Discover Movies

AN EPIC POEM explores the contradictions in man's conception of love through the myths and representations, which support it, and argues that man has constructed love in his own image, reflecting his profound anxieties about prohibited desires. Deftly using poetry, archive material, allusions and re-enactment, it teases out the threads of past and present love and war to investigate those tensions usually hidden from our view. Central to the film is the 'Rokeby Venus', slashed by militant suffragette Mary Richardson. It becomes an entry to the 'historic' past but also to myth and the unconscious, its imagery developed and shifted in a series of tableau-like encounters between Aphrodite and Ares.

A mock trial, featuring 5 international judges, to evaluate whether Austrian president and former U.N. secretary-general Kurt Waldheim should be tried as a war criminal.

BFI Catalogue: Safety film showing how accidents in the home usually happen and how they can be avoided. Includes fire safety, electricity and gas appliances, babies and children, the elderly, glass, and DIY.

In this video, the artist tries to overcome the effects of distance, and reflects on geography represented in exile due to war, and on the psychological distance represented in each one’s approach to her womanhood. The video beautifully weaves personal images and audio recordings of a very intimate nature, binding the personal with the political. Reading aloud from letters sent by her mother in Beirut, Hatoum creates a visual montage reflecting her feelings of separation and isolation from her Palestinian family. The personal and political are inextricably bound in a narrative that explores personal and family identity against a backdrop of traumatic social rupture, exile and displacement.

Scottish romantic comedy.

This is an intimate account, using film and Sibelius's music and words, of a great artist's struggle with his medium, with the world and with himself. The films set out also to try and free Sibelius's reputation from some of the unnecessary encrustations of history by looking at the composer's own declared intentions, so poetically expressed, which are earning the increasing attention and respect of composers today.

Reflections in fish tanks in the windows of restaurants in Chinatown, San Francisco, accompanied by sounds of foghorns, passers-by, dining and breaking waves. Shot on Super 8, the images oscillate between abstraction, documentary portrait and poetry, with the fish coming in and out of focus, whilst the sound provides a grounding in the setting of San Francisco’s harbour and nearby Chinatown.

This film follows the lives of 6 gay women in London and Southampton, England, including singer Saffron Summerfield, who is still singing today. The film is very upfront about their lives and sexuality and all interviews are done full face to camera with no veils. Despite all the advances, much of their experience still holds true today.

1981 short film made by Nik Allday, the drummer on Cabaret Voltaire’s critically acclaimed third album ‘Red Mecca’, and features music by Allday and the Cabs’ Stephen Mallinder. The 10 minute abstract film uses raw material of video feedback and some nuclear bomb footage to represent “the cruel chaotic dysfunctional nature of the human condition with all its potential for self destruction”. Allday wanted a soundtrack that complemented the film thematically and approached Mallinder to see if he’d be interested in creating the audio.

Punk rebellion and anarchy with Peterborough-based punk band The Destructors, six years after their formation. Born in the crucible of punk's genesis in 1977, the band are just beginning to make a name for themselves in the early 1980s.

"Phantoms was a transitional film for Swann in that it marked a watershed between her previous work in tape slide with its basis in the manipulation of secondary or found images to work using footage shot by the film-maker and with a more discernible narrative structure. Phantoms' often exquisite, atmospheric images of nature, architecture and interiors hark back to the opulence of the earlier work, yet are harnessed into a narrative of yearning and unrequited love through intertitles and the appearances of the male and female (Swann herself) protagonists. The film is an essay in desire using images rather than words. It's like a prose poem, with the intertitles giving it syntax. Swann acknowledges the influence of silent film at the time and especially that of Russian lyricism in literature and film, with its conflation of the landscape with the personal." Sotiris Kyriacou

Plutonium Blonde is a beautifully textured collage of sound and images and a fractured narrative about woman’s self-definition and control. Taking the figure of Thelma, a woman working with the plutonium monitors at the core of a reactor, Lahire questions both the process at the core of the plutonium terminal and that one that constructs female identity. Plutonium Blonde is part of a trilogy of films on radiation (the other two are Uranium Hex and Serpent River) that Lahire made in the 1980s.

In a post-nuclear-war wasteland, a man searches for his family while trying to avoid deadly killer robots.

Comparison between life in Orwell's novel and the reality of life in 1984.

"Life Under Occupation" looks at the hardships of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the early years of the Intifada in Gaza and disillusioned Israeli soldiers lamenting their military training gone to waste as they spend their days chasing down stone throwing youths. It also features Dr Swee Chai Ang working with injured children in the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. Dr Swee was an eye witness to the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut, about which she has testified at the Kahan Commission and written in her book From Beirut to Jerusalem, and she went on to found Medical Aid for Palestinians, with which she remains active today. "Life Under Occupation" was aired on BBC1 as an episode of Everyman, a documentary series that ran from 1977 until 2005 and which focused on religious and moral issues. Of related interest is "A Very Stubborn Person," another UK TV documentary that profiles Dr Swee.

Status Quo perform at the National Exhibition Centre Birmingham in front of an audience which includes H.R.H Prince Charles.

A child with albinism is often regarded in traditional societies as a curse on their family. Salif Keita, born from a noble lineage of Mali, lived in exclusion during his childhood. It is music that saved him. This film portrays Salif Keita, the man and musician. We follow him with his family, in the places of his childhood and during his concerts in Mali and in France.

In 1986, Edward Said and Salman Rushdie sat down to talk at the ICA. Professor Said launched his book “After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives” at the ICA and discussed his and the collective Palestinian identity, exile, return and the right to return.

A visual poem on the steam driven Hook Norton Brewery in Oxfordshire UK

The extraordinary story of the world's largest robbery - the theft of £26 million of gold bars from the Brink's-Mat warehouse in November 1983. Eight men have already been convicted for their part in the story; two others were acquitted at a recent, highly publicised Old Bailey trial. With the help of the man leading the police hunt, Det Chief Supt Boyce , and with insights into the criminal underworld from Andrew Jennings and John McVicar , the film follows the tortuous trail of the gold. Using some dramatic reconstruction, it shows how this massive amount of gold, beyond the robbers' wildest expectations, was smelted in a garden shed, passed over the counter of unsuspicious local banks, and fed into an international 'money laundering' operation, with much of it ending up, thanks to Britain's relaxed exchange controls, in the American drugs market.

A documentary on the devastating effect of the environmental menace just below our feet - the heat of the earth, and the eruption of this heat in the form of volcanoes.

In June 1979, London played host to Gay Pride Week, which culminated in the Pride March through the capital. It was, at the time, the largest assembly of homosexuals Europe had ever seen. This is an episode of a BBC documentary film strand (Inside Story), with the focus on investigative journalism.

Made as one of a four part series exploring different aspects of women and the law, on which all the women animators involved researched and worked as a group, before then making individual films, each quite different in content, tone and style. Based on the real life experiences of Josie O Dwyer, the film uses her voice as commentary, taken from hours of taped conversation with the filmmaker. Different styles of drawing convey her emotions and the devastating effects detention and imprisonment have on young girls put away 'for their own protection'.

A short stop-motion collage film that constructs a garden out of materials and objects such as flowers, beads, plastic cellophane, candles, even ketchup and mustard. The soundtrack is the same as in Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart, the first ‘collage film’.

A beautiful woman screams at something unseen off camera. Paul Newman appears eating salad and soon the famous sequence of Paul Newman closing a car door cut with a helicopter takes place. Absence of Satan is probably one of George Barber's best Scratch works and is a deft reworking of cinematic narrative and cliché. George Barber is one of the pioneers of Scratch Video which emerged in the UK during the mid-1980s. Scratch video makes use of found images from films and television, cutting seemingly incongruous imagery together to make a new meaning; it has been compared to the record-scratching techniques of hip-hop music, hence the name. (lux.org.uk)

Made using footage from USA Olympics in Los Angeles 1984 and snippets of Alistair Cooke's America: A Personal History of the United States. The footage was combined at Goldsmith's Art Department using an unusual Grass Valley mixer that had oscillating wipes which created the signature colours and wiggly lines. (Modern Art Oxford) Barber was always the most polished of the Scratch video artists, and Tilt shows his ability to make seductive, easy-viewing pieces, while maintaining a subversive undercurrent.

Ever condemned to be the butt of crude humour, or clad in the garb of awful euphemisms, at last the lavatory comes out of the closet. This documentary film reveals everything you ever wanted to know about them - where and how they are made, who invented them, and how the primitive privy was elevated to an art form. In a pilgrimage through Britain's loveliest lavatories, Lucinda Lambton celebrates the centenary year of the water closet, at long last paying the debt of gratitude to Britain's plumbing pioneers and sanitary magnificoes. Through her eyes the humble symbol of relief to the discomfited becomes an object of beauty and a delight to the eye.

British sex film shot on video. "A Satanic Orgy Of Sex".

In isolated mountain hamlets in Nigeria’s Jos Plateau the Ngas have traditionally observed the movements of the moon in the night sky. The moon is a key symbol in Ngas cosmology, believed to regulate the rhythm of all life. The film traces the moon’s influence on Ngas work and thought during a single growing season. The documentary tells the story form the point of view of a single traditional Ngas bard.

A henpecked husband gets a welcomed surprise when he adds too much detergent to the laundry and out pops a beautiful woman made of soap suds.

The film followed the further adventures of Lavinia, Enfys, Glenys and Rhisiart, Delyth and Bethan following the film Ibiza! Ibiza!

This documentary travels to nine Pacific nations, including New Zealand, to chronicle the long struggle to create a regional nuclear arms free zone.

Dramatisation of children's book by Gene Kemp.

When a housewife's girlfriends take her to a male strip club for her birthday, she brings back more than memories.

A remarkable documentary about the remnants of a once-thriving Jewish neighborhood in the South Bronx that survives despite the surrounding decline. Amidst all the decay, the Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Jews of Intervale are able to provide for and support each other.

The Bolshoi Ballet perform Prokofiev’s classic ballet, “Romeo and Juliet”, based on the tragic love story about two young star-crossed lovers, featuring the original choreography of Leonid Lavrovsky revised by Yuri Grigoovich.

One week before Prince Charles opens the Peddars Way Long Distance Path, local journalist Bruce Robinson talks through the book he has written about the historic Roman road it follows.

From Bitter Earth powerfully examines the drawings and paintings that survived the concentration camps, ghettos and hiding places of the Second World War. While most of the artists who created them perished, Morrison interviews painters like Yehuda Bacon, Dinah Gottliebova and Walter Spitzer who talk about the extraordinary perseverance and ingenuity that such artists demonstrated in attempting to capture the world around them, which was often punishable by death. Upon its initial airing on the BBC in 1988, The Independent referred to Paul Morrison’s documentary as “a worthy footnote to Shoah.”

Powerful Stuff is a 1988 Electrical safety film made by the Independent Business Television Limited for the Electricity Council. It was shown in schools and edited into stand-alone PIFs for television broadcast.

A short, sharp, visceral attack on the news using, amongst other things, science fiction footage and scattered newspaper headlines.

Using a metaphor of peeling skin, images from the film-maker's family history are combined with black and white images of famous paintings. A woman is seen being physically manipulated into each of the archetypal representations falling upon her skin.

Produced to develop arts institutions' ability to market themselves.

Documentary following the famous HMS Endurance on what was planned to be its final journey.

George Barber deconstructs two feature films, The Blue Lagoon and The Deep, pillaging ‘moments’ which when re-edited constitute a new totality.

A woman, enclosed in the four walls of her home, struggles to find a balance between her fairy tale upbringing and the mundane reality of her everyday life.

The first in a series of newsreels made by a local co-operative production group about the recently revived schemes of the Department of Transport to build a motorway alongside Archway Road in North London, despite local opposition over the past fifteen years and three public inquiries. Composed of interviews in local pubs, meetings etc., footage of the area affected and found footage. In three parts, subtitled "Your home town?", "Road to nowhere (dead end)" and "Who wants it? Who needs it?".

What do lesbians do in bed? With a star-studded soundtrack, we're shown women doing everything in bed from knitting and drinking tea to having raucous pillow-fights.

Misrecognitions and simulacra. An anti-montage film: a series of discrete shots that nevertheless gel at one or two points to produce simple meanings. Hovering on the line between abstraction and representation, the film hopes to problematize them both. According to Peter Gidal, “the abstract quality (never total, for the objects are always recognizable as objects) helps Hamlyn to negotiate sexual imagery as it occurs in the film by rendering those images relatively abstract and on a par with other objects depicted. The effect is to drain the image [of the naked body] of its conventional sexual meanings and associations (with pornography, for instance) and instead neutralize it almost.”

A gastronomic journey from Yorkshire to London on board a special train - made up of vintage restaurant cars, and steam hauled. This was to celebrate a hundred years of train catering. The Chairman of British Rail, Sir Peter Parker, was there to cut the cake! For use as an 'opener' for marketing meetings, presentations, etc. and for staff information.

The miners' strike 1984 was one of the longest and most brutal in British labour history. A community fighting for jobs and survival was wholly denigrated and depicted as violent by the majority of the media. THE BATTLE FOR ORGREAVE puts the record straight, as miners recount their own history, their economic and political struggles over decades and the trial they endured for 48 days in Sheffield when charged with riot at Orgreave - facing life imprisonment. Containing compelling testimonies, emotive cinematography, in depth analysis coupled with meticulous detail of the mass picket and the ensuing events of June 18 1984 at the Orgreave coking plant, the documentary also has unique footage of police violence -- all these make this an historic and important document of our time

A 1988 Bafta nominated short film by British animator Karen Watson. The film uses mixed media animation and unconventional narrative to explore the issues of domestic violence and child abuse from within the confines of the patriarchal family unit.

The Royal Ballet performs a production of Kenneth MacMillan's ballet: Manon. In decadent 18th century Paris, the young, beautiful and naive Manon (Tamara Rojo) is torn between a life of privilege and luxury with the wealthy Monsieur GM or love with the poor student Des Grieux (Carlos Acosta). Manon has become one the Royal Ballet's signature works since its creation in 1974.

Once feared by explorers as fierce cannibals, the Mangbetu tribe inhabit the edge of the Zaire rainforest in the heart of Africa. Although they don't eat people any more, they still cling to their traditions of hallucinogenic rituals and retain a deep faith in magic and sorcery, despite the efforts of missionaries to change them.

A black-and-white interview where two young Black teenagers, Pauline and Liz, interview each other, speaking candidly and playfully about their love lives, their ambitions and their desires for the future.

Sexy Secrets Of The Sex Therapists (1987) is a lighthearted erotic comedy that blends satire with farce. The film follows a group of unconventional sex therapists whose professional advice contrasts sharply with their own tangled personal lives. As their relationships, desires, and hypocrisies collide, the story plays out through a series of comedic misunderstandings and provocative situations, aiming more for playful humor and titillation than serious psychological insight.

Dust, grain, flour. Negative/positive; film ‘history’ re/presentation, figure antics and play. (After George Albert Smith)

Made in the wake of the Brixton uprisings, Street Warriors explores the tensions that exist between community building and the increasing professionalisation of a south London street hockey team.

An animated short about a very woman problem.

The Flower reflects the director's experience of living in a totalitarian communist state and pays homage to Trnka’s film Ruka, The Hand, made 3 years before the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968.