Glimpses of Austria

A 1962 West German documentary film directed by Hermann Leitner and Rudolf Nussgruber.

Contemporary life in Plymouth in the 1960s – plus some history.

A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life.

Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer is one of the first and most influential surf movies of all time. The film documents American surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they travel the world during California’s winter (which, back in 1965 was off-season for surfing) in search of the perfect wave and ultimately, an endless summer.

A fun tour of 1950s West End with international film star Yoko Tani.

An epic ramble from Winchester to Canterbury, through Hampshire, Surrey and Kent with picnics, pints and much prettiness on the way.

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

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.

Hitchcock went the wrong way! Head south by southwest with this travelogue from Bath to Cornwall.

Tourist promo film extolling the delights of Birmingham and the Midlands, with a sprinkling of arch one-liners.

The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.

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.

A doctor and party visit the villages of eastern Manipur in India's far north east.

Hear the Lama band, see the sacred dances: welcome to Sikkim, in the shadow of the Himalayas.

By combining actual footage with reenactments, this film offers both a documentary and fictional account of the life of Adolf Hitler, from his childhood in Vienna, through the rise of the Third Reich, to his final act of suicide in the waning days of WWII. The film also provides considerable, and often shocking, detail of the atrocities enacted by the Nazi regime under Hitler's command.

A staged TV portrait of the Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer; and first collaboration with Maria Hofstätter.

Blissful scenes of tourists arriving by boat and then sea bathing on a beach in the Venetian lagoon.

Johanna Dohnal, whose political career spans three decades, was one of the very first explicitly feminist politicians in Europe. As a member of the Austrian socialist government and the first Austrian minister for Women’s Affairs from 1990 to 1994, Dohnal was responsible for founding Austria’s first women’s refuge as well as criminalizing of marital rape. Yet her legacy remains yet to be discovered and re-examined. DIE DOHNAL makes a first step, and it makes Dohnal come alive.

Botanical gardens in Bombay plus the highly decorative Jain Temple in Calcutta.

Travel films have an established format with their own conventions, history and baggage. It is a medium that has all too often sought to control, define and dictate perceptions of ”other” places. Comprised of footage shot while travelling on group excursions across Russia in 2019, An Uncountable Number of Threads is an attempt to draw out the ethical restrictions of a travelogue, while questioning how (and why) to make one. At times there is an awkward tourist-gaze, aware of its outsider position. But as a self-reflexive work that considers its own creation, it ultimately unravels, as the artist rationalises themselves out of a particular way of working, inviting the viewer into their uncertainty.