Mike Leigh completed his second feature film seventeen years after his stunning debut with Bleak Moments in 1971. In those intervening years he solidified his reputation with innovatory theatre and ...

Secrets and Lies (d. Mike Leigh, 1996) looks at the lives of Black and White Britons and tries to imagine a way in which both can begin to share the same family blood link. Hortense (Marianne ...

Former sea captain William Targett returns to his native Dorset village. He brings with him his black wife, Tulip, a princess from Dahomey, Africa. Bigotry and ignorance among the villagers leads to ...

Family life with Andy, a professional chef who buys a decrepit hamburger van, his wife Wendy, a part-time waitress, and their daughters Nicola, sex and Marx-obsessed and a secret bullimic, and Natalie ...

Best remembered for her role as long-suffering Wendy McKim in Genevieve (d. Henry Cornelius, 1953) - the quintessential English rose who takes second place in her husband's affections to his vintage ...

Some cinemas were forced to close during World War One when key staff were called up for war service. Others served a useful function in conveying war news, entertaining troops stationed nearby, and ...

Intended for broadcast in 1965, writer / director Peter Watkins' nuclear war drama was withheld by the BBC - possibly as a result of political pressure - and remained unshown for nearly twenty years, ...

There was so much more to Ealing Studios than its famous comedies. But there's one category of Ealing films that's really obscure. The 30-odd documentaries and propaganda shorts released by the studio ...

A portrait of the life and work of the great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, exploring both his music and his passionate interest in his country's folklore.

As 2012's Dickens bicentenary celebrations continue, we launch an exciting new tour of short films. With the help of expert guides, the films explore the many ways Dickens' work has been adapted for ...

A portrait of pop artists Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty, and Peter Phillips. If Pop Goes the Easel looks dated to present-day eyes, that's both understandable and unavoidable, but in 1962 ...

In 1955, the British film industry faced a new threat. Television had experienced a boom year in 1953 and was welcoming a new independent channel that, free from many of the restrictions of public ...