Discover Movies

A film produced for the 1970 Society of Archivists' Conference, and featuring the craft of making marble paper, by the Cambridgeshire firm, Douglas Cockerell & Son.

A film made for the staff of the (then) British Rail featuring mainly Sir Peter Parker explaining to staff how, as the new Chairman, he intended to take the industry forward.

A male cat, with prominent testicles, approaches a sleeping woman and begins pawing and licking at her. The woman awakes and, smiling, allows the cat to dive between her breasts as though her cleavage was a body of water.

This film (which is silent apart from a song from the Easter Uprising of 1916 that it illustrates) uses only techniques available at the time, thereby giving the impression of what a Republican propaganda movie would have looked like had they the access to film making resources. Shot in black and white it has a hand-tinted section at the end which was quite common during this period.

A film made without a camera in which both image and sound are the result of the same chemical process. Raw film was spooled onto a spiral and partially submerged in developer, so that only half the film is developed, leaving the trace of a time spiral in the image and (optical) sound. The film can be projected in either direction. Outwards, from the centre of the spiral, we hear a decelerating sound like someone regaining their breath. G.S.

Railway tracks seen from a speeding train are converted into optical sounds.

A film made without a camera: A newspaper glued onto clear film is projected as audio-visual typography. "For NEWSPRINT I glued a newspaper onto clear 16mm film then punched out the sprocket holes to enable the film to run through the projector. Using a strong light I printed ‘newspaper-film’ to copy it onto another strip of film. This shows up the letters and words clearly, which can also be heard as they pass over the sound-head in the projector. Newsprint #2 is a live projection event for two 16mm projectors and two loudspeakers [...] Two identical prints are shown superimposed onto the same screen." -GS.

Filmed version of Irving A. Leitner and Bernice Myers' children's book.

Got your holidays booked yet? Take a look at what Terminal Tours have to offer in this consciously coarse comic cartoon.

A surreal animation of erotic images.

Film that encourage cyclists to lock there bike.

There are essentially two versions of the same film, both of which look at pub makers who create olde world pubs inside new ones using fibreglass mouldings of ancient wooden beams and the like. Basically these are news items from the television show ‘This Week In Britain’, which reported on a company called The Pub Makers who, back in the seventies saw a gap in the market refurbishing new pubs to look like old ones.

Made by the man who released a 70s electronic single Fuck You under the name Lucifer, this is an aggressive, confrontational work. Brooding recordings soundtrack the piece while Irving as biker and killer, drives the roads of London, making for the sea, mapping his own dark, heavy trip and the UK as it was. A murder has been committed; what will be the consequences?

'Titles within the film are: Numen of the Boughs, Old Boots, Speed Bonny Boat, Lapping Water, Incense, Aha, Brave New World, Things, Terra Firma. A poem started in words is continued in images - Part of another poem as an addition to the picture - Some images formed by direct-on-film animation - Others 'found' by the camera" - MT

Documentary insight into the crofting life on the island of North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland.

A profile of the community on the Isle of Lewis where religion is still a dominating force and the Sabbath is strictly observed.

Follows the Burns & Laird Lines ferry "Lion" on the old Ardrossan - Belfast route.

General views of schoolchildren playing netball.

A report on the new craze of jogging that has just hit Scotland - interviews with various people of different ages to see their reactions to this new form of fitness.

Ben Leigh of the Afro Caribbean Association for Economic and Social Security tells Wendy Jones about a unique scheme in Small Heath, Birmingham where a group of young black families have built their own homes from the ground up.

An experimental film which attempts to develop a sense of 'actual physical time' relative to the events observed, recorded within the original camera direction.

Exhibition of works by people with disabilities in Edinburgh.

Sequence of animations and random footage (Olympic torch lighting, rituals etc) which were "based on ideas of Hans Hollein; created for the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt Museum's opening exhibition: Man transForms", 1976. Nine designers worked with Hans Hollein in the "MAN TRANSFORMs" exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design: Nader Ardalan, Peter Bode, Buckminster Fuller, Murray Grigor, Arata Isozaki, Richard Meier, Karl Schlamminger, Ettore Sottsass, and Oswald Ungers.

DUET uses a horizontally extended screen, effected by employing two standard 16mm images projected adjacent to one another. Two vertical bars move back and forth across the width of half the frame. Through these apertures a girl is seen walking back and forth, in a similar manner to the bars. The movement of each of the bars is fairly constant whilst that of the figure is erratic. Each section of the film, i.e. right and left hand images, was shot entirely at random - the matte being moved by hand and the figure's movement being decided by herself. DUET was preceded by two earlier forms; both of which were abandoned. The first (Summer 1974) used a single image, the camera panning constantly between two points whilst the figure moved at random within, and without the frame. In the second version the camera described a circle, the figure moving along the circumference of circles at varying radii.

Motorway Fog

Jobs For Early School Leavers

British Public Information Film about the importance of removing the door when throwing a refrigerator away.

An anti-smoking film using a science-fiction setting, and intended for children aged 11-16 years.

Squatters used video to record street life, police atrocities and evictions. The video shows squatters of 93 Prince of Wales Road peacefully defending their house against ongoing eviction. The squat movement flowered in London in the 1970s, when an estimated 30,000 people lived in squats in Greater London, and the movement provided the base for many London subcultures over several decades.

British Transport film.

British Transport film.

Holiday attractions in the Scottish Highlands.

A Labour government imposing cutbacks on the National Health Services is the theme of Dismantling a Dream. Pilger recalls the establishment of the NHS in 1948 and Health Minister Aneurin Bevan’s declaration that the “silent suffering” of the old, young, chronically sick and handicapped had no place in a civilised society. But, in December 1976, an official report revealed that thousands of children who could be saved were dying.

An educational film intended for children from 6 to 8 years of age. ‘We Grew A Frog, 1970’ tells the story of two schoolchildren, Lynne and Martin, who collect frog spawn from the village pond, take it to school, and there, in a tank, watch the spawn grow into frogs. The film shows in close-up the developmental stages of the spawn-to-frog process. This educational film features the pupils of Whatfield School in Suffolk. Headteacher, Gwen Dunn wrote and told the story.

Are you a dog or a cat person? If you favour the felines then this animated meditation on cats of all shapes and sizes is for you. The film grew out of industry veteran Vera Linnecar's play with applying mottled coloured paints directly onto animation cels. Paired with the piano music these scenes are a playful experiment, mixing abstraction with careful observation of cat behaviour. Vera started her animation career at the Halas & Batchelor studio in 1940, as did Elizabeth Horn, who also worked on this film. Moving from tracing, to inbetweening, to animating, Vera became one the company's principle artists. In the late 1940s she moved to the Larkins studio which better suited her experimental spirit. In 1957, along with Nancy Hanna, she joined Bob Godfrey and Keith Learner at Biographic, and continued innovating there until she retired in 1983, after four decades in the business.

This documentary is about the Ijo people of Nigeria. The performance is a celebration of the Ijo hero Ozidi.

A BAFTA award nominated documentary illustrating how several seemingly harmless actions can culminate in an accident and injury.

"Duncan Morris is asked to laugh as long as he is able...." Another early videotape made when I was exploring the creative possibilities and affordances of the Sony Portapak, recently introduced into Britain. As an artist and filmmaker, the new medium encouraged spontaneity of execution (for little cost compared to film). The ability to see the results immediately afterwards propelled concepts and ideas towards a completed outcome.

Catherine Elwes, videotape. Screened at the About Time: Video, Performance and Installation by Women Artists exhibition at the ICA in 1980.

Part of the Logical Propositions series, 16mm, colour, sound

"One of a series of films that investigates qualities of sound that can be generated directly from the image track. The images that you see are simultaneously scanned by the optical sound reader in the projector, which converts the into sound. This particular film makes use of the aural effect of visual perspective; the steeper the perspective on the railings, the closer the intervals of black and white, and the higher the frequency of sound. I also wanted to find out what freeze frames and visual strobe would 'sound' like. Visual strobe is created both in the camera (camera shutter v. railings) and in the printer (printer shutter v. slipping frames)." -G.S.

A lonely twelve-year-old boy with problem parents experiments with drugs and enters an idealised fantasy world.

Lens and Mirror Film is part of the Light Occupations series, in which Gill Eatherley performs simple investigations of the filmic equipment, particularly the camera and the projector, in short films that are each three minutes in length – corresponding to the length of a 100-foot roll of film.

That’s Entertainment/The Conjuror’s Assistants is an attempt to reveal some problems inherent in vérité documentary such as voyeurism, the nature/extent of a vérité intervention and audience “passivity”. A frame by frame analysis of just 100ft of documentary footage taken at a children’s Christmas party, the film shows the young man “entertaining” the adults and children and his two young assistants, the a younger boy and an older girl, and the reaction of the audience – men and women supervising children of both sexes. The visible materiality of the film is used to distance the action and encourage a reading the film as a 'text.

A demonstration by the Military Vehicles Engineering Establishment, showing the use of a remote controlled Ford Escort van enveloping with foam a 'suspect' car in a built up area. Both vehicles end up buried in foam, which covers the width of the street.

A woman dances and mimes, her stark white image moves across a red floor, reflected in a fractured wall of mirrors. As she performs, her mirror image gradually assumes an autonomous identity so that what was a central relationship of self to self has become one self to other. Focii not only explores the construction of self, and the dynamics of self and other, but also the interaction between the viewer’s body and the body onscreen, raising questions on the nature of identification in cinema.

A documentary about the traditions of Dartmoor - which include broom dancing and a mummer's play - all performed by children

A found-footage film made entirely from Academy leader, which is normally used to cue the start of films. The film was hand-printed on a home-made contact printer. It was rolled back and re-printed several times over, to create a complex layering of both image and sound.

One of a series of films made about life in Dumfries Academy 1955-1978. This film was shot in the academic year 1977-1978 and as well as the scenes of daily school life, it includes footage of the flooding of the river Nith on 31st October 1977.

A film commissioned by Hartlepool Borough Council Parks Department as part of their campaign for the Northumbria In Bloom and Royal Horticultural Society Britain In Bloom competitions. The film celebrates the private and public gardens, parks, and landscaped streets and promenades of West Hartlepool.

A silent collage of lingering traces—abandoned tents, derelict homes, seaside automatons — ‘Displaced’ evokes quiet alienation and temporal drift. Its stillness invites reflection on presence, absence, and the uncanny spaces in between.

This amateur travelogue-style documentary follows the route of the South Downs Way three years after its official opening, accompanied by a voiceover providing historical narrative on the route and local history of the areas it passes through.

From 1976, a contemplation of shadows in frames, with occasional passing bodies and faces, a few sounds and statements.

Wordless portrait of British transport, featuring cross-channel ferries, InterCity 125s, and cars.