and direction. They use their artistic talents, skills and personality attributes to illustrate their lines of reasoning and insights.

Communication Matters

Bound to move and awaken people across cultural boundaries and of all generations, the young people featured provide inspiring, heart warming and courageously honest peer role models. More such positive representations of young people are needed in the mainstream media for society to break free from condemning and punitive attitudes to young people confined to the margins, and to actively come out in support of alternatives.

Policy Matters

The film shows that for young people to pursue their dreams and aspirations, they need to have access to resources, training, mentoring and professional guidance, housing and economic security. The film touches upon how policy directives and government spending cuts are restricting the parameters within which young people can recover from traumatizing and crippling experiences to fulfil their potential and make enriching contributions to their communities.