David Bradley
Comedian, actor and ex-English teacher Greg Davies is a lifelong fan of Barry Hines's classic novel A Kestrel for a Knave, the story of Billy Casper training a kestrel as an escape from his troubled home and school life. In this documentary, Greg goes in search of the book's enduring appeal, travelling to Barnsley, where the book was set and where Ken Loach's famous adaptation, Kes, was filmed.
Entirely shot on green screen, Shakespeare’s Macbeth has been reinvented by director Kit Monkman (The Knife That Killed Me) in an exciting new film adaptation. Starring Mark Rowley, (The Last Kingdom, Luther). Monkman’s unique adaptation successfully bridges the gap between theatre and film to create a wholly new type of imaginative space. This radical new adaptation puts the audience’s engagement with the story centre-stage, amplifying the theatrical context of the original and creating truly innovative and thrilling cinematic vistas, whilst maintaining the language and themes of Shakespeare’s original play. Using background matte painting and computer modelling to generate the world in which the action plays out, the green screen allows Monkman to create his vision of a multi-tiered globe in which the characters play out their various fates.
A surprisingly candid behind-the-scenes account of the career of Ken Loach, one of Britain’s most celebrated and controversial filmmakers, as he prepares to release his final major film I, Daniel Blake.
This unique interactive film puts you on set with Ken Loach in production on his latest film, I, Daniel Blake. Throwing us into life on location and during pre-production, it enables you to change the course of your viewing experience by selecting inserts in which Loach and some of his key collaborators – past and present – give fascinating insights into his creative practices. (The version released on the Criterion Collection edition is only 38 minutes and doesn't include the interactive parts with interviews and illustrative scenes from previous Loach films.)
Homeless and on the run from a military court martial, a damaged ex-special forces soldier navigating London's criminal underworld seizes an opportunity to assume another man's identity, transforming into an avenging angel in the process.
Girls growing up in 1960-61 London develop a passion for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, the first British team in the 20th century to win the English league and FA Cup "double". Twenty years later, one of the girls tracks down players of the '60-'61 Spurs for a documentary.
The true story of the First world football competition, won by a team comprised of miners from Durham.
At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside.
At a Catholic boys' school, domineering disciplinarian Father Goddard rules over his pupils with an iron hand. When one of his teenage charges confesses to murder, the dogmatic but deeply repressed Goddard finds his faith challenged and his life spiralling dangerously out of control. Also starring Billy Connolly (in his first feature-film role), Dominic Guard ,Kes star Dai Bradley, and the inimitable Brian Glover, and written by the great Anthony Shaffer, Absolution is one of British cinema’s most underrated chillers, not least for a towering central performance by Burton.
A tough young girl lives with her aging grandfather near a cove on the coast of Cornwall. She supports herself and him by gathering seaweed to sell as fertilizer. A cocky young neighboring boy decides to help her with the work.
Sixteen-year-old Terry Connor is sent, along with a few of his friends, to an Outward Bound centre. On his first day at the centre Terry is taken pot-holing by the senior instructor, Alex. All goes well until, at 100 feet underground, Alex goes to search for the torch that Terry has dropped. Hours pass, and, to Terry’s astonishment, when Alex finally returns he has no recollection whatever of having been absent. Terry suspects something sinister is taking place – it is surely no coincidence that there is a secret Ministry of Defence establishment nearby. But just how deeply his curiosity will involve him in dangerous matters becomes clear when he learns the truth about the ‘Jensen Code’...
