Discover Movies

A look at an auction of a Victoria Cross, with a glimpse at what VC holders are currently doing.

Charting the improvements in safety at sea.

A lonely spinster has her cottage in a seaside village requisitioned by the local council for a building scheme, with tragic consequences.

A look at the popularity of music, both classical and electronic, in the mid-sixties.

Featuring Joan Adler (who also appears in Chinese Checkers), Soliloquy is one of the four early Stephen Dwoskin films that were awarded the Solvey prize at the EXPRMNTL festival in Knokke, Belgium in 1967. “In Soliloquy a girl broods uncertainly over a failed love affair, while the camera roves over her fingers, her cigarette, her knuckles, her lips and the hand mirror in which she peers. In its dark reflection one isolated eye seems a dead thing, twitching; the split between her body and her spoken thoughts becomes a strange bilocation of consciousness; towards the end, an aeroplane drones overhead” (Raymond Durgnat)

A group of art-school students hold a party.

A look at the hard work of a test pilot's life, featuring the RAF Lightning, the 1960's supersonic watchdog of Britain's skies.

A BAFTA award nominated documentary on the development of gear design from the work of Wildhaber to AEI's latest product with helical shapes and 4 times the load bearing capacities of traditional gears.

A look at a number of different sights, including the Manchester Whitweek walks, liners, pet-shop windows and holes.

A spotlight on the Junior Guardsmen's Company, which teaches drumming among other trades.

The debut feature from Philippe Mora, promising “Action! Songs! Laughter! … Romance!” and more.

The Alberts (Bruce Lacey, Tony Gray and his brother Dougie Gray) attempt to take off. There are two edits of this film, both with their own distinct ending.

The English children are on holiday in the Tyrolean alps and are having a great time when one of them breaks his leg. The rest of the children get him to a mountain hut but then the avalanche strikes.

The 237th issue of the long running industry cinemagazine. Includes the articles: 'Marilyn', 'Sight Restored' and 'North Star'.

In ten years, the scooter population has increased from 4,250 to over 41,000. This film looks at the change.

More than 50,000 British soldiers, sailors and airmen police the rivers and jungles of Borneo.

New Tempo "Stimulants" involves Indian music and Dr. Ronald Laing and concerned repetitious action modified through lenses, filters, change in film speed, etc.

Tom and Sukie arrive in Malta to spend the holidays with their father, an archaeologist digging for a legendary golden statue of Calypso on the island of Gozo. He fails to meet the children who make friends with Jiminy, a Maltese boy, and go to the villa where they overhear two crooks threatening their father. The cooks fool the police to whom the children have gone. They escape and make their way finally to Gozo to see their father's colleague where they all captured. Just before the statue is handed over Jiminy arrives with an army of children who rout the crooks and drive them into the arms of the police. Based on the novel. By Jiminy by David Scott Daniel

A bitter account of the marginal status of the community of male Irish migrants responsible for rebuilding much of Britain's post-war infrastructure. Made for TV but never broadcast, it instead enjoyed limited circulation on the non-theatrical circuit.

An interesting study of how new homes and flats are being built and the importance of building them faster.

Farce in which the nouveau riche Mrs Frush buys Thark, a large country house, from Sir Hector Benbow but then complains that the house is haunted. An assortment of characters go to the house to investigate.

A look at Fair Isle, situated halfway between mainland Shetland and the Orkney Islands, and famous for its distinctive woollens. It faces a problem, two-thirds of the inhabitants are men.

Look at Life was a regular series of short documentary films produced between 1959 and 1969 by the Special Features Division of Rank Organisation and screened in their Odeon and Gaumont cinemas. This release compiles 54 memorable films which offer a fascinating snapshot of transport in 1960's Britain. A look at road building in the United Kingdom in the 1950's.

Following the life of the eel and the business involved to satisfy their consumers.

First transmitted in 1968, this documentary shows life in the British Army of the Rhine as seen through the eyes of one of its regiments, the 17th/21st Lancers, as they complete a tour of duty. It reveals how they manage their routine whilst guarding the Cold War East German front and how they try to live a normal life with their families in a foreign and sometimes alien environment.

A pixelated record of the ‘Legalize Pot’ rally in Hyde Park, with appearances by Allen Ginsberg, Heathcote Williams, David Medalla, etc., etc. soundtrack is the Beatles’ song of the same title.

A look at vending machines and services and the decline in street salesmen.

British horror short from 1962.

A look at the tough training of the Royal Marine Commandos.

A brief look at scrambling, bikes and cars in the United Kingdom in the 1960s.

‘This week in Britain’ was one of a series of magazine films or Cinemagazines produced by the COI for consumption abroad to promote Britain and the Commonwealth. Produced between 1959 and 1979, and shown in cinemas as well as on television, each film in the series presented a cultural or topical item of interest. The 199th ‘This Week in Britain’ featured the making of Harold Pinter’s famous 1960 play ‘The Caretaker’. In 2005 Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Pedal power saves a dad's day in this colourful cycling safety film set in a sunny 60s South East London.

A young artist struggles to seek inspiration from a slowly crumbling cityscape. Moving Image Archive: http://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3631

A BAFTA award nominated documentary about how the young science of radio astronomy is able to discover facts about the universe far beyond the range of optical telescopes. The film shows the early and recent highly specialised radio telescopes in Australia, Canada, Puerto Rico, U.S.A. and Britain, and indicates problems of the structure and control of their steerable paraboloid aerials.

Two and a half million passengers every day all over the country; thousands of trains, each to be cleaned at the end of its journey. This film shows in detail the various types of cleaning undertaken at stations, between journeys and at cleaning depots.

Made at the height of 'cold war' paranoia, this drama-documentary shows the work of the UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation, who's duties included the issuing of public warnings of any nuclear missile strike and the subsequent fallout.

A picture of the development of the city of Glasgow, Scotland, as seen through the photography of Scots-Italian photographer Oscar Marzaroli.

Tom and Sukie arrive in Malta to spend the holidays with their father, an archaeologist digging for a legendary golden statue of Calypso on the island of Gozo. He fails to meet the children who make friends with Jiminy, a Maltese boy, and go to the villa where they overhear two crooks threatening their father. The cooks fool the police to whom the children have gone. They escape and make their way finally to Gozo to see their father's colleague where they all captured. Just before the statue is handed over Jiminy arrives with an army of children who rout the crooks and drive them into the arms of the police. Based on the novel. By Jiminy by David Scott Daniel

Join the cool kids on the Kings Road and Carnaby Street as youth fashion brings a welcome splash of colour to Britain. “Don't take it too seriously, or you'll be missing the point!”

A look at the world of cats from the rare to the newer breeds, including the fashionable Siamese.

Life in a Yorkshire mining community as preparations are in train for a wedding.

When three year old Willy wanders away from home he falls among thieves. They are forced to kidnap him. The police ask Dickie, his elder brother and his friend, Johnny to help in the search. Johnny's friends all join in and meet with varied adventures. The children find Willy in a disused warehouse but cannot rescue him. Three more are caught by the gang who lock them in with the now unconscious gang leader and escape with the jewels. The police, alerted by the children, capture the gang, recover the jewels and finally rescue the children, including Willy

A BAFTA award nominated documentary film about life at Dorton House, a residential school for blind children in the UK.

A look behind the scenes of industry, exploring what is being done to improve Britain's output.

Short documentary about Shelagh Delaney and her hometown Salford.

A stop-motion animation aimed at young people, discouraging vandalism on railway lines, by pointing out the dangers.

A look into the life of Brett, a boy born without arms due to thalidomide exposure.

A look into inventors and how they go about getting their inventions accepted.

Virginia tries on some old clothes in her attic. She finds a crown and looks like a regal queen.

This is a short film about a man, a dog and a duck who enjoy bouncing together.

A look at the services that doctors provide, with a focus on a flying doctor in the remote areas of jungle in Malaya.

This 1969 BBC production is about as close as we can get to a definitive version of Benjamin Britten's PETER GRIMES, one of the greatest 20th Century operas. The story of the individualistic fisherman hounded by his neighbors who believe he murdered his young apprentice packs tremendous emotional power. The compelling narrative is richly enhanced by its subtexts: the lone outsider versus the conformist mob; the dreamer of improbable dreams that lead to tragedy; the artist (dreamer) versus the Philistines, and the homosexual overtones of Grimes' abuse of his child apprentices. Britten is conductor of his work and tenor Peter Pears is Grimes, 25 years after he created the title role at the opera's premiere. As the widow Ellen Orford, soprano Heather Harper is magnificent. Best of all, the sea is an ever-present actor here. When we don't see it in the background it exerts its presence in the abundant visual references to nets, barrels, and other paraphernalia of a seaside fishing village.

The inner-workings of local paper the Hertford Mercury are revealed by young, fresh-thinking reporter Peter Gibbs on his hunt for a regional scoop.

Late at night a gang of young men refuse to pay their bus fares, and assault the conductor. None of the other passengers or the driver intervene. After the incident everybody involved is interviewed in the studio about why they behaved as they did. Scene’s first play, specially commissioned for the series, was repeated late at night for an adult audience in December 1968, and shown again for schools to mark 25 years of Scene in 1993.

"In this experimental film from 1969 the seeds are seen of my exploration of the mouth motif, which reached its full expression in the ‘Opening’ exhibit of 1973. I blow on and kiss a mirror, I apply lipstick, I transform into a white statue and paint blood red lips… then I become a mask in a distorted mirror, a face with many lips…In the last sequence I circle my face with a light and transform into the mask." - Penny Slinger

A look at the world of flag makers and their flags.

A delightful Christmas musical about a young Jamaican woman who flees her humdrum Liverpool lodgings in search of her glamorous London cousin. Broadcast live on 28 December 1964, this rare TV musical is one of few to have survived from the 1960s. A tale of Afro-Caribbean immigration, the show is unusual for its time in that it doesn't labour the issues around racial tensions in Britain, but simply celebrates Christmas and family.