As lead singer of the much-loved bands Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart, Lawrence is one of true cult artists of the British indie music scene, without really ever troubling the charts over his 40 year career. First released in 2012, Paul Kelly’s (Saint Etienne’s The London Trilogy, Dexys’ Nowhere ...

A beautiful tale of love, loss, new beginnings and the strange adventure taken by migrants to the UK. In 1977, young Xiao Mei leaves China for the UK to enter into an arranged marriage. Speaking no English and feeling distant from her Elvis-obsessed new husband and his stern mother, Xiao Mei drea...

Luke (Steven Brandon), a young man with Down's syndrome who prizes his independence, is forced into a care home after the death of his mother. There he rails against the restrictions imposed on him, but his frustrations are allayed by his budding friendships with his care-worker Eve (Shana Swash)...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Before Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Goodies there was At Last the 1948 Show, the ground-breaking comedy sketch series starring John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Marty Feldman, and Aimi MacDonald. Highlights of this package include brilliant a solo turn from Brooke-Taylor as ...

Enslaved by the invading Roman army, Hengist Pod and Horsa are sent to Ancient Rome to be auctioned off ñ that is until they hatch a plan to escape. In their bid to free themselves from captivity Hengist finds himself confused for a gladiator and becomes drafted into Cleopatraís private guard. Me...

The sinister Dr Watts and his monsters are on the loose! Kidnapping local women to be bungled into his haunted mansion to be transformed into shop-window mannequins. The only thing standing in his way is the hapless Detective-Sergeant Bung and his equally hapless side-kicks. With his quest for cl...

This agreeably murky tale of court intrigue, corruption and sexual manipulation is a rare excursion for Ealing into historical drama. Peter Bull and Joan Greenwood are perfectly cast as the dissolute Prince George-Louis and his reluctant bride Sophie Dorothea. Shooting in colour for the first tim...

Inspired by the tragic life and death of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK, this was the Siren from Swindon's bid for a serious acting career. Desperate to shake off her buxom dumb-blonde image, Dors brought compassion and sensitivity to the role, but this didnít stop the studio...

Ernst Lubitsch’s 1925 Hollywood version of Lady Windermere’s Fan is often misquoted as the first screen adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s enduringly popular 1892 play. In fact, the British got there first, with this early silent feature made nearly a decade before Lubitsch’s film. While the lack of act...

Paul and Nick are an odd duo who have developed a method that allows them to predict the sudden death of unsuspecting innocents in London. When their unbroken record of accurate predictions is threatened by an American tourist who discovers their theory, the morose forecasters start to unravel. A...

Disturbed by visions of a labyrinthine London about to be consumed by water, a lonely father begins to destroy his family's tower block flat in order to make room for an unlikely refuge in their front room. Eerie, absurdist and darkly comic, this brilliant psychodrama won director Richard Heslop ...

The residues of history in the Welsh landscape plus the traditions of working class knowledge and solidarity are examined in this searching, moving film by political film collective Cinema Action. Charismatic union convener Shirley Butts assumes the focus, but her daughter's attempts to find work...