Movies by Heather Powell

Paradise Circus

Paradise Circus

Mothers, architects, artists, shoppers and other women who live and work in Birmingham explore the contradictions of the city, its promises, frustrations and disappointments, and suggest that listening to the experiences of women may hold the answer to the impoverished 'concrete jungle' so familiar today.

Property Rites

Property Rites

Partly based on a true event, the death in 1817 of a Birmingham woman, Mary Ashford, and the consequent trial of a local man, Abraham Thornton, for her rape and murder. The film is concerned with the response of her contemporaries to her behaviour on the night before she died, and by situating this within the fictional circumstances of a modern woman, explores current attitudes to rape, and the forces and assumptions underlying them.