Simon Pummell's (Bodysong) visually ravishing sci-fi thriller exploring the future of virtual reality and the desire to transcend human limits. The theft of an experimental drug to suppress the immune system reveals a case of virtual reality addiction and forces a detective to confront his night...

The 1970s, and a suburban family depart for their summer holiday. But as tensions rise and tempers fray, a terrible accident sees their cosy world disintegrate. Director Andrew Kötting (Gallivant, Swandown) and co-writer Sean Lock inject real terror into the everyday nightmare of a family vacatio...

Kevin Brownlow’s portrait of the last days of Glasgow’s tram system centres on the last tram to run in 1962, accentuating the mood of the final journey by contrasting shots of the event to the funky sounds of Joe Meek and The Tornados’ Telstar, a symbol of the modern world to which the tram no lo...

This autobiographical narrative redefines female beauty and sexuality by reflecting on filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah's relationship with her mother. Onwurah's discovery of her sexual appeal as a young model is combined with an intimate account of her mother Madge's experience of desexualisation after h...

Ridley Scott’s first film – featuring his younger brother, the late Tony Scott, as a schoolboy playing truant for the day to meander around Hartlepool on his bicycle – is a far cry from the director’s Hollywood blockbusters, a lyrical and highly personal evocation of the early sixties North East.

The opening film in Terence Davies' powerful Liverpool-set Trilogy introduces Robert Tucker as a withdrawn young boy, bullied at school and terrorised by a violent father.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...

Told with authenticity and perception, David looks back on the life of a school caretaker in a Welsh mining town, from the marriage and birth of his son to the trauma of a pit accident.

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, mal...

Transience and desire, and the silence and concealment surrounding sexuality, love, death, AIDS, and the fear of bereavement, are all touched upon among a rush of abstract and allegorical connections in this artist film from 1990 by Anna Thew.

Your NHS Needs You. Specifically, if you're a woman you, yes you, should consider joining the nursing ranks. Even if (gasp) you're already in your mid-twenties. Enter Kathleen Byron, a great character actress best known for her role as an unhinged nun in Black Narcissus (1946). Byron's the star o...

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...

The second instalment of Bill Douglas’ revered Trilogy. Though life becomes ever harder for Jamie, so that he eventually ends up in a none-too-comforting children’s home, the bold, uncompromising assurance of Douglas’ very personal brand of realism ensures that the film effortlessly avoids the pi...

Set in 1945, the first part of Bill Douglas’ poetic and profoundly stirring autobiographical triptych revisits his impoverished childhood, living with his grandmother and half-brother in the Scottish mining village of Newcraighall.

Concluding his acclaimed Trilogy, Bill Douglas’ autobiographical film follows young Jamie as he leaves home to live with his paternal grandmother, only to be conscripted into the RAF. Ironically, military service in Egypt brings a sense of freedom and friendship unimaginable in his earlier years....

In his first cinema film, made at British Transport Films, John Schlesinger presents a day in the life of Waterloo Rail Station. Now a staple television format, this observational look at the workings of one of London’s key railway hubs was considered innovative in 1961, winning it awards at Veni...

Presented as found footage à la The Blair Witch Project, this chilling and provocative fake home movie presents the story of three dissidents and their plan to commit a revolutionary act on film. Will Knightley (father of Keira) plays one of the guerrillas who kidnap and torture a cabinet minister.

In this charming early short from British cinema maverick Ken Russell, a young girl, cast as an angel in the school play, is distraught when her brother steals and damages her treasured wings. Pocket money in hand, Amelia traverses London on the hunt for a new pair in time for the play. Mercedes ...

The friendship of a young white boy and a black girl reaches out across the generations in this uplifting mid-60s short, directed by South African-born actor and anti-Apartheid activist Lionel Ngakane. Against a background media narrative suggesting ever-worsening racial tensions, Jemima + Johnny...

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...

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...

This ghoulish short has a truly gripping premise. Distracted by her boyfriend while driving on a quiet country lane, a young woman regains consciousness in their wrecked car to find herself hand in hand with her lover. But his lifeless hand, frozen by rigor mortis refuses to let go. John Hardwick...

If Edward Lear had been alive in the 60s, he may well have made The Peaches, Britain's short film entry at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. A very beautiful, very clever girl (played by future Adam Adamant Lives! star Juliet Harmer) adores peaches, but when she falls in love the world's supply star...

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...

European emigre Tanya moves to London to work as a family au pair. Still grieving for her recently deceased father and rejected by an old girlfriend, Tanya draws closer to her employer's husband. The sights and sounds of the Capital at Christmas form a deceptively romantic backdrop for this bri...