First Cut documentary strand returns to Channel 4

Channel 4’s First Cut documentary series is to return to the network later this year, in a later and extended slot.

This programmes showcase films by up-and-coming directors with Commissioning Editor Lina Prestwood already acquired ten hour-long editions for the 2013 series, with more in development.

“With First Cut occupying an exciting new 60′, post-watershed slot on Channel 4, the strand now represents the industry’s most significant new talent strand for documentary directors.

“Commissioned to sit confidently alongside Channel 4’s other documentary strands, this initial tranche of First Cut films from five diverse and exciting new directors tackles a huge variety of stories and covers bold new territories in an entertaining and informative way.” Prestwood says.

First Cut first launched in 2007 and the broadcaster aims with the later slot and longer programmes to allow greater freedom for directors with more ambitious output.

The forthcoming films will tell the stories of the global Independent Scientology movement; see the world’s most prolific streaker attempt to do the best streak of his career; divulge into the UK’s booming industry of male strippers; explore the relationships between British women and Jamaican-born men and discover why London’s rental market and flat sharing has become more competitive than ever before.

Highlights for the next series include Dreamboys which looks at the boom in male strippers in the UK. Dreamboys is the biggest male stripping agency of them all and David Blaze is in charge – also a former stripper. He claims to know what women want, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to give it to them. David is on the search for some ‘fresh meat’ to join his London troupe and meets the men that come forward to auditions. Who are they, why are they doing it and what impact is it having on their life?

In Flatmates the documentary looks at what living with housemates is like. From stolen cheese, weirdo lodgers and passive aggressive post-it notes on the bathroom mirror. With the average age a Brit now expects to be able to buy their first home a whopping thirty-eight, this one-off insight follows some of the so-called ‘Generation Rent’ as they brave an increasingly brutal and judgemental rental market where the competition to find the perfect flat, or flatmate, is intense – from speed-flatmating events to elaborate interview processes, Flatmates is filmed in London where 800,000 people currently flat share, often with people they’ve never met.

Scientology 2.0 examines the global Independent Scientology movement and the high level defectors who have publicly renounced their membership of the Church of Scientology while The Baredevil looks at famed streaker Mark Roberts from Liverpool who has done the Full Monty over 500 times. Mark, aged 48, is known as ‘The Baredevil’ and has no wife, no job, no money and no clothes.

A film about the world of British women who have chosen to take on every aspect of Jamaican culture from food and fashion to dialect and dance style features in Dating in the Dancehall. Reflecting on the very special relationship that has existed between the UK and Jamaica for over 50 years, this film follows a group of British women as they navigate love, friendships, parenting and pop culture in a distinctively Jamaican style.

[Reporter: Mike Watkins]