Dan Cruickshank and the Family That Built Gothic Britain

The Lost World of the Seventies

May 2012 •English

Michael Cockerell sheds new light on the tragi-comedy of the 1970s by focusing on some of its most controversial characters. With fresh filming and new interviews, along with a treasure trove of rare archive, the film presents the inside story of giant personalities who make today's public figures look sadly dull in comparison. The well-known journalist revisits some of his films on the big characters who helped shaped the 1970s in Britain. Both tragic and comic, it highlights just how much our world has changed in four decades.

The Genius of Gothic Art

May 2021 •German

Death and the devil, nudity and eroticism, horror in blazing colours, Gothic art cast a spell over people 500 years ago. In these image-poor times, art deliberately and skilfully played with the emotions of the viewer, triggering fear, devotion, but also rapture. Art documentary on German gothic art of the late-middle ages.

Hogwood: A Modern Horror Story

September 2020 •English

Hogwood: A Modern Horror Story takes you beyond the factory farm walls and follows an intrepid group of undercover investigators as they enter some of Britain's biggest factory farms for the very first time.

George III: The Genius of the Mad King

January 2017 •English

After 200 years under lock and key, all the personal papers of one of our most important monarchs are for the first time seeing the light of day. In the first documentary to gain extensive access to the Royal Archives, Robert Hardman sheds fascinating new light on George III, Britain's longest reigning king. George III may be chiefly remembered for his madness, but these private documents reveal a monarch who was a political micromanager and a restless patron of science and the arts, an obsessive traveller who never left southern England yet toured the world in his mind and a man who was driven (sometimes to distraction) by his sense of duty to his family and his country. Featuring Simon Callow and Sian Thomas as the voices of King George and Queen Charlotte.

Attack! The Battle for New Britain

June 1944 •English

Actual footage by the United States Signal Corps of the landing and attack on Arawe Beach, Cape Glouster, New Britain island in 1943 in the South Pacific theatre of World War Two, and the handicaps of the wild jungle in addition to the Japanese snipers and pill-box emplacements.

Bauhaus: Gotham

January 1999 •English

A registration of the band's concert at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City during their 1998 reunion tour.

Organ Stops - Saving The King of Instruments

June 2021 •English

Beautifully made and historically important pipe organs are being scrapped in their hundreds. Once at the centre of British culture pipe organs are now neglected and unloved.

Phantasia

March 2024 •

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

Tribus gothiques

May 2009 •French

I Goth My World

November 2012 •French

Great Yorkshire Show at Leeds

January 1902 •

The well-dressed Edwardian ladies and gents of the county tour the annual agricultural show.

Air Parade

January 1951 •English

A brief history of British aviation and the development of both civil and military aircraft. Made for the Festival of Britain.

Sex, Death & Eyeliner

January 1999 •English

Documentary directed by W.K. Border, that which dives into the aspects of contemporary Gothic subculture, vampirism, and BDSM culture. Filmed in 1997 in California.

David Macaulay: Cathedral

April 1986 •English

Author David Macaulay hosts CATHEDRAL, based on his award-winning book. Using a combination of spectacular location sequences and cinema-quality animation, the program surveys France's most famous churches. Travel back to 1214 to explore the design of Notre Dame de Beaulieu, a representative Gothic cathedral. The program tells period tales revealing fascinating stories of life and death, faith and despair, prosperity, and intrigue.

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape

August 2010 •English

A documentary analyzing the furore which so-called "video nasties" caused in Britain during the 1980s.

When Wrestling Was Golden: Grapples, Grunts and Grannies

December 2012 •English

Timeshift turns back the clock to a time when villains wore silver capes, grannies swooned at the sight of bulky men in latex and the most masculine man in the country was called Shirley. In its heyday, British professional wrestling attracted huge TV audiences and made household names of generations of wrestlers from Mick McManus and Jackie 'Mr TV' Pallo to Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy. With contributions from inside the world of wrestling and surprising fans such as artist Peter Blake, this is an affectionate and lively portrait of a lost era of simpler pleasures, both in and out of the ring.

Goths Make Better Lovers

December 2002 •English

"A short film about the love too miserable to speak its name. Goths Make Better Lovers asks why do Goths always have boyfriends? Goths, so often the victims of wry asides, mild pity or open scorn have much to teach their more colourful bretheren when it comes to affairs of the heart. Because Goths always appear to be in a relationship - and obtusely, these relationships appear to be happier than the non-Goth kind."

Imperial Sunset

January 1967 •English

This short satirical film, created entirely from archival footage, is about the British Empire—on which the sun never sets. The majority of the humour and wit is found in the interplay between image and sound: what we see during the formative days of the Empire, and what famous servants had to say about it. Edited by Oscar®-nominated experimental filmmaker Arthur Lipsett (Very Nice, Very Nice).

Bats, Balls and Bradford Girls

January 2019 •English

This BBC Three film follows the first all Asian girls’ cricket team over the summer holidays as they train for their last ever tournament together. The team started at school four years ago when their only experience of cricket was their dads and brothers watching it on the TV. In spite of this, they took to it like naturals and began winning almost all of the tournaments they entered. Last year they lost out on becoming National champions at Lords by only one run.

There Go the Boats

January 1951 •English

An historical account looking at how Britain's canals were used, and declining, in 1951.