The Workshop of the World: Birmingham (1930)

Rolling at The Tower

Dating back to the 1800s, Birmingham’s roller skating scene is a flourishing, diverse community - but it lacks dedicated spaces. This community documentary explores the history of one roller venue, The Tower Ballroom, and considers what it tells us about the power of community action.

A & E: When Patients Attack

Hospital staff are reporting more violence and anti-social behaviour than ever before. In 2015, 8 staff were assaulted every hour – a new record high. At The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham – one of the UK’s biggest hospitals – they think they have the answer. Here a private security force of 46 uniformed guards, and a sophisticated CCTV system, keep staff and patients safe. A colourful mixture of characters ranging from ex-soldiers, to bouncers, to former elite sportsmen, it’s the security team’s job to keep the hospital running smoothly. With more than 2 million visitors they have to deal with all aspects of crime and anti-social behaviour. All against a back drop of life changing and life saving procedures.

The Ballad of Judas Priest

Witness the 50-year story of Judas Priest. From forging Heavy Metal in the British Steel industry to their rise to Metal Gods.

Handsworth Songs

The Black Audio Film Collective’s acclaimed essay film, 'Handsworth Songs', examines the 1985 race riots in Handsworth and London. Interweaving archival photographs, newsreel clips, and home movie footage, the film is both an exploration of documentary aesthetics and a broad meditation social and cultural oppression through Britain’s intertwined narratives of racism and economic decline.

Reconstruction of Hill Street Birmingham

An engineering feat: Second city civil engineers complete a new bridge to carry traffic over New Street's tangled railway intersections.

Paradise Lost: History in the Un-Making

When filmmaker Andy Howlett set out with his camera to document the final days of Birmingham's Brutalist Central Library complex, little did he know the rabbit hole he was stumbling into. Decried by the Council as an eyesore, but hailed by Historic England as an exemplar of postwar design, the story of John Madin's concrete colossus and the fight to save it is a curious one. In this psychogeographic detective story, Howlett weaves together archive footage with on-the-ground explorations in an attempt to figure out why we lost Paradise and how it might be regained.

Bhaji on the Beach

A group of South Asian women try but cannot escape their problems on a day trip to a British beach resort.

Tina Turner: Private Dancer Tour

The Private Dancer Tour was the fifth concert tour by singer Tina Turner. In support of her fifth studio album, Private Dancer (1984), the tour helped to establish Turner as a major solo artist of the 1980s and a dynamic solo performer, after initially starting out singing with ex-husband Ike Turner's band. The tour is often considered one of the best comebacks in music history. The 180-date, eleven-month world tour traveled across Europe, North America and Australasia. Notably, Turner played a show in Budapest, Hungary, the only show of the tour behind the Iron Curtain. The concerts received many accolades, including the "Most Creative Tour Package" and "Comeback Tour Of The Year" awards from Pollstar. The two March 1985 shows at Birmingham, England's NEC Arena were filmed and released as Tina Live: Private Dancer Tour. It featured special guests Bryan Adams and David Bowie. In 2025 a 4K upgraded blu ray of the concert came out, including bonus video clips.

Tolkien

England, early 20th century. The future writer and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) and three of his schoolmates create a strong bond between them as they share the same passion for literature and art, a true fellowship that strengthens as they grow up, but the outbreak of World War I threatens to shatter it.

I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle

When a motorbike gang kills an occultist, the evil spirit he was summoning inhabits a damaged bike. The bike is then bought and restored, but reveals its true nature when it tries to exact vengance on the gang, and anyone else who gets in its way.

Felicia's Journey

Seventeen and pregnant, Felicia travels to England in search of her lover and is found instead by Joseph Ambrose Hilditch, a helpful catering manager whose kindness masks unsettling secret.

Privilege

Britain's biggest pop singer, Steven Shorter, receives unwavering adulation and possesses total control over his rabid fans, which includes nearly the entire population. Yet Shorter is not an autonomous performer -- he is little more than a puppet for the government, promoting whatever agenda they see fit. When a beautiful artist, Vanessa Ritchie, is commissioned to paint his portrait, she pushes Shorter to question his obedience to his manipulative handlers.

The City Gone Wild

Hard-boiled underworld melodrama, with gang wars and gunfights, in which criminal lawyer turns prosecutor to avenge a friend's death.

The Final Year

Featuring unprecedented access inside the White House and State Department, The Final Year offers an uncompromising view of the inner workings of the Obama Administration as they prepare to leave power after eight years.

The Rape of Recy Taylor

Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.

Teaching War

This episode from the Czech Journal series examines how a military spirit is slowly returning to our society. Attempts to renew military training or compulsory military service and in general to prepare the nation for the next big war go hand in hand with society’s fear of the Russians, the Muslims, or whatever other “enemies”. This observational flight over the machine gun nest of Czech militarism becomes a grotesque, unsettling military parade. It can be considered not only to be a message about how easily people allow themselves to be manipulated into a state of paranoia by the media, but also a warning against the possibility that extremism will become a part of the regular school curriculum.

Verdon Vertical Mile

Plot unavailable

The Scorpions - A Home Movie

The Scorpions were a Serbian paramilitary unit that gained notoriety for their involvement in war crimes during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. By using the statements of former members of the Scorpions unit, and the materials recorded by the unit itself in the course of its campaignes, this film demonstrates the functioning of a typical combat unit organized by the security service to do dirty jobs in the Balkan wars. Including their treatment of Bosnian Serbs; from refusing them water to the stomach-wrenching murders of six Bosnian Muslim men, some of whom were minors, in Srebrenica in July 1995. Archival footage used in this film includes materials of Humanitarian Law Center, International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia.

Crossing Axis

Even though it was planned, Brasilia's Pilot Plan barely considered the crossing of an exotic animal through the Residencial Axis.

Persecution Blues: the Battle for the Tote!

In 2010, the iconic Tote Hotel – last bastion of Melbourne’s vibrant music counterculture – was forced to close by unfair laws. Filmed over 7 years, “Persecution Blues” depicts the struggle of more than 20,000 fans – and the bands who inspire them – to preserve their history and protect their future, and puts the audience on the front line of an epic-scale culture war.

Deep Blue

Deep Blue is a major documentary feature film shot by the BBC Natural History Unit. An epic cinematic rollercoaster ride for all ages, Deep Blue uses amazing footage to tell us the story of our oceans and the life they support.

In Search of Dracula

Mark Gatiss explores and celebrates Dracula, an icon of popular culture, asking just why we keep coming back to the count.

Ed Sheeran: In My Own Words

A celebratory look at the global superstars life and stardom. Includes interviews with Fiona Bevan, Paul Gambaccini and Sian Welby, plus some of his most memorable performances.

Father

It is a love story of one family. There are neither romantic moments nor miracle changes. But there is a strong potential to change our understanding about what happy and loving family is or could be.

Nijolė

An artist and her whole existence spent away from her homeland. The insight of a son, that forty years later interprets again the work of his mother.

The Hindenburg Disaster: Probable Cause

Plot unavailable

Prampolini-Menarini Express

A found footage / object film: the colorful 1960s in Italy, a joyful time, live-giving coating of born-again found images, re-animated, examined, reviewed in a past time, revisited.

Ditadura Reservada

Plot unavailable

Profession grimpeur, Eric Escoffier

A documentary portrait of the legend Eric Escoffier at the height of his mountaineering career. A true athlete, Escoffier has comprehensive, cutting-edge preparation in three different climbing disciplines: rock climbing, ice climbing and solo free climbing, without any safety devices. Philippe Lallet's camera follows Eric in his performances and in his preparation for one of the first La Sportroccia climbing competitions, in 1985 in Bardonecchia in Italy.

Under the Stars

Paying tribute to some of America's only surviving drive-ins – and those who keep them running – this heartfelt documentary captures efforts to preserve these nostalgic theaters in small-towns across the country.

One Fine Evening in 2000

Problems of Futurology, the film is an experience of recreating the future on the example of some scientific discoveries and phenomena of today's social life.

Saving Skylab: America's First Space Station

How an electric lineman's tool manufacturer in Centralia, Missouri, helped save the first American space station from catastrophe.