Testimony

Tony Palmer directs this 1971 documentary about Scottish bass player and former Cream member Jack Bruce. The film tracks Bruce's life from his childhood in the Gorbals to the height of his fame with Cream and beyond.

A look at the life of Bobby Moore

Banned by the BBC in 1971, director Tony Palmer's profile of the late Peter Sellers was, in the words of the film's subject himself, "the only portrait which really understood me." Sellers was an icon of comedy and a true innovator, but a look inside reveals a tragic figure. How could one of the world's most beloved comic talents have such a morbidly distorted opinion of himself? In this documentary, interviews with such friends, fans, and colleagues as Raquel Welch, Yul Brenner, Spike Milligan, Laurence Harvey, and others reveal the true personality behind the man who was loved by everyone, but still viewed himself as entirely alone.

Director Tony Palmer tells the incredible life story of Athol Fugard, the prolific playwright, novelist, and director who exposed the horrors of South Africa's apartheid system for the entire world to see. Interviews with Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Yvonne Bryceland and others help to illuminate Fugard's remarkable legacy.

This film is a biographical look at the career of the acclaimed Margot Fonteyn.

This is Palmer's highly controversial portrait of Brahms - a film that exploded the familiar image of 'stodgy old bearded Brahms' - a man whose first musical experience had been playing an upright piano in the brothels of Hamburg where he had grown up, and who at the end of his life lived a bachelor in Vienna having his every need satisfied by the prostitutes of the city whom he always affectionately described as his ‘little singing girls'. It is a celebration - of Brahms' unabashed, life-enhancing, sexually explosive music. Warren Mitchell portrays the composer

"Touring makes you crazy," Frank Zappa says, explaining that the idea for this film came to him while the Mothers of Invention were touring. The story, interspersed with performances by the Mothers and the Royal Symphony Orchestra, is a tale of life on the road. The band members' main concerns are the search for groupies and the desire to get paid.

Rose Sellars is a middle-aged woman who falls in love with a widower. However, his children believe that their father is too old to start a new relationship.

Irish Tour '74 is a film which captures the artist, his music, the period and the place with perfection. Filmed in January 1974 at Rory Gallaghers Irish Tour at Belfast Ulster Hall, Dublin Carlton Cinema and Cork City Hall. Directed by Tony Palmer

In Torre del Lago, by Lake Massaciuccoli, Puccini is writing "The Girl of the Golden West" when his wife Elvira accuses him of a dalliance with their maid, Doria Manfredi, a young women from town. Although the maestro is frequently unfaithful, he denies the affair; Elvira insists she's right and publicly hounds Doria. Between scenes in this domestic drama that turns tragic, we watch a Scottish company rehearse and stage "Turandot," Puccini's last opera. The film finds parallels between the two stories and suggests that in the opera, Puccini expresses love for his wife and guilt in Doria's fate. Three local gentlemen provide a spoken chorus as Puccini's score plays throughout.