In the middle of World War II Cavalcanti provocatively imagined a postwar England in which the failure of the threatened German invasion could be safely seen in flashback, thanks to the resourceful villagers of Bramley End. Once the ostensibly British troops in their village are revealed as Nazis...

For this remarkable experimental film, the provocative avant-garde legend Stephen Dwoskin gathered together a group of strangers and filmed them as they explored their fantasies over a period of five days: a project that now sounds a little like TV's Big Brother.

The ground-breaking first feature from the director of Orlando and The Tango Lesson, The Gold Diggers is a key film of early '80s feminist cinema. Made with an all-woman crew, featuring stunning photography by Babette Magolte and a score by Lindsay Cooper it embraces a radical and experimental na...

The BFI Archive's restoration of Herbert Ponting's official film record of Captain Scott's tragic expedition to the South Pole, with a new score by Simon Fisher Turner. Please note this film contains offensive racist language.

The British New Wave came a decade earlier than advertised with Robert Hamer's downbeat postwar thriller. In a dank East End of ration-book misery, dosshouses and black marketeering, a world-weary housewife is shaken by the sudden reappearance of an old lover, now an escaped convict on the run. R...

This dramatic reconstruction of two decisive naval battles from the First World War is one of the finest films of the British silent era. Walter Summers’ film was originally released on Armistice Day 1927 to act as a memorial to the thousands who died in the Battle of Coronel, triumph for Germa...

Innovative and influential, and originally envisaged as children’s show, Do Not Adjust Your Set was a madcap early-evening comedy sketch show that quickly acquired a cult following with Swinging Sixties adults, who rushed home from work to see it. Written by and starring Michael Palin, Terry Jone...

Innovative and influential, and originally envisaged as children’s show, Do Not Adjust Your Set was a madcap early-evening comedy sketch show that quickly acquired a cult following with Swinging Sixties adults, who rushed home from work to see it. Written by and starring Michael Palin, Terry Jone...

Innovative and influential, and originally envisaged as children’s show, Do Not Adjust Your Set was a madcap early-evening comedy sketch show that quickly acquired a cult following with Swinging Sixties adults, who rushed home from work to see it. Written by and starring Michael Palin, Terry Jone...

Innovative and influential, and originally envisaged as children’s show, Do Not Adjust Your Set was a madcap early-evening comedy sketch show that quickly acquired a cult following with Swinging Sixties adults, who rushed home from work to see it. Written by and starring Michael Palin, Terry Jone...

The men disaffected by the turbulence of the 1980s place themselves at the forefront of black liberation, embodying their authoritative traditional gender roles to dictate a vision for the future. Feminist Maggie Baptiste and her friend Gary (Chance), a gay black man, are youthful advocates who r...

Friendship (Tilda Swinton) has been sent to Earth on a peace mission. Heading for MIT, she inadvertently lands in Amman, Jordan during the 1970 ‘Black September’ war and is ushered to safety by journalist Sullivan (Bill Paterson). Holed up in a hotel as the conflict rages outside, the pair enter ...

The influence of Fritz Lang is unmistakeable on Powell’s earliest extant film – a thriller crafted with real visual style, despite its limited budget. The twisty plot concerns businessman F.X. Benedik (Rome), who has been receiving threats from a mysterious stranger. When Benedik is murdered,...

Powell’s amiable ‘Quickie’ comedy stars music hall veteran Jerry Verno as a lowly clerk who inherits a hotel, but gets more than he bargained for when various guests turn out to be crooks. (Watch out for the cameo from Powell himself). The production’s limitations are undeniable, but Powe...

Powell was dismissive of this stage adaptation, about a murder at a society party, which was foisted on him by Gaumont-British boss Michael Balcon. While it may betray its stage origins, it’s more fun than Powell suggested, with inventively staged scenes, and characterful performances from its ...

Powell’s adaptation of Walter Ellis’s successful play was the most prestigious production he had made to date. A ‘society drama’ involving suspicion, clandestine romance and presumed murder, its cast of accomplished stage actors are nonetheless entirely upstaged by the glorious comic doub...

Working with cinematographer David Peat directors Murray Grigor and Patrick Higson capture Billy Connolly at his brilliant best, as the comedian employs his trademark humour and no small amount of roguish charm to navigate the political tensions of 1970s Dublin and Belfast.

Gritty rather than glam, this incendiary, cult classic both confounded and delighted audiences upon its release in 1975, at the height of the legendary glam-rock band’s success. Charting the rise of fictional rock group Flame, with Slade themselves playing the band, it offers a witty, sublimely...

Set in a world before Elvis, a Liverpool before the Beatles, Terence Davies' debut feature is a remarkable evocation of working-class family life in the 40s and 50s and a visionary exploration of memory. In a powerful succession of searing vignettes, Davies paints an autobiographical picture of a...

The opening film in Terence Davies' powerful Liverpool-set Trilogy introduces Robert Tucker as a withdrawn young boy, bullied at school and terrorised by a violent father. His strict Catholic upbringing hinders his sexual awakening and as a young man he's still living at home with his mother. A v...

The second instalment of Terence Davies' masterful Trilogy finds Robert Tucker in middle age, with the clash of religion and sexuality taking its toll. A depressed loner who takes the ferry across the Mersey to work as an office clerk, Robert is haunted by nightmares of his own death and tormente...

Hailed as Britain's first black feature film, Pressure is a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted British-born black youths. Set in 1970s London, it tells the story of Tony, a bright school-leaver, son of West Indian immigrants, who finds himself torn between his parents' ch...

The anguished finale of the Terence Davies Trilogy opens with the death of Robert Tucker’s beloved mother, jumping forward in time to show an elderly Robert bedridden in hospital (an astonishing appearance by Steptoe and Son’s Wilfrid Brambell). Fragments of his past - a school nativity play,...

The flagship of the GPO Film Unit's output and a cornerstone of British documentary. Harry Watt and Basil Wright's study of the down postal express stands as a beacon for John Grierson's original purpose for documentary - to make the working man the hero of the screen. A truly collaborative effor...