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Three animators collaborate on a film.

When best-selling author James Fuller Hayes comes to Glasgow to publicise his personal account of the Spanish Civil War, a surprise reunion with two of his old comrades from the International Brigade reveals contradictory & devastating information. Technically, this was the last Play For Today ever made by the BBC, but it wasn't broadcast under the strand.

An old white woman colonial settler staying on in up-country Kenya.

A summer evening in Edinburgh, 1776. The ailing philosopher David Hume has an unexpected visitor.

Filmed in December 1986 the film captures Spandau Ballet in performance during their « Through The Barricades » tour, which at the height of their success saw them play over a million people.

Set during the political upheaval following Ayatollah Khomeini's rise to power in Iran, Les Blair's gripping work tells the story of Shahin Mohamedi, a young Iranian woman studying in London. When the cheques her father sends from home are intercepted by the Khomeini government, she is threatened with repatriation by vicious British immigration officers. To remain in England she must be granted 'Leave To Remain'. Enter Jimmy Johnstone, an English wide-boy strapped for cash and willing to perform the paper marriage that will ensure Shahin's freedom. Jimmy wants to build on the relationship, but Shahin's heart is a thousand miles away with her old fiance.

Includes performances of Over The Rainbow, Uncle Arthur's Lonely World, Ulakanakulot: Decline And Fall, Pagan Lovesong, New Form Of Beauty, Walls Of Jericho, Caucasion Walk, Bernie & Attracta Sing, Rhetoric, The Pig Children, Come To Daddy

WAITING FOR ALAN is about a woman whose marriage is dead. Trapped in the rich but sterile environment of a lavishly appointed country house, MARCIA is a microcosm of society – a victim of, and partner in, someone else's routine. It’s not the housework or the cooking (MRS BETTS looks after those), but the daily monotony of waiting for ALAN – her newspaper-reading, TV watching husband. To him, she's just the emotional central heating switched on and off in return for paying the bills and expected to operate as smoothly and regularly as the washing-up machine or the gardener. But MARCIA has waited long enough… WAITING FOR ALAN is a humorous but critical 'tale of the unexpected' (and expected) in classical, three-movement sonata form. It was screened at least twice on Channel Four television in the late eighties and both times received a very positive audience response as well as praise from weekly pre-viewers in the newspapers

Alan Plater looks at the various adaptations of J.B. Priestley's 'The Good Companions', in the company of the author himself.

Gerald has been separated from his wife and children for twenty-one years. Now ailing physically and mentally, he contacts them in the hope of a reunion.

Educating Oz, is a very rare chapter in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet history. Mostly unseen by many viewers it stars Jimmy Nail as Oz, and Tim Healy as Dennis, Educating Oz, is a short public information film made in 1986 to highlight the issue of AIDS and how important it is to practice safe sex, using the characters of the popular TV series.

A play about bullying, asking whether anything can actually be done about it. A gang of boys engage David in a game of 'coins against the wall' every day at school, a game for which David needs a daily supply of money, and which he inevitably loses. When he doesn't have money he truants from school, and eventually steals money from home.

A wheelchair bound little girl gets involved with characters from her computer game that help her though a difficult time.

It is the mid-1980s. The economy has not improved. For 17 years Professor Frank Merrick has been ensconced in a research lab of a provincial university working on a cure for the common cold. He is very near success. Can he avoid becoming yet another victim of the eternal cutbacks?

In 'I Dish' a naked woman dredges in filthy water. What is she looking for? Gold? Something she's lost? She brings up a series of barbaric-looking bits of metal, nasty looking hooks. In a film which has considered notions of nourishment, sex, love, cleanliness, silence, obsession and compulsion, Parker demonstrates her poetic by letting imagery have its mystery, resonate unforcedly on its own terms.

For centuries, rice farmers on the island of Bali have taken great care not to offend Dewi Danu, the water goddess who dwells in the crater lake near the peak of Batur volcano. Through an analysis of ritual, resource management practices (planting schedules, irrigation vs. conservation, etc) and social organization, anthropologist Steve Lansing and ecologist James Kremer discover the intricacy and sustainability of this ancient water management agricultural system.

An actor and his protege lock themselves away from the world while he rehearses for a part in an upcoming feature.

20 minute music documentary shot in two days of November 1984 in, and around the outskirts of, Tokyo, Japan. A large part of the music was completed during that same month and recorded over a period of three days.

A shepherd’s son befriends a dragon, who is more inclined to compose poetry than attack the frightened villagers.

A documentary following future seven time world snooker champion Stephen Hendry as a teenager in the run up to and aftermath of his first ever ranking event win at the Rothmans Grand Prix.

British abstract painter Ben Nicholson, whom artist and critic Patrick Heron claimed 'was the greatest English painter since Turner' and director John Read extolled as "the man who re-drew the map of English painting', is presented through the eyes of his closest friends, as they take us on a tour of his career and reflect on his art.

Silently conveys a couple's fear of an immanent nuclear blast. Part of Sweet Disaster; a 1986 series of short films made for Channel 4. It consists of “animated visions of the apocalypse”.

Hopefully learning the lessons of Close Up, the attempt was to construct the discrete form the (seemingly) continuous... so that, mainly retrospectively (yet during viewing) sequences present themselves as fragment-conglomorates. Therefrom might come questions of 'natural representations'... Filmic assumptions of evidence lacking, desired voyeurist pleasures could be turned into thought. Realism of another kind.

This live recording was made at the Royal Albert Hall during one of Londons famous Promenade Concert seasons. Sir Georg Solti conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a magnificent performance of Berliozs concert cantata. This feast of Berlioz launched Soltis farewell tour with the orchestra he had directed for twenty years and was described by The Times as the unsurpassable culmination of two decades of music-making...one that summarised all that has been most admirable about Soltis long reign in Chicago. Like reading the book by flashes of lightning was how one writer described the relationship of Berlioz to Goethe in this Dramatic Legend, his way of shaping twenty scenes selected from the story into a narrative in four parts. Though it has sometimes been staged, the works drama is to be found within the music itself, which illuminates the incidents with what the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham once called a bunch of the loveliest tunes in existence.

A portrait of Salford-born poet, storyteller and comic, John Cooper-Clarke. His poems, a satirical blend of humour and social comment, are delivered at a fast pace, often with musical backing. His style, and that of his contemporary Linton Kwesi Johnson, have influenced a generation of younger poets involved in a revival of popular poetry in Britain.

Documentary about a martial artist in London.

"It never done a woman any harm to be at the end o' a back-hander." In a society where drunkenness and battered wives are treated as 'normal', Jean McLeod attempts to hold her family together. But after a particularly severe beating she decides to fight back.

Mistaken identity, unrequited love and the supernatural combine in Shakespeare's classic set in the woods of Greece on a moonlit night.

One in three marriages in Britain ends in divorce; perhaps more would if it weren't for the couples staying together for the children. How does it affect the kids? Are their views taken into account? Scene investigates and interviews parents, children and young adults.

A exploration of the origin, theory, philosophy and themes of Stephen Dwoskin's films from 1963 to 1984.

Filmed production of Bizet’s Carmen at Earls Court in London, June 1989.

Documentary following young male prostitutes in Birmingham and Manchester. (An episode of the BBC's "Forty Minutes" series.)

'Look, I'm not being horrible or nothing, Sadie, but all you've got is a body. You've got to make the most of it. It's not enough just to like the idea of being a model. You've got to be businesslike about it.' How does 16-year-old Sadie react to her friend Mary's advice? Where - in the glamour model world - will she end up?

All over Britain are strange and delightful buildings with one thing in common - they were created for animals. Lucinda Lambton is your guide to such follies. Castles, temples, palaces, obelisks and pyramids, they are a happy by-product of the British passion for animals.

A year in the life of star fourteen-year-old Welsh boy soprano Aled Jones.

Calling International Resuce… a runaway rocket carrying three astronauts is heading for a collision course with the Sun… Impact imminent!

Period drama based on a novel. While waiting for a train, a lonely woman is witness to a suicide on the tracks. A sympathetic man strikes up a friendship with her. At first reluctant, she is drawn in by his self-assured good looks, despite an uneasy feeling that he is not what he seems. She eventually discovers that he is hiding a deadly secret.

Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly solo from Great Britain to Australia. Mulvey and Wollen’s experimental documentary combines newsreel footage of the aviator’s arrival, dramatic recreations of events from her life and contemporary discussions by feminist groups on the subject of heroism in this most unconventional biopic.

Frank, a young lad from Sheffield, leaves home to seek his fortune in London; he finds the big city not all what he had expected

Featuring interviews, live concert footage, and a feature on how punk was transformed from a trend to a way of life, UK/DK is a comprehensive look at the skinhead/punk movement. Some of the most notorious bands on the scene are featured, including The Exploited, The Vice Squad, The Adicts and many more.

Inspector Ghote arrives from India to observe Scotland Yard, and ends up immediately stepping in to prevent some foolish potential lawlessness.

Evidence that the United States and Britain knew beforehand of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Dramatisation of part of Wilson Harris' novel "Da Silva's Cultivated Wilderness".

A computer programmer invesigates a colleague's death in this ominously prescient tale of big corporations and new technology

For various reasons, a number of people have come see the painting Water Lilies by Claude Monet in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Two businessmen caught up in office politics discover the truth about themselves and their situation. Angie and Marcia, two elderly matrons, find a place to rest their weary feet. David, a shy English student, meets a young student museum guide, and a married couple find the peace of the room gives them the strength to talk truthfully about their relationship.

Noel Burch’s fascinating and well-made (if at times historically contestable) six-part BBC television series, about early silent cinema in Denmark, England, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, and the U.S., mixes beautiful clips of rare films with various social theories about their significance.

Some of the best moments from televised darts 1983 - 1987.

“What is the role of the media in wartime? Is it simply to record or is it to explain, and from whose point of view – the military, the politicians or the victims?”

The Doctor is on trial... again but this time he is disputed by some Silurians, or more accurately the people who played them.

Detailed interview with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger looking back at their long career as influential British film-makers and their unusual partnership. Includes clips from many of their films.

Two Christopher Nupen films about the music and the artistic intentions of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the greats and a composer who appeals to millions of people.

On March 24th, 1980, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers performed for BBCTV Rock Goes to College, at Oxford Polytechnic.

The creation of the Megget Valley reservoir and dam.

Play by Carol Bunyan. Two very different ladies share an office, a common enemy and a sense of humour. Sorry follows them through a day and their very different, and in one case, traumatic, lunch hour.

’25 years ago I was asked by Chiatt Day Advertising in Los Angeles to cover the making of ‘1984’ for Apple Computers. This commercial was to be directed by Ridley Scott to introduce the Macintosh to the world. ... The message of the whole enterprise was: ‘If you miss this, then you’re going to be at a disadvantage’. This sentiment in itself set the tone for the definition of the self at the end of the 20th century, when the self was to be defined by its likes and its dislikes. Prisoners as a work derived from the footage shot during the making of the commercial deals with the problem of ideology, the potential manipulation of meaning and the hotness or coldness of the medium as expressed by McLuhan as well as several other issues. ... So therefore those people depicted in my work, the capitalists, the neo-Nazis, Thatcherites , communists, corporatists and us the anarchists video crew, were all held Prisoner by our own set of beliefs.’ – Terry Flaxton

A documentary on the ways in which the symbolism of the breast is expressed in film, fashion and filth, how the bosom is idealised and the means by which it is trivialised and denigrated. Contributors include Barbara Windsor, Jane Russell, Marina Warner, Sheila Kitzinger, American poet Audre Lorde, Vivienne Westwood, Anna Raeburn and Russ Meyer.

An extremely obscure minute-long short by the Brothers Quay in 1989. Animation appears to be done in 'Cutout' style, is abstract and plotless - more a moving painting than anything else. Featured on the 'Inner Sanctums' blu-ray boxset featuring a vast collection of shorts by the Quay brothers.

Adolescents will always be obsessed by the same old subject, even when they are educated by nuns. Six ex-Classmates meet for the first time in 12 years and hilarious memories change into highly emotional situations.

Objects in the world given luminousness, light, are here less apprehensible to knowledge than that which has less light.