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The official film record of the Bo'ness Fair which took place in June 1974 in Bo'ness, Scotland.

Part of BFI collection "The Age of the Train."

‘At the work's core is an experimental approach to the stuff of film and a fiercely political outlook. Dresden Dynamo is an abstract assault on the senses. Eschewing a camera, Rhodes affixed patterned Letratone stickers to the film itself and used filters to create red and blue colours. Stripes, dots and wavy lines surge across the screen, and their forms dictate the accompanying barrage of white noise and atonal bleeps.’ --Ben Luke London Evening Standard 26 January 2012

A short film by Derek Jarman.

A trip round the west of Ireland where the residents tell of their lives.

Featuring well known sports presenter Jimmy Hill, ‘Think Bike’ encourages motorists to take extra care to look out for motorcyclists when pulling out from junctions. Using the slogan ‘think once, think twice, think bike’, the film features a graphic depiction of an accident to shock the audience. A very similar tactic is still in use today in the recently launched ‘Think – take longer to look for bikes’ campaign which also shows a motorcyclist crashing into the side of a car. A Department for Transport report from 2006 concluded that the most common cause of motorcycle crashes is a ‘right of way’ violation…the majority of these incidents occur at T-junctions and it is usually the motorist – rather than the biker – who is at fault.’ ‘In around 65% of these ‘right of way’ incidents, a driver somehow fails to see a motorcyclist who should be in clear view.’

Filmed in London. Preserved in Oesterreichishces Filmmuseum, Vienna.

Glimpses of everyday life in 1970s Nottingham form the backdrop to this film about local refuse being converted into heating for new homes.

William Mompesson retells the heroic true story of the inhabitants of Eyam, Derbyshire, who he convinced to sacrifice themselves during a visitation of the plague.

Born with the gift from nature, polished by years of painstaking work, Pinchas Zukerman was between the ages of 7 and 17 the best teaching that could possibly be found. His well-spent youth established him with an international career before he was 21. The close friendship between the artist and the director, Christopher Nupen, provides not only an interesting documentary but also a touching immersion in the intimacy of one of the greatest violinists the world has ever known.

Rare archive footage of British born young people in the mid 70s, discussing issues of school, police, parents and what it is like to be black in a white world.

An acting company prepares to rehearse the play The Rules of the Game by Luigi Pirandello. As the rehearsal is about to begin, they are interrupted by the arrival of six strange people. The Director, furious at the interruption, demands an explanation. The Father explains that they are unfinished characters in search of an author to finish their story...

The building of a factory in Shotts, Scotland.

1976. A candid look at the highs and lows of Australian society.

A look at how the landscape of the Scottish Highlands has been shaped by man.

A BAFTA award nominated documentary showing the speed sailing at Castle Cove near Weymouth for the John Player World Speed Sailing Record in 1975.

British Public Information Film about the importance of looking both ways before crossing the street.

An experimental short by Derek Jarman visually represents a crumbling barn.

Intended for European audiences to encourage them to drive to Britain for their holidays. Shows the travel facilities offered by Sealink, and suggests some of Britain's tourist attractions.

Part of BFI collection "The Age of the Train."

ON SEPTEMBER 3RD, 1970, Joni Mitchell stopped by the BBC’s Television Centre in London to perform for the premiere of their In Concert series. She would play songs from previous albums, including “Cactus Tree” from her 1968 David Crosby–produced debut and “Chelsea Morning” from Clouds, but the majority of her 11-song set came from her then-new album, Ladies of the Canyon. With tracks like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “The Circle Game” — the latter her response to Neil Young’s “Sugar Mountain” — Ladies of the Canyon marked Mitchell’s first platinum record. It was also her first to feature the piano, an instrument she’d use to produce warm, introspective songs less than a year later on Blue.

Part of BFI's "National Coal Board Collection".

The first part of the film is in colour and consists of arguments about how to make films and what film to make. The film then changes to black and white and the argument continues about houses and planning, with shots of the destruction of a house, and shots from other films of the houses it used to be. The arguments are not conclusive and the film is about doubts rather than certainties. - A.R.

Magnus Magnusson's guide to the Egyptian king Tutankahmun's celebrated visit to a London museum in 1972.

Trish is a lonely young wife in a tense marriage, living at the top of a high rise block of flats. She looks to the police and her husband for help when she finds her baby has been stolen from its pram.

Optical sound film by Guy Sherwin

A woman applies make-up in an attempt to change her appearance to more closely resemble an ideal of feminine beauty. As the camera closes in, the ideological and commercial images that determine her goal are literally jig-sawed over her face. She becomes a single element among a conglomerate of media images and then is entirely effaced. An ironical soundtrack further emphasises the artificiality of these constructions.

Examines patterns that occur across nature and religious buildings. Sacred geometry proposes that mathematical principles exist in nature, ascribing them with symbolic meaning, and this film illustrates these ideas in sequences soundtracked by folk and progressive rock musicians Mike and Sally Oldfield. From the close study of flower patterns to the examination of church and temple architecture, this film reflects on the interplay between humans and the natural environment.

In the first of a trilogy of documentaries made in the United States, John Pilger reveals American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s policy of refusing aid to countries that do not support his government in the United Nations and the existence of a “Zap Office” – officially, the Office of Multilateral Diplomacy – specially set up in the State Department to monitor voting patterns.

An androgynous person is climbing up a swaying tower of humans who hang in the air. Many drop into a sea of flies below them. The flies pick at their brains. At the top of the tower a lotus flower opens and radiates light.

The film starts with an extreme close-up of television static. Through a series of carefully controlled processes, the abstract nature of the image (which is concerned with pattern, colour and time), is juxtapositioned with the formal images of domestic room interiors and exteriors. With this work, Leggett questions the legibility of the image, examining the illusion produced by the two great illusionists – television and cinema – and the extent to which these can be manipulated and do manipulate.

A classic concert by Gordon Lightfoot from 1972, accompanied by Red Shea and Richard Haynes. They perform songs including Summer Side of Life, Saturday Clothes, That's What You Get For Loving Me, Affair on 8th Avenue, If I Could Read Your Mind, Steel Rail Blues, Ten Degrees and Getting Colder, Early Morning Rain, Me and Bobby McGee, Minstrel of the Dawn and Canadian Pacific Trilogy.

Movieman follows the career of James S. Nairn who, for almost all his working life, aspired to the highest standards in cinema presentation.

Peter Blackman, founder of Steel 'n' Skin, talks about this pan-African group, which takes African culture to British schools. The film follows the group during a ten day workshop in Liverpool.

1973 documentary on boxing from filmmaker Philip Donnellan, inspired by an original Radio Ballad of the same name by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger

An early short film by Bernard Rose.

A poet of forty wanders about the beach, changes his clothes when he feels like it, reads his poetry, reminisces engagingly, and reflects on life. Looking rather like Max Bygraves gone to seed, he keeps up a patter full of original jokes, interspersed with powerful verse about life and death.

The Kirghiz of Afghanistan are a group of some 2,000 pastoralists living on a bleak mountain plateau in a narrow isthmus of land between the borders of the Soviet Union and China. For nine months of the year heavy snows cover the ground, which was formerly used only by the Kirghiz for their summer pastures before the borders were closed, virtually terminating the contact of this group with other Kirghiz communities. Although the film shows dramatically the ten-day journey which lowland traders must make to reach this remote people, as well as scenes of a Kirghiz wedding and the traditional Central Asian sport of ‘buzkashi’ – demonstrating the horse-riding skills of the people – there is very little about the pastoral economy and society of the ordinary Kirghiz.

ELP's performance of Pictures at an Exhibition filmed at London's Lyceum in December 1970. Bonus features include a 1971 appearance on the Belgian TV show "Pop Shop".

A group of industry figures discuss the advantages of investing in Scotland.

A couple's untraditional early morning ritual is observed in a short drama which originally supported Polanski's The Tenant in UK cinemas.

A one-off performance, never repeated but led to Horror Film 1.

A look at the process of distilling whisky in various Scottish distilleries.

From LUX: "Welsby adopts a system of camera movements to chart the movement of tides, waves and sky".

Shows the abject poverty and miserable life style still endured by Peruvian peasant farmers, and notes how the changes to the land tenure system brought about by the 1968 revolution have failed to bring any change in the deplorable living standards of the Peruvian peasant farmer

Jon Pertwee (the third Doctor Who) stars in one of the most (in)famous Central Office of Information films, using the mnemonic 'SPLINK' to educate kids in the correct way to cross the road.

A BAFTA award nominated documentary looking at the construction of the 800 mile long pipeline from the Alaskan oil field to the ice-free port of Valdez.

Industrial espionage comes closer to home for Dr Stevens as his son is kidnapped and ransomed for his scientific discovery. With spectacular scenes of mayhem and destruction the question is whether or not the evil doers will succeed in their mission.

Changing Plans

First transmitted in 1979, this programme looks at the Rainhill Locomotive Trials in Rainhill, Lancashire (now Merseyside) in 1829, a competition to find the best passenger steam locomotive in Britain.On the 150th anniversary of the trials, replicas of its famous winner - Stephenson's 'Rocket' - and two of its competitors are rebuilt by modern day designers, and the trials are reconstructed in Hyde Park.

After the fall of France, Hitler occupied the whole of the Western European coastline and his forces were massed across the channel, facing the southern coast of Britain only twenty miles across the sea. This WWII documentary examines the epic defense of Great Britain led by less than a thousand young pilots of the Royal Air Force in the summer of 1940.

The acclaimed Scottish poet discusses his work.

After the 1973 Chilean military coup, Joan Jara reflects on the life and legacy of her husband, folk singer and activist Víctor Jara, who was tortured and killed by the regime.

A profile from 1972 of celebrated Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid on the occasion of his 80th birthday. In this film he talks about his uncompromising life and the ideas and circumstances that have shaped its progress.

Four million Tiv people form the major culture of the Benue state of southern Nigeria. They are popularly known as the greatest democrats in Africa as their society is based on fraternal cooperation between age mates rather than on authoritative chieftaincy. Men of an age work together on communal farming and house building and celebrate their achievements with feasts famed for the excellence of their music and dance. Their women create amongst the greatest dances in Nigeria within their extended family compounds. Each year, during the dry season, when there is little farm work, the leaders of the dance teams compose songs to record recent experiences and new features in their lives which they express in the rhythms and gestures of their dance.

The sun is out and it's time for men to dress up as women and for grown-ups to charge about in prams. This film from 1976 shows an event called the Pram-Olympics, which were held on Southsea Common during what was one of the hottest summers ever recorded.

Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire - eleven Midland counties which can offer the holidaymaker a variety of pleasures and some of the lovliest English countryside.