World Without End

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.

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.

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.

The history of Scotland and the factors that have shaped the character of its people.

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the overnight run from Euston, London to Glasgow.

Ambitious documentary chronicling the cultural life and religious customs of the Sinhalese and the effects of advanced industrialism on such customs.

Short documentary about British education in the late 1930s.

Directed by Basil Wright.

An overview of the shepherd's life during the lambing season.