Summaries

A filmmaker sets out to discover the life of Joyce Vincent, who died in her bedsit in North London in 2003. Her body wasn't discovered for three years, and newspaper reports offered few details of her life - not even a photograph.

Details

Keywords
  • isolation
  • 2000s
  • black woman
  • mysterious death
  • christmas present
Genres
  • Drama
  • Biography
  • Documentary
Release date Dec 15, 2011
Motion Picture Rating (MPA) Not Rated
Countries of origin United Kingdom Ireland
Language English
Filming locations Hannaywood Studios - 347 Bannow Road, Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
Production companies Film4 Bord Scannán na hÉireann / The Irish Film Board Cannon and Morley Productions

Box office

Gross US & Canada $8405
Opening weekend US & Canada $3085
Gross worldwide $291898

Tech specs

Runtime 1h 35m
Color Color
Aspect ratio

Synopsis

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasnt discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life not even a photograph.

Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyces life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties: the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

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