Discover Movies

BBC documentary that led James Kenelm Clarke to quit making documentaries and start producing exploitation films. Includes Pete Walker, David McGillivray, Hazel Adair, Bachoo Sen and a woman who never wears knickers.

Angie, Tony and their son Farnley go to stay with Uncle Edward. The routine of Edward and his companion servant, Blades, becomes unsettled when Edward and Angie develop a close bond.

In amongst the fishing quaysides of the North East of England, manipulative Bob is first able to wangle his way into a prominent position within a fish distribution firm. It isn’t long before he has his sights not only on the boss’s job - but also his wife as well.

Johnson begins his life sentence for the murder of a policeman. It is not long before he will experience the harsh realities of the brutality and day to day drudgery of prison life.

This is not so much a film about a park, or a record of the people passing through the park. Here the camera is not a passive observer, nor is it used as a surveillance device. Rather, the camera in Park Film, like the passers by who trigger its shutter, is an active participant in the interaction between a park and the city which surrounds it.

Toulouse-Lautrec's sketchbooks are turned into an animated short.

Film showcasing the tourist attractions, culture and natural beauty of Ireland.

A portrait of the Scottish artist Sir William Gillies.

compilation film designed to commemorate the Foundation 21st birthday. Compiled from: THE BIG CATCH; GHOSTS AND GHOULIES; DAVEY JONES' LOCKER; CRY WOLF; MR. HORATIO KNIBBLES

A BAFTA award winning comedy based on short story by Damon Runyon. Set in New York in the 1920s, the story tells of the bungling attempts of three gangsters to break into a safe, aided by Butch the safe cracker, who has brought his baby along because he can't get a sitter.

In this experimental short, four naked men are touched by death.

A silent avant-garde experience created by Derek Jarman, filled with superimposed images forming a whole picture. His palette consists mostly of reddish random images of Egypt and the pyramids; a strange garden destroyed from time to time by a man with a whip; a young peaceful man relaxing on the floor; other smoking and eating insects. This is Jarman's view of the Garden of Luxor and its mysteries.

A Ghanaian fashion student and a Nigerian squash player are among the Africans making a life in 70s Britain.

Petunia lectures Joe on the importance of warnings about dangerous currents, whilst he is distracted by something at sea.

Ruth invites her friend Mary to visit for the weekend. Mary brings an unexpected companion and the weekend becomes increasingly unsettled.

A forgotten and aging actress tries to recapture her youth through her actress daughter's life. Her husband understands what is going on but invariably blames the daughter for his wife's disappointments.

A humorous look at the preparation and writing of reports. Details the essential elements of good report writing. Intended for management in industry, commerce and public service. This film features Jeff Rawle as the young employee and Arthur Lowe as his boss (and some other characters as well).

45 fingers were needed to play the film soundtrack mimicking the sun's movement over four months on piano keys.

Film charting the development of the London bus from 1829 to 1979, with the 150th anniversary of Shilibeer's first service, featuring a procession of many of the Museum's historic vehicles. Collected in BFI's "London on the Move."

BBC documentary on street games and songs in Belfast. The footage of children playing is contrasted with the violence of the Troubles and poverty of the city's working-class districts.

England in the late Middle Ages. Escaping from vagabonds, three peasants, two men and a woman, flee into a forest where they are attacked by monks and robbed of their possessions. The subsequent progression through the forest is extended historically over some four hundred years, marked by incidents both real and imaginary: they discover a wounded knight and, at his orders, carry him through the forest for days, unaware that he has died; picking over the scrap metal left behind from a battle in the Wars of the Roses, they are cheated of their boaty by a cunning pedlar who resells it to a merchant; they come upon a small forest community wiped out by the plague; later they appear as actors in a performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Explores the communal life of young hippies in Devon, through a series of theatrical happenings, conversations on revolution, and strange encounters in an underground labyrinth.

This is the ultra rare Sham 69 Documentary which features a drama using the 'That's Life' album. Filmed for BBC Arena in 1979.

A dangerous game of bingo.

Michael Abbensetts’ first play for TV is a powerful, funny and shocking exposé of the racism faced by a black museum attendant in his place of work.

Captivating documentary about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Featuring the only interview with Desmond Cussen, who reflects on his life with Ruth, and her death.

Married life starts out full of bright hopes for Alex and Lynda - but soon they are trapped in a nightmare with their friend Bill.

An adaptation of Jack London's short story covering the last 5 hours of the old and dying Inuit chief Koskoosh.

The film follows Ongka's struggles to accumulate huge numbers of pigs and other items of value to present at a Moka ceremony to another tribe.

80 year-old Gaelic speaker Donald MacDonald takes us on a brief tour of his lifelong home, Gigha - a tiny island off the West coast of Scotland. He explains how Gigha has been able to fend off the threat of depopulation, which has afflicted so many other small Scottish islands, to become a place of beauty and prosperity.

Britain and Turkey had not always enjoyed the ‘special’ friendship referred to in the commentary. Their armies were on opposing sides in the First World War and there had been disagreementt over the future of Cyprus in the run up to the settlement of 1960. In the 1960s relations improved and this reciprocal tour (the President of Turkey, Cevdet Sunay, had paid a state visit to the United Kingdom in November 1967) was regarded as a milestone in the bilateral alliance between the two countries. The camera affords the viewer a prime vantage point by which to marvel at the splendour of the pageantry and contemplate every nuance of gesture and sartorial detail. As we linger on the bejewelled Queen waiting patiently at the British Embassy in Ankara to greet her guests we wonder what it might be like to be in her shoes.

This immersive experimental film work demonstrates the influence of collage and psychedelic light shows. Constructed using the Debrie contact printer at the London Filmmakers’ Co-operative, it employs a musical and associative editing style, introducing colour-fields and symmetrical effects that transform the diverse source material. Stuart Pound’s transitions gently toy with the viewer’s perception.

An informative short film from Thames Water providing an in depth look at their operations and how they supply water from the Thames River for a variety of uses.

“The Nightcleaners” is set in the context of the campaign (1970-1972) to unionize the women who cleaned office blocks at night and were being victimized and underpaid. Intending at the outset to make a campaign film, the Collective was forced to turn to new forms in order to represent the forces at work between the cleaners, the Cleaner's Action Group and the Unions - and the complex nature of the campaign itself.

One of Nick Park's earliest works, Archie's Concrete Nightmare was shot on standard 8mm film and submitted to a BBC young animator film competition. The short didn’t win, but it did air on national TV on BBC2 in 1975.

This film was hand wound though the camera backwards and forwards as the waves on a beach built up and broke on the shore.

When Gerry Broadbent, in search of his roots, takes his fiancée Nita home to Brighouse, they find that the picture is not quite as he painted.

Daniel Massey stars as a priest who faces a crisis when the local community turns against him after he is suspected of molesting a young girl who he befriends on a local housing estate.

British secret service agents are dispatched to islands in the South Atlantic where a fascist regime plans to attack the world.

The children visit a waxworks museum near closing time, whilst their grandmother does her shopping. Alice the chimp gets lost, and the children hide as attendants close the building for the night. Meanwhile, an attempt is being made to steal the day's takings.

The location is a small bay in Wales, this bay faces due north over the Irish sea. It has high ground to the east and west and low ground to the south. At its mouth it measures about a quarter of a mile from one side to the other. From the mouth to the beach, at the southernmost point, it measures half of a mile. The distance between the high and low tide mark on the beach is about 100 yards during spring tide. The tripod was placed at an angle of 60 degrees to the horizontal plane midway between the two sides of the bay and at the waters edge. The camera panned through 360 degrees stopping every 45 degrees to take a predetermined number of frames. The shooting speed was one frame per second.

A BAFTA award nominated documentary looking at Alaska and it's future prospects now that oil has been discovered.

A BAFTA award nominated animated fable in which the audience, while being entertained, may also learn eight Chinese characters.

A critique of the institution of mental health care that questions ‘normal’ viewing habits.

Stark 70s firework safety film which mixes the everyday and the uncanny.

Documentary covering three gigs during Genesis' 1978 'And Then There Were Three...' tour.

An adventure story for children involving a professor's efforts to discover an a ntidote to some 'shrinking' pills, and the attempted theft of his formula by two crooks

The sculptor Benno Schotz at work in his studio in Glasgow, and demonstrating his technique. The film examines his working methods and the themes running through his work. Much of his work is as a modeller in bronze and metals, and as a sculptor of stone, wood, iron and plastic.

An adventure story for children involving a professor's efforts to discover an antidote to some 'shrinking' pills, and the attempted theft of his formula by two crooks

In a world growing ever shorter of energy, railways are well suited to satisfy the world's future transport needs. This is the story of the new railways in Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Poland and Italy.

A community-based documentary following four local arts projects in the London Borough of Hackney.

A young couple go for a picnic beside a lake in the grounds of an empty house. Three years before, the owner had murdered all his family, killed his animals and disappeared.

A series of six short films concerning the adventures of form 2B and their inventive science master, Mr Potter

Nirad C. Chaudhuri expounds his views on culture, history, religion and society from a comparative perspective.

In this satirical rendering of the history of American intervention in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War, the silent movie format with lively ragtime piano music is combined with a dramatically understated narration and excerpts from "newsreels" of the period to reveal the nature of American attitudes toward Third World peoples and significant parallels with contemporary American foreign policy.

Can a convicted murderer genuinely repent and reform? If you were the prison authorities, would you find it easy to decide if he should be released?