Opiate of the People Films has been making low budget films for over seven years.

Warning: this is a very long story, so to cut it short, you're welcome to jump by year:
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008

Originally run by a staff of 2; we now have 17 staff members, over 60 crew people who join in occasionally - and we're always bringing in new blood.

In our first year as a company, 2000, we shot several concerts and various weddings to raise some capital.

2001 saw us completing / collaborating on a variety of short films and deciding that short films were fun... but limited.

In 2002 We started pre-production on a documentary that was to involve a group of people going without sleep for 7 days, production was postponed, and eventually stolen (yes we are bitter...) by Channel 4, who we approached with the idea. We also shot 2 promos for the band BREATHER, 'All Fall Away' and 'Drawn'. They signed to a label and the video floated around for a bit.

2003 was a big year for us, embarking on an anti-war documentary 'Blood and Oil Don't Mix' which followed the exploits of activist youth group REVOLUTION. We followed this up with production of some animated shorts, including 'Just watching TV...'. Production also began on a feature, the romantic comedy '16 Days til The Rest Of Your Life'.

2004 saw '16 days' wrap, and the shoots of 'Continuing Adventures', and the 'Early Retirement' went by smoothly. Preproduction also began on a number of original shorts & features.

2005 saw the DVD releases of '16 days', and 'Continuing Adventures/Early Retirement'.

We completed writer/director Alex Maher's debut short 'Mixed Reception' which went on to festivals worldwide, and created a number of animated shorts.

We started planning a bunch of features and shorts, including 'Samurai Deacon' and Improvised Features (exec produced by Alex Cox) and an animated feature 'Reginald & Meradith Travel Through Time'. We edited Damian Holliday's debut short 'PAT', provided projected visuals for the play AM BECOME, sponsored and provided tech support for the S2F2 film festival and advised a number of new filmmakers on how to go about shooting their first films.

We also had 4 films screened in 6 festivals, and have a number sent into others.

2006 was a busy year; we completed Joanna Daniel's directorial debut Red, the second of our FIRST TIME WRITER/DIRECTOR films, which premièred at Cannes. We produced a bunch of animated shorts that are developing quite the fanbase, and started a comedy series; "English for Dirty Foreigners". Production of our feature film “GUTLUMP” was postponed when the lead went in to hospital – the shoot will resume when he's back out, and started developing £1,000,000 feature film “The Centre”. We were shooting music promos, gigs, plays and creating promotional DVDs for artists.

2007 was packed with the filming of the £10,000 feature film Simon & Emily, the continuing pre-production of The Centre, a host of music promos and live gigs that were shot - as well as the occasional continuation of our series English for Dirty Foreigners; which won us a BBC award.

2008 sees the impending release of Simon & Emily, the first release of a book from our publishing department Opiate Press, another few music promos of ours on MTV, a commercial for a French company and one for Miller beer. another bunch of competition wins, three new features in development - with at least one to be shot at the end of the year - and the relaunch of our popular webseries "English For Dirty Foreigners".

As always, we're on the look out for more material - so keep it coming! Contact us: takepart [at] opiatefilms.com!