Discover Movies

A ground-breaking feature-length fly-on-the-wall chronicle of Southend Band The Kursaal Flyers, as they tried to break in to the big time, this film is a stark depiction of three days on the road in Scotland and the north-east.

UK Public Information Film.

Art film part of the REWIND + PLAY, An Anthology of Early British Video Art box-set.

Commercial and technical developments on British Rail: new freight loads, air conditioned carriages, an ultrasonic test-train for checking the permanent way, a lecture train, and a new station for motorists - all part of the railway scene in the 1970's.

Aspects of the precision and drama of locomotive manufacture, composed to form a lively pattern in picture and sound.

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

With a rock music soundtrack, Choke suggests pop art in its treatment of Piccadilly Circus at night. Multipally exposed and treated images mirror each other or travel across the two screens. Originally made as a 2 screen film in 1971 from standard 8mm film blown up to 16mm. Recently digitized, and both screens combined in wide screen video format.

A comprehensive explanation and demonstration of the Margaret Morris Movement. Exercises are introduced by Margaret herself.

Derek Armstrong’s 1975 Shell Film Unit instructional series on aerodynamics, explaining the relationship between lift and weight as the foundational forces that keep an aircraft flying. (Note: This is an update of the 1947 film series of the same name.)

A look at the design and production of various products.

Optical sound by Guy Sherwin

One of a series of films that uses soundtracks generated directly from their own imagery. I shot the images of a staircase specifically for the range of sounds they would produce. I used a fixed lens to film from a fixed position at the bottom of the stairs. Tilting the camera up increases the number of steps that are included in the frame. The more steps that are included the higher the pitch of sound. A simple procedure gave rise to a musical scale (in eleven steps which is based on the laws of visual perspective. A range of volume is introduced by varying the exposure. The darker the image the louder the sound (it can be the other way round, but Musical Stairs uses a soundtrack made from the negative of the image.) The fact that the staircase is neither a synthetic image, nor a particularly clean one (there happened to be leaves on the stairs when I shot the film) means that the sound is not pure, but dense with strange harmonics. – G.S.

Experimental film responding to the controversial Industrial Relations Bill of 1971.

1977 newsreel showing boxing legend and 'People's Champion', Muhammad Ali making an extraordinary visit to Tyneside in the 1970s.

The curved, reflective sculptures of William Pye create different ways of reading space. Shapes seem to grow or move organically and the viewer's perception of the surrounding natural phenomena is also affected.

A BBC short feature. J.G. Ballard reflects on cars and our interactions with them.

Coastguard's Job

First polygonal rotating object computer animation

Noodle Spinner takes some basic documentary footage of a Chinese noodle spinner and then loops, split, reduces and staggers it to present a series of multiple-image collages in motion: in an inventive way the film's form thus resembles the process it was seeking to represent.

For Landscape for Fire, Anthony McCall and members of the British artist collaborative Exit followed McCall’s pre-determined score to torch containers of flammable material across a field. McCall describes it: "Over a three-year period, I did a number of these sculptural performances in landscape. Fire was the medium. The performances were based on a square grid defined by 36 small fires (6 x 6). The pieces, which usually took place at dusk, had a systematic, slowly changing structure." The work brought the grid — a conceptual focus for many artists in the 1970s and after — into a natural landscape, merging it with the vagaries of outdoor space and fire.

The story of the artist siblings Augustus and Gwen John, their childhood in Wales, their days at art school in London, their love affairs and their painting careers.

In Persisting an image of the Yangtse bridge is re-filmed with a soundtrack of popular Chinese music and the legend “persisting in our struggle”. Kerr, who studied with Steve Farrer and Lis Rhodes at the North East London Polytechnic and participated with the latter on a series of performance pieces in the mid-1970s, creates strong iconic statements in his films, invariably from found images which are often banal. “Thee gap in between, perception and awareness of perception of moment is Persisting.” (Genesis P. Orridge).

The sound of lights passing through a darkened landscape seen from a moving train.

'Slides' came about through some fascination with the phenomena of matter, its frailty and transcience, the oddness of tiny filmed images from my earlier work lying around. Working with these parts, 35 mm slides cut into strips, thread, sewn film, light leaked footage, 8mm and 16mm fragments, I hand held this material in the contact printer. Images were created by movement and handling, literally keeping in touch with the elements.'

Ian Nairn takes a critical look at the townscapes and landscapes in which we live

Sports documentary profiling the 1970 Commonwealth Games held in Edinburgh. Includes shots of athletes from Commonwealth nations training in newly built facilities and visiting the city.

General views of a girls' football match.

World in Action interviews the residents of Haycroft Road, Brixton as a controversial by-election stokes concerns about race and immigration.

Amateur film depicting what is arguably the first Moss Side Carnival, in Alexandra Park, Manchester. Now one of the largest community events in the North of England, this early Carnival is packed with floats, fashion, football and dancing, plus Rita Fairclough from Coronation Street lending her support.

"A simple, entirely unaffected portrait of a family which happens to be black" is how Sid's Family was described by a Monthly Film Bulletin reviewer at the time of its release. The film is the first in a trilogy charting the lives of Jamaican-born, Bristol-based Sid Williams and his family at eight year intervals from 1972 through 1980 to 1988.

1970 documentary on the Wandsworth Comprehensive School boys' choir. Unique in that the boys were not taken into the school as singers, but took choir as an extra-curricular activity. Music director Russell Burgess taught, inspired and moulded the boys to create a unique choral sound which became known as the 'Wandsworth Sound'. The choir made recordings with Benjamin Britten, Colin Davis and Luciano Pavarotti and performed at many London venues such as the the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, St Paul's Cathedral and the Festival Halls, as well as at the Aldeburgh Festival and internationally in Holland and the USA.

A basic composition of brick wall and man seated facing the camera, laughing his head off. No temporal or narrative framing is ever given , it is just the person, the action, and the manipulation of the sound and image that describe the conditions of being in front of and behind the camera.

Jobs For Women

Wendy Smith turns her Super 8 camera on her beloved Leeds United, documenting the team’s celebrated 1973-74 season from a devotee’s perspective. Smith’s unusual football fan film screens with a separate tape cassette soundtrack.

A haunting animated public information film from the 1970s about closing all doors every night to prevent fire.

British Public Information Film detailing how to behave during the rabies outbreak of 1976.

Everyday except Christmas London Transport run coach tours of London. The tours start from Victoria and from Piccadilly Circus; there is no booking and little waiting; they are popular with visitors of all nationalities, and they let you see the sights in comfort, though rarely with so well-orchestrated a musical accompaniment as David Fanshawe's.

Two identical cameras are placed, leapfrog style, around the artists studio, simultaneously revealing and concealing the space.

A 1950s b-movie Western is projected via a rectangular framework of 16 moveable mirrors. As the film progresses the artist moves the mirrors so that the images overlap in the center of the screen.

Documentary following James Thompson, a teenager with Down's Syndrome, as he attempts to adopt to independent life, and how his family supports him.

The story of the crofters who live on the island of North Uist - the reality of their relationship with the land, the elements, the wildlife and each other. Finlay J. Macdonald, an islander, narrates the story, interspersing legend and superstition with fact.

The film begins at a women's agency in London, where the protagonist, Mel Lamb, makes arrangements for a series of engagements. During his time in Paris and at Ai en-en-Provence Mel's human values are explored in the environment of horror and violence of Belfast.

Amateur film about a young man who joins the Edinburgh Cine Society to improve his film-making skills, which he achieves with prizewinning success.

A look at the Metro-Cammell factory in Birmingham which designs and builds a variety of metro trains, looking in particular at the planning and building of the 'Kowloon Connection', a metro system between Hong Kong and Kowloon.

The techniques and materials used (and attention to detail needed) to clean railway carriages manually.

Explaining the procedural changes to speed regulations on British railways, using signals with animated diagrams, models, and footage of trains and drivers.

A look at Derby's Railway Technical Centre, which exists to apply science to the practical problems arising from a changing railway system which has its roots in the past.

Electric Light Orchestra performing live at Brunel University.

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.

Harry Belafonte performs some of his best-loved songs, including Turn the World Around, Going Down Jordan and Marching to the Fair, recorded live in a BBC TV special filmed in November 1977.

A BAFTA award nominated reworking of a 1957 documentary using models and animation to explain the need to mix air and petrol in the correct proportions to create an efficient fuel for an engine.

Made from old travelogue footage including leader numbers, opening titles with swelling overtures, dissolving into panoramas of historic Florence. Four copies of this 50 foot sequence were cut and interwoven as follows: A B C D A B C D A B C D A B C D A B C D etc… – – – 1 – – 1 2 – 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 2 3 4 5 3 4 5 6 4 5 6 7 The resulting interplay between traditional editing devices like fades, dissolves, pans, swelling crescendos, and the imposed editing structure sets up partial repetitions, stretched out sound and picture images, and whole new meanings in the relentless commentary. – C.G.

A picture of life at Le Court, the flagship Cheshire Home near Petersfield, Hants. Describing itself as a “Musical Documentary about the dreams, hopes, fears and difficulties of disabled people”, Maybe Today was made by disabled filmmaker Brian Line (resident of Le Court Cheshire Home) with the support of local arts student Monica Mazure and members of the Le Court Film Unit, who were all residents of Le Court. It shows how residents raised funds to build an extension enabling everyone to have a private room. With its combination of folksong and a homespun (almost home movie) shooting style, it’s a curious but intriguing film.

"This film was made in an effort to illustrate briefly the parody of life as a series of conflicts. For example the initial conflict between innocence and social convention, as seen in the confusion of a child. I have tried to project the subconscious conflict-contradiction-of life and inevitable death. Thus the film is in two movements as it were. In the first, a figure dressed in white to symbolise life, moves through and explores a series of structures and objects. In the second movement the figure is replaced by a figure in black, who wanders back through the wreckage of the structures. As death, she controls life until they write into nothingness." - Elaine Shemilt

Illuminated by two blank screens projected from empty slides, four performers read texts drawn from the history of cinema – a dictionary of cinema, the chemical production of film materials and a fragment of a Hollywood narrative film script. The readings are treated as a musical quartet with a gradual superimposition of the four readings on each other. slide-performance