A rookie Yorkshire journalist sets out to solve the case of a child murderer in the first of this searing three-part series set to the backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper.
Comedy about a tough luxury line skipper who receives five odd replacements just as he casts off on a Mediterranean cruise.
A team of police investigators are on the case to stop the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper from killing again but uncover something far more terrifying in this second part to the blistering three-part drama.
A distinguished physiologist Professor Shapey commits suicide and Hall a security officer then reveals evidence of treason against him. He has been experimenting with Isolation, the study of what happens to a man when all sensation-touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing - is removed. A colleague,...
A corrupt police official is plagued by guilt and sets out to try and solve the case of a missing schoolgirl when connections between her disappearance and a rash of prior abductions comes to light.
Bizarre comedy of a working class artist who alienates his wife when he acts out his emotional affinities with gorillas.
When she meets a hip television director, a young woman is swept into the world of London's lavish sixties nightlife. However, her lust to belong to the scene doesn't even begin to quench her thirst for fun, as she drifts from clique to clique looking for an unattainable sense of belonging.
This lively Free Cinema short captures a night out at the Wood Green Jazz Club, where teenagers jive to trad jazz. Funded by the BFI Experimental Film Fund, it was filmed over the course of nine Saturdays by Karel Reisz, then programmer of the National Film Theatre, and a young BBC television dir...
The great black actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson is on fine form as a lowly London-born dock worker who suddenly finds fame and fortune as a world-famous opera singer. Using his new wealth to explore his African heritage, he discovers he's a descendant of royalty.
David Bowie cemented his unearthly persona in Nicolas Roeg’s startling cult film; playing an alien stranded on Earth while on a mission to find water for his own world, he initiates a plan to amass a fortune to help save his home planet.
Unlike the horrifically antisemitic 1940 Nazi propaganda film, Lothar Mendes’ adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s book offers a fairly sympathetic depiction of a Jewish man (Conrad Veidt) who seeks political power in order to improve the plight of Germany’s Jewry. Despite some unpleasant stereotype...
Jack Clayton’s 1959 romantic drama tells the story of Joe (Laurence Harvey), a young and ambitious man who has just moved to Yorkshire to work for the Borough Treasurer’s Department. He instead becomes romantically involved with Alice (Simone Signoret in an Oscar-winning performance), and what en...
A unique and affecting tale of a disillusioned gay man who flees the city’s shallow scene, convinced that the facial birthmark in the shape of the eponymous island makes him terminally unattractive. Winding up on a rugged stretch of coast he forms a hesitant relationship with an eccentric, sexual...
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...
Lively period drama set in 17th century London, based on the play by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by Richard Eyre. Billy Crudup stars as Ned Kynaston, the brightest star in Restoration theatre. Since women are forbidden to appear on stage, the beautiful, brazen Ned is able to shine in all the gre...
English tourist John Trant (Mark Gatiss) visits an East European cathedral in search of an obscure religious painting. There he encounters enigmatic guides, who lead him deep into the strange church, where horror awaits... With the unnerving black humour you'd expect from League of Gentlemen pedi...
An early classic of Black British cinema about the intriguing social dynamics that arise as a ten shilling note is passed around the black community. A student borrows ten bob from a white man and then in turn lends it to a natty musician. Later, when the student meets an upstanding member of the...
Masie Blue is an enigmatic Black Widow figure under investigation by detective Margrave for her involvement in the suicides of successful white men. Through the blurred lines of perception and reality, the myth of the black feminine mystique is explored under the guise of a murder mystery. Writte...
Italian director Lorenza Mazzetti borrowed techniques from the neorealist school to conjure this striking study of East End life, one of the original Free Cinema shorts. Following the ambling existence of two deaf-mute dock workers, Mazzetti crafts a poetic depiction of post-war London populated ...
Karel Reisz’s honest and sympathetic depiction of South London teens aimed to challenge the media perception of ‘Teddy Boys’, and would be one of the last films to appear under the Free Cinema banner. One of the key elements of the Free Cinema films was the sympathetic representation of working-c...
Humphrey Jennings and Harry Watt's famous film, produced at the GPO film unit, is an enduring example of British self-mythology and rousing evidence of the artistic potential of supposed propaganda. A hymn to our capital city's resilience during the Blitz, structured as a day-in-the-life of stiff...
Humphrey Jennings epitomises the artist-filmmaker and this poetic evocation of ordinary people enjoying well-earned time away from the mill, mine, or foundry is a forerunner to Jennings' later wartime greats such as Listen to Britain. Joyous shots of people either pigeon fancying, ballroom danci...
Documentary, public information film, morale booster; propaganda film. All descriptions that apply to Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister's extraordinary war-time film. Using his customary combination of poetry and propaganda, Jennings constructs a collage of the various people and classes ...
