Island People
This one-reel film was produced during the middle of the Second World War. It purports to offer a portrait of the British people, in broad and in fine. It shows them as hard-working, serious people five and a half days a week; on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, they pursue their private interests, whether they be following a football team, spending time with the family or chatting amiably at the pub while the pretty barmaid draws a fresh beer.
Philip Leacock
Paul Rotha
Also Directed by Philip Leacock
Walt Sherill (Alan Ladd) is attacked and beat down by a group of juvenile delinquents on his way home from work one night. The boys who attacked him are not previously known by the police and are therefore hard to track down. As Sherill starts getting impatient he begins his own investigation. Meanwhile Detective Sergeant Koleski (Rod Steiger) does his best to track down the culprits.
A married couple are traveling on a deserted desert road at night. They stop at a diner and the husband goes to the men's room. He never returns and the wife begins to suspect serious foul play.
The headmaster of a stuffy British boys' school receives a surprise visit from the now-grown, and very voluptuous, daughter he fathered years earlier in the Pacific islands.
Adam is a young American wrongly accused of being an accomplice to murder while on shore leave in Liverpool. He is sentenced to death by hanging but the sentence is commuted to twenty years in a convict settlement in Australia.
During WWII an American soldier sent to Norway to help with the escape of a scientist working on the atomic bomb for the Germans. Before they can escape they are captured and sent to a POW prison camp in an alpine castle. Cook must find a way to escape with the scientist before the Gestapo discover the Norwegian's true identity and convinces the other prisoners to build a two person glider in which they plan to escape.
No description
A former CIA agent and his friend operate a boat service in Florida find themselves the target of an eccentric millionaire with a score to settle.
Berrenger's is an American primetime television soap opera created by Diana Gould that aired on NBC in 1985. The series revolved around the Berrenger family, a New York dynasty which owned the glamorous department store which bore their name. Following in the tradition of Dynasty and Dallas, Berrenger's played up to the familiar motifs of 1980s soap operas - glamorous and beautiful characters, using money and power in games of love, business and betrayal. The series was cancelled after 13 one-hour episodes had been produced. In North America, only 11 of the 13 episodes were screened. Because of studio television output deals it was screened in Europe and Australia, and has sustained a modest cult following.
Seven-year-olds Michael and Rachel are best friends who do everything together and who have vowed to remain friends "forever and ever and can't be parted for never and never." Unfortunately, the society that Michael and Rachel live in is one of religious intolerance. The fact that Michael is Irish Catholic and Rachel is Jewish is a point of conflict for just about everyone in the community. When the two young children are made aware of their ideological differences, it begins to tear apart their friendship, and they decide to test whose God is stronger. What they discover is that at the core, their religions really aren't that different from one another: both worship a God of love, not vengeance.
Nineteen people were hanged and one man pressed to death, while hundreds went to jail during the "witch hysteria" of 1692. THREE SOVEREIGNS FOR SARAH offers an accurate portrayal of the Salem witch trials, with real characters and original transcripts woven into the dialogue. The film is a powerful, moving story about three loving sisters accused of witchcraft.
Also Directed by Paul Rotha
Directed by Paul Rotha.
Dunkirk to D-Day in 20 minutes flat: this gripping account of Britain's war effort compels us to sit up and pay attention. A 'total war' is one encompassing civilian as well as military life. Here we witness the might of the state mobilising technology, infrastructure, agriculture, industry and above all people. A rapid-fire onslaught of images and information palpably evokes the experience of total war.
Carefully chronicling in great detail the early years of Hitler's political life until his fall as the leader of Germany, this archive-footage documentary offers a sharply critical insight into the stealthy rise of the Nazi party and how it's racist vision of the world slowly took hold in a disillusioned Germany.
1944. Resistance-fighter Bakker gets send to a prison in Leeuwarden by the Gestapo. There he and other resistance-fighters are about to be rescued in a giant prison escape by their companions
Documentary about the building of ships at Barrow-in-Furness.
Urban utopia beckons in this idealistic vision of postwar Manchester - fascinating to revisit as Northern Powerhouses and city devolution return to the agenda. Sponsored by the city council, it's very ambitious for a local government film. Under the soaring, sweeping direction of Paul Rotha, it takes in themes of industry, energy, leisure and housing, present, past and future.
UNESCO-funded "one world" documentary by Paul Rotha and Basil Wright.
Oscar nominated documentary short from 1961
A GI deserter frames a girl for killing a blackmailer, and holds her captive while seeking gems.
The brilliant British documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha made his feature-film debut with 1950's No Resting Place. Filmed on location in Ireland, the film is a lightly fictionalized study of that country's itinerant workmen. Michael Gough plays tinker Alec Kyle, whose life is thrown into turmoil when he accidentally kills a man. Kyle spends the rest of the film evading Guard Mannigan (Noel Purcell), a civil servant who relies on instinct rather than scientific deduction to get his man. Without ever trying to elicit sympathy for his characters, director Rotha manages to compellingly detail the miserable living and working conditions of Ireland's nomad artisans.