Archives for Education

A breathtaking winter journey in the Pennines, from country to town and back again via electric tram. An unusually painterly visual sweep (taking landscape rather than people as its subject) distinguishes this particularly special Mitchell and Kenyon film. It proves thought-provoking as well as beautiful: expressing the changes to the face of Britain heralded by tram electrification and later accelerated by the internal combustion engine: the route travelled here is today a busy A-road.

In his celebrated 1934 travelogue An English Journey, author and thinker J.B. Priestley suggested there were "three Englands": the first a peaceful, ageless, pastoral land; the second a gritty, smoky one spawned by the Industrial Revolution; and the third an urban and suburban 20th-century England less rooted and romantic than either - and destined to supplant them both. Tram Ride in Halifax was filmed three decades earlier, yet it somehow encompasses all of Priestley's Englands, while revealing the crucial role of transport in connecting and transforming them all.

Duration: 4 minutes

Suggested credit: Tram Ride into Halifax (1902) © The British Film Institute

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Dr Wise is here to advise! As Britain fell under the grip of the Great Influenza of 1918-19, the Local Government Board (later the Ministry of Health) commissioned this dramatised public information film. Its hard-hitting message was designed to shock people out of their complacency towards this common illness and take preventative measures, as recommended by Dr Wise.

In 1918-19 the deadly ‘Spanish Flu’ ravaged Britain, claiming nearly a quarter of a million lives. At the time of filming around 2,500 people were dying every week in London alone. Look out for some impressive microscopic footage of the deadly microbes in question, as well as some impressive location footage of London’s West End.

Duration: 18 minutes

Suggested credit: Dr. Wise on Influenza (1919) © The British Film Institute

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Go with the flow: to gentle but spellbinding effect this ingeniously-shot natural history film glimpses marine life astride rising tides at Millport on the Isle of Cumbrae, Ayrshire. Urchins, lugworm, weaver-fish and crabs are the shy-but-elegant stars coaxed onto the screen (with the assistance of Millport’s local research station) for this archetypal edition of Gaumont-British Instructional’s 1930s cinema series Secrets of Life.

Pioneer film-educationalist Mary Field is in the director’s chair and oversees a typical blend of innovative time-lapse micro-cinematography, lyrical background music by regular (and underrated) composer Jack Beaver and a commentary by newsreel announcer EVH Emmet that – as was his wont – is by turns facetious and poetic.

Director: Mary Field

Duration: 9 minutes

Suggested credit: Ebb Tide (1936) © The British Film Institute

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"Believe it or not this holiday-maker is in England!" Step aboard and luxuriate in a cinematic tour of the South West, from Dorset… to Devon… to Cornwall… back up to Somerset… then across to South Wales. The film is both a promo for our resort-studded westerly coast and for the Great Western Railway services headed there (notably the legendary Cornish Riviera Express). Aptly, it feels brisk and leisurely at the same time. Fine sunlit cinematography is enjoyably overlaid by a newsreel-y voiceover brimful with mildly facetious-but-fun remarks.

Note the commentary's reference to recent war damage in Plymouth. The version shown here is in fact a 1947 re-voicing and re-release of a film originally produced in 1936: stylistically, it feels much more of the 1930s than the 40s. It was made by the 1930s' leading mainstream non-fiction film producer, Gaumont-British Instructional, sponsored by the GWR, and takes its place in a long and rich tradition: a link in the chain between earlier silent travelogues funded by railway companies and the later, lusher post-war classics turned out by the nationalised British Transport Films.

Duration: 14 minutes

Suggested credit: Great Western Approaches (1936) © The British Film Institute

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Flock to your local keep fit class - there's a war on and Britain needs its citizens in tip-top shape. These sprightly scenes of women partaking in energetic group exercise at a local community hall - in fetching grey tunics - add up to something of a wartime curio. Special emphasis is placed on the importance of healthy feet: "Well-exercised feet help you keep fresh in housework or shopping or standing about at your job," says narrator EVH Emmett, encouragingly.

With WWII well underway, women watching this film would typically have been working in a munitions factory or on an aircraft or shipbuilding assembly line - where there wouldn't have been too time for much 'standing about'! The film was part of a wider three-year national fitness campaign organised by the National Fitness Council for England and Wales, which issued grants to local authorities to run fitness classes like the one shown here.

Director: Mary Field

Duration: 11 minutes

Suggested credit: 4 and 20 Fit Girls (1940) © The British Film Institute

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The face mask comes of age in this intriguing wartime guide to germ prevention. Learn how to make a germ mask, 1940s-style! Whether it's glamour or practicality you're after, this short instructional film - made in support of the wartime government's 'coughs and sneezes spread diseases' campaign - will tell you how. Scientifically proven to be effective against all forms of 'direct projectile infection', our advice is to go out and get one now!

The film was one of several made in aid of the Ministry of Information's 'coughs and sneezes spread diseases' campaign. As much concerned with the effects of illness on productivity and essential war work as it was with protecting workers' health, the campaign took on an extra urgency as wartime conditions meant large numbers of people began gathering together in crowded air raid shelters and other communal spaces where the risk of spreading infection was much greater.

Director: Maxwell Munden

Duration: 6 minutes

Suggested credit: A-tish-oo (1941) © The British Film Institute

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War, what war? In this London travelogue Oxford Street teems with shoppers, couples stroll through Hyde Park, and Chelsea pensioners collect their morning ration of free beer. If it wasn't for a shot of St Paul's Cathedral standing proud amid the ruins, a 'Public Shelter' notice in Trafalgar Square, or the fleeting mention of ration coupons, you'd hardly guess that World War Two was in full swing.

The film is testament to the resilience of Londoners at a time when the city was being routinely raided by the German Luftwaffe and the deadly 'doodlebugs' (V2 Rockets). B.S. Productions was a prolific producer of short documentaries and travelogues throughout the 1940s.

Director: Paul Barralet

Duration: 17 minutes

Suggested credit: Around Big Ben (1944) © The British Film Institute

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Modern advice and old-fashioned values combine in this postwar animated health guide from the makers of Animal Farm. This "modern" advice may be over 70 years old, but there is a lot of good common sense contained in this post-war health film. Roughly divided into sections on working men, children, young women and finally housewives, it's this segregation that dates the film. The lot of married women is painted as particularly arduous, with the only help offered being a half-hour break before bed.

Many of the artists who worked on the film were women, including the co-director, writer and designer Joy Batchelor. At this stage the animators of Halas & Batchelor was almost all female, although most had left the company by the time it embarked on Animal Farm, Britain's first animated feature film.

Directors: John Halas and Joy Batchelor

Duration: 9 minutes

Suggested credit: A Modern Guide to Health (1946) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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Dover gets a makeover in this quirky and pointed public information film, which reveals how the heavily-bombed and shelled Kent town was being replanned after the war. The filmmakers cleverly and entertainingly capture our attention by opening on travelogue cliches that they quickly undercut. It's not white cliffs and rolling hills they want to tell us about. It's present-day Dover - remaking itself in the crisp freshness of a postwar spring.

This was one of the first wave of government films commissioned through the Central Office of Information (COI), formed the previous year. Mary Beales (1926-2014) was only 20 when she directed this film (the daughter of famous economist HL Beales, she later, as Mary Orrom, became a successful sculptor). She was a junior member of DATA, Britain's first film production co-operative, who hoped to make accessible but politically progressive and creatively original postwar documentaries - a plan that never really came off, mainly because the COI and most other film sponsors didn't want to pay for anything too offbeat. But this early DATA production, helped by Wolfgang Suschitzky's characteristically sharp camerawork, captures a little of what the filmmakers were after.

Director: Mary Beales

Duration: 11 minutes

Suggested credit: Dover, Spring 1947 (1947) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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Power cuts, housing shortages and exorbitant rents – Aberdeen man Norrie Williamson goes head to head with his greedy landlady.

In the face of housing shortages and exorbitant rents, the post-WWII Labour government set up rent appeal tribunals across the country whose role was to impose fair rents for tenants. Shot in the Footdee and Castle Terrace districts of Aberdeen, the film revolves around the actual case of a dental mechanic, Norrie Williamson, who despairs when, out of the blue, his landlady hikes the rent. Norrie wants to appeal to the tribunal to reduce his rent but his wife fears it will result in their eviction.

Made with the co-operation of the Aberdeen Rent Tribunal, its Chairman Mr R. S. Aitkey plays himself in the film. Local involvement also came from another Aberdeen resident, Mr Norman Mitchell, who appears as a member of the tribunal, while Mr R. A. Livingstone, a former clerk to the tribunal, takes on that role. Director Mary Beale was a founding member of the Documentary and Technicians Alliance, Britain's first film co-operative, and the producer of this film. Beale made several fascinating films that vividly capture the post-war spirit, including Dover Spring (1947).

Director: Mary Beales

Duration: 11 minutes

Suggested credit: Fair Rent (1947) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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Bethnal Green "with its noisy crowds and cheery hucksters" is full of last-minute Christmas shoppers. This clip is from Newsreel.

Duration: 2 minutes

Suggested credit: Newsreel (1948) © BBC Archive

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Bristolians spend a romantic Valentine’s Day by simulating the aftermath of an atomic blast in the city. This clip is from Newsreel.

Duration: 2 minutes

Suggested credit: Newsreel (1951) © BBC Archive

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Never a dull moment for a rural district nurse in the early days of the NHS. "Mr Lee is one of my favourite patients - 90 years old and the only thing wrong with him is that he can't use his legs!," says Jane Symonds, one of two district nurses covering the Wadhurst area of East Sussex whose work is showcased in this warm and inspiring film. The film's remit was to promote Britain's new National Health Service to overseas audiences - and to encourage applications to the nursing profession.

An apparently typical day's work for these two dedicated nurses - who live together in a small rural cottage - includes teaching a farm worker to administer his wife's daily injection, dressing the ulcerated leg of an 80-year-old man, tending to an injured motorcyclist and delivering a baby. Their well-earned down time is spent growing cacti plants or knitting. As an Indian-born Jewish woman, the film's director, Sarah Erulkar, was a rarity in the realms of postwar British documentary filmmaking. Erulkar's early and highly successful career at the prestigious Shell Film Unit came to an abrupt end upon her marriage, though she went on to achieve further success elsewhere.

Director: Sarah Erulkar

Duration: 27 minutes

Suggested credit: District Nurse (1952) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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Out of the post-war years of austerity, the 1950s saw the birth of the teenager, and the BBC’s Special Enquiry was on hand to investigate the hopes and dreams of these strange new creatures. What are they? What do they want? Presenter Denis Mitchell attempted to get to the bottom of these questions.

Pat and Mike are teddy boys, with no ambitions other than to stay as they are, but have more money. Lynette is a teenage fashion model on the precipice between adolescence and adulthood. Philip, 19, is an undergraduate at the London School of Economics. Diane is a Dirk Bogarde fan from ‘deserted’ West Norwood, where everyone is either too young or too old.

Duration: 29 minutes

Suggested credit: Special Enquiry - Britain’s Teenagers (1955) © BBC Archive

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First transmitted in 1956, each week 500 girls leave their provincial homes and arrive in London either to take up jobs or look for work. But flaring headlines in Sunday papers about what has occasionally happened to some youngsters causes parents to worry. Are they right to be worried? Robert Reid sets out to find out what really brings the girls to London, what happens when they get there, how they live, what sort of digs they find and what sort of people they are meeting and palling up with. This Special Enquiry seeks to identify the true reality of what awaits these young women upon arriving in the bustling capital. 

Producer: Anthony de Lotbiniere

Duration: 30 minutes

Suggested credit: Special Enquiry: A Girl Comes to London (1956) © BBC Archive

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Denis Mitchell’s lyrical film portrait of night life in Manchester from dusk until dawn.

Director: Denis Mitchell

Music: Ewan MacColl

Suggested credit: Eye to Eye: Night in the City (1957) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

Documentary looking at holidaymakers who take the 'Big Gamble' every summer - those who are willing to risk their savings on a stay at a British seaside resort, which could very well be ruined by bad weather. Filmed at Broadstairs beach.

Directors: Richard Cawston, Pamela Wilcox Bower

Duration: 29 minutes

Suggested credit: Eye to Eye: The Big Gamble (1957) © BBC Archive

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The Eye to Eye documentary team has a look at life in this country as it strikes a newcomer to these shores.

Directors: Richard Cawston, Pamela Wilcox Bower

Duration: 30 minutes

Suggested credit: Eye to Eye: The Man at Dover (1957) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

The swirling neon frenzy of Piccadilly Circus has never been better captured than in this innovative short, which presents the London landmark as a bewildering collage of image and sound.

Swiss film enthusiasts and BFI employees Claude Goretta and Alain Tanner (later to become established art-house filmmakers back home) were inspired by their colleagues’ success with the Free Cinema programme to try their own attempt at low-budget documentary filmmaking. After shooting 6,000 feet of footage of 25 nights, they turned the limitation of an absence of synced sound to their advantage by crafting a sophisticated soundtrack. Utilising snatches ambient street noise, pop music and scraps of dialogue from the kinds of Hollywood films shown in West End cinemas, their collage of sound was used to both imaginative and ironic effect (such as the National Anthem played over a shot of a large Coca-Cola sign).

Director: Claude Goretta and Alain Tanner

Duration: 16 minutes

Suggested credit: Nice Time (1957) © The British Film Institute

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The people of Liverpool tell stories of their past and present. Denis Mitchell's companion piece to 'Night in the City' follows various conversations during a morning in Liverpool. As children play on bomb sites and in playgrounds, the elderly reminisce about their own childhoods. It's a city still recovering from the Blitz over a decade before, not yet the home of football and music that it would become. Denis Mitchell's 1959 documentary is full of evocative images of a Liverpool still recovering from the post-war gloom. This BBC film won the award for the best television documentary film in the Italia Prize Contest.

Director: Denis Mitchell

Duration: 35 minutes

Suggested credit: Morning in the Streets (1959) © BBC Archive

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Director Robert Vas was himself a refugee from Hungary, having arrived in London only three years earlier when he received a grant from the BFI to make the film. Despite its slightly incongruous use of voiceover, the film was adopted by the Free Cinema movement for its stylistic contrast of contradictory images and sound and its focus on the dispossessed.

With its enquiry into themes that are just as resonant in today’s society, and its uncompromising outsider’s view of an inhospitable 1950s London, Refuge England is a fascinating example of Free Cinema. Director Vas went on to become a very important documentary maker at the BBC.

Director: Robert Vas

Duration: 27 minutes

Suggested credit: Refuge England (1959) © The British Film Institute

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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-class people, something the filmmakers felt was lacking in contemporary British cinema. Here, members of Kennington’s Alford House youth club talk about their lives and interests.

By avoiding a strict narrative, We Are the Lambeth Boys gives its subjects space to express their frustrations and aspirations, allowing the youngsters a voice and sensitively capturing the nuances of their daily lives. The film has much in common with Lindsay Anderson's Every Day Except Christmas, which was also produced by Leon Clore, sponsored by Ford Motor Company as part of its ‘Look at Britain’ series, and filmed on 35mm by the usual Free Cinema cinematographer Walter Lassally and editor John Fletcher. We Are the Lambeth Boys is also available on BFI's Free Cinema DVD set, along with the entirety of the Free Cinema films.

Director: Karel Reisz

Duration: 48 minutes

Suggested credit: We are the Lambeth Boys (1959) © The British Film Institute

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Feeling under the weather? Have a look at these flu remedies.

Disclaimer: BBC Archive takes no responsibility for any side effects you may experience after putting an old sweaty sock around your throat, rubbing mustard and lard on your chest or any other remedy herein mentioned.

Duration: 4 minutes

Suggested credit: Tonight (1959) © BBC Archive

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First transmitted in 1960, this film was written and directed by Ken Russell for the BBC. It follows the bohemian lifestyles of the tenants of an old London house in Bayswater and its housekeeper, Mrs Collings. The blend of documentary style filming, colourful anecdotes and stylised sequences produces a highly evocative and entertaining film as well as an early example of Ken Russell’s distinctive approach to film making. 

Director: Ken Russell

Duration: 30 minutes

Suggested credit: A House in Bayswater (1960) © BBC Archive

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Dennis Potter is the son of a coal miner and grew up in a village between the Severn and the Wye. After three years as a student at Oxford he returns home, and describes the changes he sees both in the life of the village and in his relations with his family and friends.

After university, Potter joined the BBC as a graduate trainee and mentored by producer Denis Mitchell, made this film. He later became a renowned playwright and TV dramatist.

Director: Dennis Potter

Duration: 30 minutes

Suggested credit: Between Two Rivers (1960) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

Coventry Kids: People of a Restless City is a personal view of the industrial life of a great city by acclaimed British documentary maker Philip Donnellan, highlighting the skills, hopes and fears of its people.

The film shows the people of Coventry at work in the car factory during the week and enjoying stock car racing and playing darts and dominoes in the pub at the weekend, ending with a spirited R&B rendition of “"Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well?” by a quintet upstairs.

Director: Philip Donnellan

Music: Ewen MacColl, Peggy Seeger

Duration: 41 minutes

Suggested credit: Coventry Kids (1959) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

A refugee family comes to terms with living in England and adjusting to a new language and culture. John Krish’s deeply compassionate documentary on the resettlement of refugees was produced by Leon Clore, on behalf of the Central Office of Information, to mark International Refugee Year 1959.

Although Clore was then known for his association with Free Cinema talents Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz, Krish’s approach to the material is largely at odds with the Free Cinema ethos, although he does characteristically cross the boundaries of documentary and fiction by using real-life refugees to play characters in a fictionalised narrative. Director John Krish's empathy for his subject may have been influenced by his own family's immigrant background; his father and both sets of his grandparents had come to Britain as Jewish refugees from eastern Europe. The deeply compassionate treatment of this theme, following an opening section drawing attention to Britain's history as a haven for refugees, serves as a reminder that the UK was not always as keen to demonstrate the 'hard line' approach to immigration and asylum that it tends to favour today (particularly when addressing its own citizens).

Director: John Krish

Duration: 29 minutes

Suggested credit: Return to Life (1960) © The British Film Institute

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This eye-opening drama-doc, set in a psychiatric hospital, was used to train student nurses and tells us much about evolving attitudes to mental illness. A progressive training tool in its time, it still feels sincere but also sensible and silly in about equal measure. The clinical need to clarify vies with the cinematic need to dramatise, reaching a feverishly literal extreme in scenes of a paranoid schizophrenic being pursued by a giant eye…

New Zealand-born Margaret Thomson, a veteran documentary-maker, had already made two psychiatric training films before being commissioned by the COI to direct this richly fascinating film for the Ministry of Health. Her casting of Irish and African women goes some way to accurately representing post-war nursing intake – the film’s target audience. Older colleagues offer them sage advice: one of the film’s two main purposes was to prepare inexperienced nurses so that they are not too shaken by violent episodes. The other, more innovative, purpose was to encourage medical staff to hold group discussion of patient incidents, modelled on the thoughtful discussion between doctors and nurses taking up the second half of this film – the hope being of course that in the first instance these scenes will trigger animated discussion by viewers as soon as the lights go up when the film is over.

Director: Margaret Thomson

Duration: 23 minutes

Suggested credit: Understanding Aggression (1960) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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Made to introduce employment advice for school–leavers, Krish turned a potentially dreary subject into a quirky delight, using a mix of actors and real schoolchildren performing a script about a careers officer with magical powers.

Director: John Krish

Duration: 28 mins

Suggested credit: Mr Marsh Comes to School (1961) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

Alan Whicker met a tragically underrated barber-turned-unpublished-musician, Barry Ross, whose muse was the North Circular road.

Duration: 5 minutes

Suggested credit: Tonight (1961) © BBC Archive

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This elegiac film marks the sad end of Holloway's Marlborough Theatre after nearly 60 years of services to public entertainment, first as a theatre and music hall, and later as a cinema. This grand building on Holloway Road was one of some 200 designed by prolific theatre architect Frank Matcham, and opened its doors in 1903, with seats for 2,612. It was converted to a cinema in 1918 and was in the hands of the Odeon group from 1942 until it screened its last film in 1957. The bulldozers came in in 1962, and the site is now occupied by the City & Islington College.

Finale was co-directed by Robert Vas and Michael Darlow, who both went on to become major talents of documentary television, at Triangle Films, a small independent production company specialising in arts subjects.

Directors: Robert Vas, Michael Darlow

Duration: 10 minutes

Suggested credit: Finale (1962) © The British Film Institute

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Ken Russell's stylish and playful 1962 film on the Young British Artists of the day who were pioneering the Pop Art movement features the works of four friends and colleagues. 

Peter Blake explores his passion for pop icons, Peter Phillips is featured with his cool companions, Derek Boshier voices his concerns with the American influence on British life and culture, and Pauline Boty, Britain's great female pop art painter who was to die only four years later, performs in a short dramatic dream piece.

Director: Ken Russell

Duration: 42 minutes

Suggested credit: Monitor: Pop Goes the Easel (1962) © BBC Archive

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How do you actually make a home movie? This instructional film from Kodak has all the answers, from how to load film while avoiding exposure problems to positioning the camera for the best results. Clear diagrams, concise instructions and practical examples will have you well on your way to impressing the audience at home. Smartphone movie makers could learn a thing or two!

Duration: 17 minutes

Suggested credit: Using the Camera (1963) © Kodak

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Capturing a time when Victorian blocks were being demolished in favour of new towers, this poignant film makes strong arguments for progress, with an awareness of what was being lost in the process. Camberwell Green and Peckham Rye feature, as do churches and pubs now lost to time - showing that while much has changed, a sense of Camberwell's history remains evident on still familiar streets.

The tower block featured in this film, Lakanal House, was the site of a tragic fire in 2009.

Director: Winifred Crum Ewing

Duration: 30 minutes

Suggested credit: The Changing Face of Camberwell (1963) © London Borough of Southwark

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A railwayman from St. Kitts, a bus conductor from Jamaica, a family of singers from Trinidad and a nurse from Barbados. Philip Donnellan's Birmingham-based film gives a voice to West Indian immigrants who movingly describe their experiences of trying to integrate into a surprisingly unwelcoming ‘mother country’. Shot in 1964 the film provides an important snapshot of Britain in the early stages of momentous social change and first-generation Afro-Caribbean immigration.

Director: Philip Donnellan

Duration: 57 minutes

Suggested credit: The Colony (1964) © BBC Archive

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John Morgan interviews groups of mods and rockers about their lifestyles for Panorama.

Duration: 13 minutes

Suggested credit: Panorama (1964) © BBC Archive

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Denis Mitchell catches up with the teenagers featured in his 1955 Special Enquiry documentary. How are they faring ten years on?

Duration: 48 minutes

Suggested credit: Ten Years After (1964) © BBC Archive

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"I am a midlander - and that is, I do believe, the most uninspiring, uninteresting, unexciting English tribe to belong to."

In his charming documentary Two Town Mad, Ray Gosling compares and contrasts the cities of Leicester and Nottingham. This clip focuses on Leicester, with its prosperous workers, vertiginous car parks and modern automated infrastructure; a city where the factories churn out bits and bobs for other industries.

Duration: 13 minutes

Suggested credit: Two Town Mad (1964) © BBC Archive

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"I am a midlander - and that is, I do believe, the most uninspiring, uninteresting, unexciting English tribe to belong to."

In his charming documentary Two Town Mad, Ray Gosling compares and contrasts the cities of Leicester and Nottingham. This clip focuses on his time in Nottingham - Queen of the Midlands - with its metropolitan outlook, and architecture evoking sheer northern rawness.

Duration: 11 minutes

Suggested credit: Two Town Mad (1964) © BBC Archive

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First transmitted in 1966, Man Alive speaks to couples who, for various reasons, have decided not to take the traditional route towards marriage. Some have been married before but are unable to obtain the divorces they need, while others just see marriage as an outdated concept. What are the effects of this on their children and how does wider society view couples who are 'living in sin'?

Director: Tom Conway

Duration: 30 minutes

Suggested credit: Man Alive - Living in Sin (1966) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

This "musical profile of the Watersons" is a precious document of the British folk revival, much of it shot in their hometown, Hull. A British road movie of sorts, this rich and vital film follows the group on the folk club circuit, at home and in studios. It's rewarding on several levels - whether your main interest is Hull, the folk revival or documentary filmmaking - and repays repeated viewings. Seminal and superb.

Though not entirely above romanticism (Humberside isn't quite Yorkshire's answer to the Mississippi Delta), nor occasional swipes at 'pop' folk (B. Dylan included), the film, and the group, are admirably clear-eyed about English folk music: not a 'living form', only its 'still warm ashes'. Heading his own small production company, director Derrick Knight was a significant and underrated filmmaker who played a part in modernising British documentary's style. Though not pure 'direct cinema' (it has a narrator), this film is influenced by innovative French and American techniques: shooting on location with a lightweight easily moveable 16mm camera, avoiding artificial lighting and capturing sound in synch with picture. His company also crossed the boundaries between film and TV - by independently producing films broadcast on the box it was well ahead of its time. This one was shown on BBC2 on 21 May 1966, at 8:50pm.

Director: Derrick Knight

Duration: 45 minutes

Suggested credit: Travelling for a Living (1966) © The British Film Institute

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Electric cars have been around longer than you might think. Raymond Baxter reports on the latest models, including the Peel Trident and the Scottish Aviation Scamp. This clip is from BBC News.

Duration: 2 minutes

Suggested credit: New Electric Cars (1966) © BBC Archive

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In the first part of a special Man Alive report, Jeremy James interviews homosexuals about their feelings and the opinions of society towards them. The contributors include a hairdresser, a doctor and a woman whose husband committed suicide rather than face a court case that would have revealed his sexuality. The language used in the programme is often blunt and reflects the attitudes of the time. 

Producer: Tom Conway

Duration: 30 minutes

Suggested credit: Man Alive - Consenting Adults: The Men (1967) © BBC Archive

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In the second part of this Man Alive special report about homosexuality, Angela Huth interviews lesbians about their lives. 'Stevie' has been living as a man since her teens, even entering into heterosexual relationships with other women. Julie and Cynthia have lived together for many years and claim they see no difference between their relationship and that of a married couple. In a private club in Chelsea, lesbians can enjoy a safe haven that allows them to be themselves without risking condemnation from society. 

Director: Adam Clapham

Duration: 30 minutes

Suggested credit: Man Alive - Consenting Adults: The Women (1967) © BBC Archive

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First transmitted in 1967, this documentary asks whether London really was 'swinging' during the 1960s.The film follows arts reporter Robert Hughes, writer Lewis Nkosi and journalist Olivier Todd to gather an Australian, African and French perspective on whether London really deserved its reputation as being a 'swinging, switched on' city. They begin their journey in Carnaby Street, the Mecca of swinging London. 

Director: Michael Gill

Duration: 47 minutes

Suggested credit: Three Swings on a Pendulum (1967) © BBC Archive

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Valerie, John and Peter reveal what goes on behind the television cameras and in the studio gallery.

Duration: 9 minutes

Suggested credit: Blue Peter (1968) © BBC Archive

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End of a Tactic was filmed in collaboration with the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. Shot on 16mm black and white film, it is a 15-minute documentary about a series of demonstrations held in London in 1968. It was made to explore the role of mass demonstrations as a tactic for social and political change and attempts to account for the reasons why they were not instituting the changes they sought. The film combines interviews with participants and organisers with observational footage of the demonstrations themselves. The aesthetic of the film is representative of the themes it seeks to cover: the editing combines fast cuts of chaotic, disorienting scenes of marchers and protests. At one point the camera is physically pulled in various directions by the people on the march. The constantly changing, disembodied voiceover gives no clear message as to what the film is hoping to achieve, creating a sense of confusion and inconsistency in dictating what the viewer should think or feel.

The finished film was intended to generate discussion and develop new modes of protest and activism.

Duration: 15 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Suggested credit: End of a Tactic (1968) © Liberation Films

Interview with Ron Orders

The Tuesday Documentary examines the role the English Channel plays in shaping English attitudes on the continent.

Duration: 11 minutes

Suggested credit: Europe: Them and Us (1968) © BBC Archive

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Holiday 69 takes a flight on the new hovercraft from Dover to Boulogne. Another clip from this programme is available here.

Duration: 3 minutes

Suggested credit: Holiday 69 (1969) © BBC Archive

To view this clip, please contact your lecturer.

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You see them in the street with their big boots, narrow braces and close-cropped hair - Skinheads. And their enemies: roaring into town on motorbikes, with German war insignia and swastikas pinned to their leather jackets - Hell's Angels.  

Two unorganised youth groups with one aim in common. They profess hate for the older generation and they're out to shock and disgust by any means. 

Both the press and the public condemn them as violent, antisocial and dangerous.  

Skinheads are blamed for football violence, train-wrecking and racial assaults; Hell's Angels for terrorising towns. Are such criticisms justified? Or are the wild ones of today the respectable family men of tomorrow? 

To find out, Man Alive met Skinheads, Hell's Angels, and their parents; listened - without condemning - in the hope that we all could learn. What they said was more than frank. 

Director: David Filkin

Duration: 50 minutes

Suggested credit: Man Alive: What's the Truth about Hells Angels and Skinheads? (1969) © BBC Archive

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In meeting the demands for a richer and fuller life technology has polluted and destroyed much of his environment. The film, sponsored by BP, illustrates this paradox and indicates some of the possible solutions.

Director: Derek Williams

Duration: 25 minutes

Suggested credit: The Shadow of Progress (1970) © BP Video Library

To view the film, please contact your lecturer.

First transmitted in 1971, John Pitman reports from Hyde Park, which was Henry VIII's former hunting ground. The park has now become home to early morning keep-fit swimmers, sailors and fishers of the sometimes frozen waters of the Serpentine, members of the Household Cavalry exercising their horses and the rather less formally attired civilian riders on Rotten Row, as well as fashion photographers, free speakers at Speakers' Corner and a vast army of other park lovers. 

Director: Jenny Barraclough

Duration: 50 minutes

Suggested credit: Man Alive: Hyde Park (1971) © BBC Archive

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Stylishly-shot in black and white, London Me Bharat (India in London) - the first Hindi-language film made in Britain - presents a distinctive and sometimes surprising view of 70s London. After a striking opening in which a traditional Indian music soundtrack renders familiar landmarks unfamiliar, the film abandons tourist London to explore Southall, home to one of Britain's largest Indian communities. It's an insightful take on an increasingly multicultural city - at a time when, the commentary tells us, the capital's Indian population numbered some 150,000, with another 300,000 elsewhere in the UK.

London Me Bharat was the debut film of director, producer and actor Vinod Pande, whose Indian films include Star (1982), Ek Naya Rishta (1988) and Red Swastik (2007). Pande spent some 15 years in London from the late 1960s, working at the Department of Inland Revenue and the BBC World Service before completing his London-set first feature, Ek Baar Phir (Once Again, 1979).

Director: Vinod Pande

Duration: 19 minutes

Suggested credit: London me Bharat (1972) © Vinod Pande

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In hindsight, it's almost a little cruel to watch this film earnestly trumpet the logic and ambition behind the new town of Milton Keynes, in the knowledge that, fairly or not, it would soon become the butt of a thousand jokes. What's clear is that the vision behind the development was a long-term one, and its legacy will last far longer than knee-jerk reactions to concrete cows.

Duration: 8 minutes

Suggested credit: Milton Keynes - A Village City (1973) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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Blue Peter presenter John Noakes demonstrates some of the mind-boggling visual effects that have been made possible using the Colour-Separation Overlay (CSO) technique.

Only the BBC calls it Colour Separation Overlay, by the way - feel free to call it chroma key or blue screen like the rest of the world.

Duration: 4 minutes

Suggested credit: Blue Peter (1970) © BBC Archive

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Excitable or restless? Learn how to control your impulses in this safety film from the National Coal Board. "Impatience and tragedy are frequent travelling companions", as illustrated by this safety film made by the National Coal Board's prolific film unit. Miner Bert's enthusiasm to leave the pit at the end of his shift to hasten to his bookie and claim his winnings ends in catastrophe. And there are further cautionary tales…

Director: Michael Shoring

Duration: 8 minutes

Suggested credit: Impatience (1971) © The British Film Institute

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Ken Loach makes Public Information Film shock! Talk About Work is a vocational guidance film produced through the Central Office Information (COI) for the youth employment service - who asked for Loach by name. Predictably, it ended in tears. The director’s cut was re-edited and he dissociated himself from it (Loach’s name isn’t on the credits). A cautionary tale, perhaps, for all modern communications professionals for whom ‘authenticity’ is elusive comms gold.

In any event, it’s an interesting case of a government body consciously going after a contemporary approach via a ‘name’ director). Loach was not then quite the national treasure he is today: still a TV director with a growing rep. Veteran production company Ronald H Riley & Associates was a long-standing COI supplier and a surprising place for Loach to fetch up. His emphasis on people speaking unscripted (hence the title) contrasts with traditional modes of sponsored filmmaking; so does the fluid, televisual directness of the visual style, owing much to now-legendary director of photography Chris Menges. Filming locations included Henderson’s department store, Liverpool and Ford’s works, Halewood.

Director: Ken Loach

Duration: 15 minutes

Suggested credit: Talk About Work (1971) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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This hour-long programme made for the BBC introduces the programme to the audience, which is shot in a studio. Short films are interspersed with studio footage with films examining, in some instances in a comical fashion, the issues facing the East End of London. Themes examined include the benefits system, lack of social housing in the area, immigration and the changing culture of the area. In the news section, the E1 Festival is promoted, along with school closures and high truancy rates discussed.

There is a tongue-in-cheek film review of Tunde’s Film and a brief clip of the film is promoted. Other features consist of a ‘Dishes of the East End’ segment featuring the iconic Fish and Chips. A play called ‘A Five to Six Minute Play’ follows featuring Tunde Ikoli, where he talks to an older man about the issues both face trying to find work. A community video short also features called ‘Our Kids’, truant school children are interviewed about why they are skipping school and what their hopes are for future. The programme ends back in the studio where the group discuss ‘Our Kids’.

Director: Tony Laryea

Concept: Maggie Pinhorn and Basement Project Film Group

Duration: 60 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of BBC Archive and the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

NOTE: This film contains strong language, racist comments and imagery and views that are representative of a different time and place. These views are presented within the context of a programme looking at these issues and any use of clips from this programme should fairly reflect that.

Interview with Maggie Pinhorn

Come on a psychedelic journey to Cornwall as vivid yellows, blues and oranges and a Robert Wyatt soundtrack create a stunning, sensual film.

Optical printing effects that introduce colour, superimpositions and mirroring transform personal 16mm footage gleaned first from the streets of London, then the roads of Cornwall. The film journeys deeper into the Duchy, passing china clay pits, mining stacks and green fields. Wyatt's music is mesmerising and this little known, drug-inspired masterpiece of rural psychedelia is quite something to behold.

Director: Arthur Johns

Duration: 8 minutes

Suggested credit: Solarflares Burn for You (1973) © The British Film Institute

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Approximately 25,000 ice creams, 13,000 deckchairs and 45,000 toilet rolls - just some of the figures for a bank holiday weekend in Southend revealed in this Nationwide item.

We meet the people who keep the town running smoothly, from the road-sweeper to the manager of the sweet factory. There are charming crooners and groovers, kiss-me-quick hats and a very pleased BBC reporter, who gets to present the prizes at the Miss Lovely contest.

Duration: 10 minutes

Suggested credit: Nationwide (1973) © BBC Archive

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Starting to Happen is a documentary produced by Liberation Films, later shown on BBC2 as part of the Open Door series. It was made with a community action group based in Balham, South London.

The documentary (shown in the first 40 minutes of the Open Door programme) presents the eight stages a community might go through when using portable video recorders to shoot, edit and screen a video by, for and about a local campaign.

First, the group recorded a ‘trigger film’ on 16mm, which was screened at a ‘community film show’ to encourage local people to use video cameras to interview each other. Those who were most enthusiastic were then invited to make their own videotapes about their community and were trained in the use of portable video recording technology who were interested by the community video team. The emphasis was on fun and experimentation rather than technical skills.

The group edited the video with the Liberation Films team and organised a community screening and discussion. A compilation film of material recorded by Liberation Films and videotape shot by participants was then made and screened for other communities, so it could act as a ‘trigger film’ for them to make videos. The documentary is followed by a short studio discussion.

Production Team: Tony Wickert, Ron Orders

Duration: 50 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Suggested credit: Starting to Happen (1973) © Liberation Films

Interview with Ron Orders

Filmed in 1970s East London, this rare, gritty drama deals with the trials faced by a group of young black teenagers. The film follows director Tunde Ikoli and his pals Colin, Micky and Taploe as they struggle to find work on the streets of pre-developed Tower Hamlets. Penniless and constantly harassed by the police, the boys decide to cut their losses and rob a bank. A potent, incisive slice of social realism, with music by Joan Armatrading.

Directors: Maggie Pinhorn, Tunde Ikoli

Duration: 40 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Interview with Maggie Pinhorn

Whey aye, a half-price pie. A Greggs seconds shop in Newcastle allows patient queuers to buy half-price bargains from yesterday's unsold bread and pastries, as well as more recent rejects.

Duration: 7 minutes

Suggested credit: Nationwide (1974) © BBC Archive

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Radio 77 holds the dubious distinction of broadcasting to the smallest audience in the country. Deke Duncan did eventually go on to fulfil his "ultimate ambition to broadcast to the rest of Stevenage".

BBC Three Counties Radio tracked him down after this Nationwide clip was posted on social media by BBC Archive, which led to him presenting a one-hour special on the station during Christmas in 2018.

Originally broadcast by Nationwide on 9 October 1974

Duration: 6 minutes

Suggested credit: Nationwide (1974) © BBC Archive

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This film documents the activity of the Inter-Action Community Media Van during one day in Newcastle. This mobile video installation aims at public participation in social and political debates, and the use of media as a means for one's view to be heard. The video also includes Inter-Action Video Activists teaching people of all ages, though mainly children, how to use that video equipment and to film with a Portapak.

Director: George King

Duration: 18 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Interview with Ed Berman

Interview with team leader Clive Scollay

Nationwide travels to the Highlands, to speak with students at the smallest school in Britain - both of them.

Duration: 7 minutes

Suggested credit: Nationwide (1974) © BBC Archive

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John Noakes and Leslie Judd demonstrate a coal-powered car - just the thing to beat rising petrol prices. This clip is from Blue Peter.

Suggested Credit: Blue Peter (1975) © BBC Archive

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“There are absolutely no trailing cables of any kind; it's not connected to anything at all because it's got its own built-in transmitter and receiver.”

The Blue Peter presenters have a go at a phone with no cable, that you can even take outside. It'll never catch on.

Duration: 6 minutes

Suggested credit: Blue Peter (1976) © BBC Archive

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A training tape for (and mostly made by) young people, on how to make videotapes. Made by Inter-Action Milton Keynes for Channel 40.

Director: Carry Gorney

Duration: 12 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Interview with Carry Gorney

Is punk "degrading and evil" or "an exciting musical innovation"? Brass Tacks goes to Electric Circus in Collyhurst to investigate. Featuring John Peel and the Buzzcocks.

Duration: 50 minutes

Directors: Derek Towers, Roger Casstles

Suggested credit: Monitor - Punk Rock (1977) © BBC Archive

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"Forty pounds? You could get a good bike for less than that. Nationwide investigates the latest craze, skateboarding, at London’s South Bank.

Duration: 7 minutes

Suggested credit: Skateboarding on Nationwide (1977) © BBC Archive

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Director's statement:

'It was the mid-seventies and black youth, mostly British born, were being perceived through the media as thieves and criminals (what’s changed?). I was upset by this interpretation and wanted to show a different reality to media sensationalism. It was a time when those growing up here or born here in the UK were treated as outcasts and invisible - unless something negative happened. As with one incident I remember, when two youths robbed an elderly woman who died in Birmingham. The Judge gave them 21 years!! We lived in the shadows of Enoch Powell’s speech predicting black immigration would lead to conflict and ‘blood on our streets’. I was living in another reality of Malcolm X, Black Panthers, Angela Davis and George Jackson which was shaping my views about the world I wanted to change.

STEP FORWARD YOUTH was my first film project. The title came from a reggae tune of the same name by Prince Jazzbo. I wanted this film to be relevant to my community more than looking for outside recognition. I teamed up with David Kinoshi who was also the same film school to make the film. We became very close, we hung out, chased girls, went raving together, we were gonna change the film world. In those days we were shooting on raw 16mm film stock which was expensive, but we were not daunted.

With the help of a few donors we managed to gather enough to give encouragement. The main funder was David’s uncle who was a fairly rich Nigerian. He owned an apartment in St Johns Wood, London. To get his money we had to turn up at his apartment at 10am regularly, he kept us waiting for hours whilst he had a bath, and talked on the phone. His display of power didn’t go down too well with us till eventually we got tired of playing his game. Anyway he coughed some of the money. It wasn’t enough and I had to make a decision about whether we should stop and wait to get more money or keep going. I decided to keep going – it was the most important decision of my life – aged 21. We continued on, and with a few favours managed to edit and complete the film and Uncle came in with some more money that helped us through the film processing costs.'

Director: Menelik Shabazz

Duration: 29 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Interview with Menelik Shabazz

Thanks for the Memory - The Viewer's View asked people what they thought about television. This woman was likely approached for a snappy vox pop, but ended up delivering something closer to a dramatic monologue.

Duration: 5 minutes

Suggested credit: Thanks for the Memory - The Viewer's View (1977) © BBC Archive

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This is a musical film starring Woodsy Owl. It was produced by the US Dept of Agriculture Forest Service and designed to help elementary school children recognise pollution problems and their solutions.

Duration: 16 minutes

Suggested credit: Help Woodsy Spread the Word (1977)

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A series of films featuring the re-discovered work of amateur cameramen and 'home-movie' makers of the 20s and 30s, introduced by James Cameron.

High days and holidays were (and still are) meat and drink to the amateur film maker; the Caught in Time request for old home movies produced scores of examples and this episode shows four of the best: Blackpool 1933, Snowdonia 1937, a canal trip in the Black Country, called simply Poor People's Outing, and an account of the Warrington Walking Days, combine to show Britain “having a good time” before the war.

Duration: 19 minutes

Suggested credit: Caught in Time - Having a Good Time (1978) © BBC Archive

To view the film, please ask your lecturer

A series of films featuring the re-discovered work of amateur cameramen and 'home-movie' makers of the 20s and 30s, introduced by James Cameron.

In 1934, the then-Marquess of Anglesey made a family film ridiculing the Blackshirt movement. He called it The Pinkshirts and it starred his five children and his house guests. The Pinkshirt leader, played by the young Lord Arran, is overthrown thanks to the courage of 14-year-old Lady Rose - “Peter Fleming was staying with us - it was a lovely summer and Daddy said ‘let's do a film.’” Now Lady Rose McLaren, she guides James Cameron through the plot.

Duration: 19 minutes

Suggested credit: Caught in Time - The Pinkshirts (1978) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer

A series of films featuring the re-discovered work of amateur cameramen and 'home-movie' makers of the 20s and 30s, introduced by James Cameron.

The owner of a Nottingham factory that turned out lace-making machinery before the war used his movie camera to record not just his family life and holidays at Skegness, but also rare scenes on the shop floor and works outings with his employees. He died in 1944 but his son - seen as a very little boy in the film - tells the story of the family's fortunes in the years leading to World War II.

Duration: 19 minutes

Suggested credit: Caught in Time - The Rewards of Industry (1978) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer

A series of films featuring the re-discovered work of amateur cameramen and 'home-movie' makers of the 20s and 30s, introduced by James Cameron.

Major Arthur William Gill loved his native Cornwall and in 1938 he turned his cine camera on to the ancient customs, traditional ceremonies and antique working tin-mines that he feared would soon disappear for ever.

Duration: 20 minutes

Suggested credit: Caught in Time - The Spirit of Cornwall (1978) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer

A series of films featuring the re-discovered work of amateur cameramen and 'home-movie' makers of the 20s and 30s, introduced by James Cameron.

Among the most potent reminders of the pre-war world are the vanished technological dinosaurs; like the huge biplanes of the commercial airways, the Atlantic ocean liners, and above all the steam trains. This programme is made up of home-movies of all these giants and ends with the story of a small boy who dreams about a railway engine and wins one of his own.

Duration: 20 minutes

Caught in Time - Trains and Boats and Planes (1978) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer

A series of films featuring the re-discovered work of amateur cameramen and 'home-movie' makers of the 20s and 30s, introduced by James Cameron.

At the end of 1939 most amateur cameramen put their cameras away for the next six years. This programme, the last in the series, looks at Germany and Britain on the eve of World War II.

Duration: 19 minutes

Suggested credit: Caught in Time - War Clouds (1978) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer

This punk-infused documentary by the Newsreel Collective invites young working class Londoners to discuss their experiences of racism. First and second generation Black and Asian immigrants, as well as ex-National Front members, paint a detailed picture of discrimination in 1970s Britain. The film uses lo-fi animation, archive footage and a pulsating soundtrack to compare racial inequality in London to Britain's colonial 'divide and rule' policy, European fascism and the rise of Nazi Germany.

Reggae band The Enchanters are interviewed about their involvement with the Rock Against Racism movement, which started in 1976. The film also shows the 1978 Brick Lane Protest, organised by the Anti-Nazi League and the Hackney and Tower Hamlets Defence Committee.

Duration: 41 minutes

Suggested credit: Divide and Rule - Never! (1978) © The British Film Institute

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Something Else debates political disillusionment amongst the young. The Clash's Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon are on hand to discuss the situation with Labour MP Joan Lestor.

Director: Patricia Mann

Duration: 22 minutes

Suggested credit: Something Else (1978) © BBC Archive

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First transmitted in 1978, this programme looks at the differences between modelling in the 1940s and 50's compared to the 1970s. 

Providing insights into the different eras are Cherry Marshall and Sarah Grant. 

Cherry Marshall became a household name in the 1950s, as the house model for Susan Small, a leading name in ready-to-wear fashion. She established the Cherry Marshall Model Agency and managed such figures as Vidal Sassoon, Patti Boyd, the actress Suzi Kendall and the models Pat Booth, Grace Coddington, Paulene Stone and Brenda Walker. 

Australian model Sarah Grant is a catwalk veteran, who has been modelling since she was 16. She is still modelling, and a recent catwalk appearance was walking for Chanel in 2011, at the age of 60. 

Producer: Tony Salmon

Duration: 25 minutes

Suggested credit: World of Difference - The Models (1978) © BBC Archive

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The heart of London has always followed the beat of a different drum - a day in the life of late-70s Soho, from dawn till dusk in the bohemian heart of London’s West End. This 1979 portrait of the people and places of Soho catches the neighbourhood towards the end of an era. There's some great footage inside an Italian delicatessen and of assorted street characters. It's a fascinating glimpse into this walled garden of cosmopolitan life on the cusp of the gentrification and commercial interests that have since broken its borders.

Director: Paul Des Salles

Duration: 28 minutes

Suggested credit: Chameleon Soho (1979) © The British Film Institute

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Peter France traces the hippies of ten years ago to find out how they are living today. Yippie leader Jerry Rubin, 'Social Deviant' Mick Farren, Oz editor Felix Dennis, Dr Timothy Leary 'the messiah of LSD', Lynn Darnton, the founder of the 'Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom,' folk singer Vashti Bunyan, and many more.  

Peace and love are ideals almost everybody shares; ideals preached by almost all religions; but can the ideals survive in the real world? 

Producer: Bill Nicholson

Duration: 35 minutes

Suggested credit: Everyman: Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (1979) © BBC Archive

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Black parents have high expectations of their children - expectations which aren't always met when the children go to school. What can be done by the schools to help black teenagers reach high levels of achievement? And how far does this demand changes in the curriculum or in the relationships between teachers and students, and schools and parents? This programme looks at two London schools which are coming up with effective answers to these questions.

Produced by John Radcliffe and Yvonne Deutschman

Duration: 26 minutes

Suggested credit: Multi-Racial Britain: Great Expectations (1979) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

‘Centrepoint Soho’ examines the plight of homeless young people living in the West End of London and the establishment in 1969 of Centrepoint, a voluntary agency set up to help these homeless young people. Amongst the hustle and bustle of London the camera crew visit Euston Station in October 1979. They interview several young people, one man has travelled down from Glasgow with £2 to his name, another young girl has run away from her boarding school and is not welcome back at home. The scenes move to Centrepoint, a night hostel close to Piccadilly. The temporary residents and volunteering staff are interviewed about the work of Centrepoint, which aims to help young people who are new to London. Much of the problems encountered which lead to homelessness include being without family support and being unemployed. In 1979 12,000 requests were made to Centrepoint for emergency accommodation and the charity could only house 7000. The video ends with a return to Euston Station, this time in February 1980 where more young homeless are interviewed.

Directors: Andy Porter, Simon Bright

Duration: 43 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Interview with Andy Porter

"We're not just a dance band, we have things to say."

Arena goes to Coventry to quiz The Selecter and The Specials about the rise and rise of 2-Tone and all things ska.

Director: Jeff Perks

Duration: 33 minutes

Suggested credit: Arena - Rudies Come Back (1980) © BBC Archive

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Some of Hackney's most notorious landmarks feature alongside some of the borough's much-loved institutions in this entertaining period piece about four community-based arts projects rooted in the 1970s. Long before the regeneration heralded by the arrival of Tony Blair, street artists get down with the kids on run-down council estates. Women at a print workshop in Lentall Road produce striking feminist posters and graphic designs while historic Hoxton Hall offers drama and a pensioners' lunch club.

Director: Ron Orders

Duration: 50 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

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Interview with Ron Orders

Part One of ‘A Place of My Own’ interviews five young people who have faced homelessness, interspersed with a slot machine that highlights the gamble and lottery that young people take in trying to find suitable accommodation. Scenes of authority figures illustrate the irony and barriers young people face in the welfare system, for example only being able to claim rent supplements if one has an address, and the housing shortage leading to higher rents making accommodation unaffordable for young people.

Part Two directly addresses the outcome of Part One’s broadcast, with the topical news programme ‘The Viewpoint’ debating the issues raised, Part Two also explores the accommodation available to young people examining, amongst others, a housing cooperative and squatting.

Directors: Andy Porter, Graham de Smidt (co-director, Part 2)

Duration: 50 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Interview with Andy Porter

This kaleidoscopic record of the 1980 Notting Hill Carnival invites you into the busy streets, following floats and popping into community centres where performers prepare. The diversity of the crowd really makes Carnival, and here we see the original punks, the dancing coppers, the nostalgic Caribbean ex-pats. With no narrator, the film echoes the event's relaxed yet ecstatic rhythm.

Director: Henry Martin and Steve Shaw

Duration: 18 minutes

Suggested credit: Grove Carnival (1981) © The British Film Institute

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“We don't class ourselves as anything. We're individuals.” The youth of Newcastle upon Tyne give their views about labels and life as musicians and artists on the dole. This is the first in a new series, Something Else, made by young people for young people with the help of the Community Programme Unit. Featuring interviews with the creators of Viz.

Duration: 21 minutes

Suggested credit: Something Else (1981) © BBC Archive

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Tune in if you rankin! Jamaican Patois hits the UK airwaves for the first time as the pirate radio station was featured on the Oxford Roadshow.

Duration: 4 minutes

Suggested credit: Oxford Roadshow (1982) © BBC Archive

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Hackney teenagers - black, white, gay and straight - talk sex, love, gender expectations, relationships, peer pressure and marriage in this compelling drama-documentary with a powerful post-punk and ska soundtrack. Set at a drunken party in Hackney, it can't fail to fascinate anyone who grew up in the early 1980s.

The party central to this film by the Newsreel Collective was scripted out of improvisations with the cast. The film was originally made for schools, colleges, youth clubs and women's and men's groups, and will surely resonate with all those 80s children's television viewers who were somewhat bemused that the kids never used swear words at Grange Hill. Another film by the collective, Divide and Rule - Never! is also available through the scheme.

Directors: The Newsreel Collective

Duration: 33 minutes

Suggested credit: True Romance etc (1982) © The British Film Institute

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The Lesbian and Gay Youth Video Project formed in 1982 and about 25 young lesbians and gays made this video about themselves. Jeff Cole, one of the group, explains the process:

"We were challenging the ways that conventional documentary makers were showing lesbians and gay men on television documentaries and so wanted to include ourselves as makers and as subjects, not in any way trying to be balanced. We found ways to film each other that helped us feel comfortable and we did loads of experiments using the new VHS and Betamax cameras. When the editing came to be done, the new technology of the freeze frame helped disguise some dodgily-shot interviews but also had the great effect of helping the viewer to concentrate on what was being said. So what with adding in clips of tv and films as comment and videoing what we shot in the street on a monitor (to highlight the outside ‘straight’ world) we were throwing away all the conventions in the book, not to mention chopping up what we said underneath all the freeze frames to make it sound better — we ended up getting an award for Best Documentary from the BFI in 1983 and being shown on Channel 4 (at midnight in a youth slot) in 1986."

Duration: 46 minutes

Licensed by LCVA with the permission of the filmmakers under the following Terms of Use

Interview with Jeff Cole

Interview with Nicola Field

Interview with Femi Otitoju

Facilitating ‘Framed Youth’

Precursor of Pride: The Pleasures and Aesthetics of Framed Youth

Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex is a traditional little seaside town. It's got a sandy beach and a pier and not much else. But despite the age of the jet and the cheap package tour, Walton's population still doubles during the season. This film reflects a typical day at the sea with the people who have been coming here for years and the people whose job it is to entertain them and keep them happy.

It begins early in the morning when Eileen Fowler, the 'First Lady of Keep Fit' can be found on the beach, still practising what she started preaching back in the 50s. She first visited as a child in 1921 and returned to retire. We meet the Punch and Judy man, the family who run a Wild West show at the back of the car park and Brian and Charlie, resident entertainers who love doing the season "because we get just as much enjoyment here as we would at the Palladium or Las Vegas".

Director: Adam Curtis

Duration: 31 minutes

Suggested credit: Just Another Day: The Seaside (1983) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

First transmitted in 1985, John Pitman talks to people who live and work in Soho, once known as London's 'crooked square mile'. He meets Alfredo the doorman who happens to have sung with Frank Sinatra, Beryl the queen of sound effects as she struggles to unzip a banana, hears a 1721 Stradivarius being cracked open and sympathises with retired wrestling master of ceremonies Frankie, who complains the girls just aren't what they used to be! 

Director: Imogen Sutton

Duration: 31 minutes

Suggested credit: Just Another Day: Soho (1985) © BBC Archive

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First transmitted in 1985, To the World's End follows the No. 31 London bus from Camden Town to World's End, Chelsea, meeting characters who live and work along the route.  

The programme's soundtrack features the Carl Davis composition Variations on a Bus Route, which was commissioned to celebrate London Transport's 50th birthday in 1984. 

Producer: Jonathan Gili

Duration: 51 minutes

Suggested credit: To the World's End (1985) © BBC Archive

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An electric tricycle, capable of a top speed of 15 mph, has driven into a safety row on its first day on the road.

The Sinclair C5 - launched by the computer millionaire, Sir Clive Sinclair - is designed for short journeys around town and can be driven by anyone over the age of 14.

But the £399 vehicle, driven by a battery-powered motor, only 2ft 6in high and six feet long, has raised safety concerns.

Duration: 3 minutes

Suggested credit: BBC News (1985) © BBC Archive

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