Lumière!

Mariam Shahin has been making films about Gaza for over thirty years. When she moved to Gaza in 2005, she felt a powerful sense of optimism following the Israeli withdrawal. But by 2009, war had badly damaged its infrastructure, neighbourhoods, businesses and communities – and that optimism had evaporated. Now, in the wake of the even more destructive war that began on 7th October 2023, Mariam seeks out the people she has met in Gaza over the years – and reflects on the wasted potential and devastated lives after sixteen years of blockade and a year of one of the most destructive wars in Middle East history.

In the summer of ’83 a camera crew visited Valkhn Films, an editing house where Style Wars was being painstakingly spliced together. This 25 min piece is a rare glimpse at the process of telling a real story as it’s happening.

Artist Htoo Lwin Myo excavates the lesser-known and wildly joyful history of Myanmar’s horror and genre film industry in the 1950s that has persisted through political turmoil and archival neglect, told directly by the people who made it.

Overknee boots that triggered a fashion wave, a legendary shopping spree to the iconic theme song - the 1990 romantic comedy "Pretty Woman" by Garry Marshall starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere is still the genre's biggest box office hit. The modern fairytale about a rich man who falls in love with a prostitute and rescues her made millions dream and made 22-year-old Julia Roberts famous overnight.

Vivre dans l'Allemagne en guerre

That Child with AID$ tells the story of Brazilian advocate and artist Lili Nascimento, who was born with HIV in 1990. Lili has worked to expand narratives about living with HIV beyond the limited images and ideologies that permeate the AIDS industry.

Heart Murmurs is a poetic dialogue between the filmmaker and Dean, a young man living in Hong Kong. In reflecting on his experience living with a congenital disability and HIV during the first years of the COVID pandemic, Dean expresses his sense of self in the face of regular medical challenges.

This Bed I Made presents the bed as a place of solace and agency beyond just a site of illness or isolation. Through the shared stories of two Filipino men living with HIV, the video explores modes of care, restoration, and abundance in the midst of pandemic pervasion.

Losing the Light reflects the artist's bitter battle to stay in this world as a long-term survivor of AIDS who has lost his vision to CMV retinitis. An experimental self-portrait, the video evokes the dissolution and fragmentation of the artists body, representing the impact of blindness, long-term HIV infection, and the cumulative effects of decades of antiretroviral medication.

A documentary on the life and career of filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr., with clips from his films and interviews with the cast and crews of some of his films.

A documentary about film producer Hal Roach.

As part of the 2017 UK-India Year of Culture, the British Council and British Film Institute share a unique collection of films documenting the sights and culture of a bygone India. Filmed between 1899-1947, and preserved in the BFI National Archive since then, these rare films capture many glimpses of life in India, from dances and markets, to hunts and pageantry.

This documentary film traces the struggle of Indian auto workers of the Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar, near Delhi, in forming a union. Investigating the underbelly of class conflict and exposing a widespread system of injustice, the film focuses on the repression faced by the workers and their criminal prosecution.

We’ve all dreamed about making it big. About doing something that sets us apart and makes an indelible claim about who we are. Gunnar Ryan Wiik is a dreamer. But what makes him stand out is that he is seemingly willing to do anything to make his dreams come through. Directors Even G. Benestad and August B. Hanssen has been following the Norwegian entrepreneur Gunnar Ryan Wiik since 2017 when his spectacular film project about the Western hero Morgan Kane collapsed and became front-page material in Norwegian newspapers. Ryan lost everything. With unique access over seven years, the film follows Ryan's new and adventurous projects. Can he finally succeed, or will the ghosts of the past consume him?

French documentarist Sonia Kronlund follows actor and director Salim Shaheen, an Afghan movie star who produced more than 110 low-budget movies in a country devastated by war.

On 28 January 1901 the great musician Giuseppe Verdi died from the consequences of a stroke that had struck him six days earlier. These very rare images, captured in Milan on 27 February 1901 by the operator and pioneer of Milanese cinema Italo Pacchioni, document the transfer of the Maestro's body from the Monumental Cemetery of Milan to the famous retirement home for musicians which he himself founded.

L'Histoire secrète de la Résistance

Examines the early 1980s Hong Kong filmmaking community. Tony Rayns interviews some of the new generation of filmmakers and figures from the wider film culture.

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.

How are the sex scenes filmed? What tricks are used to fake the desire? How do the interpreters prepare and feel? Spanish actors and directors talk about the most intimate side of acting, about the tricks and work methods when narrating exposed sex. In Spain the general rule is that there are no rules. Each film, each interpreter, faces it in very different ways.