Prostitute (1980)

A Night at the Cinema in 1914

Cinema a century ago was a new, exciting and highly democratic form of entertainment. Picture houses nationwide offered a sociable, lively environment in which to relax and escape from the daily grind. With feature films still rare, the programme was an entertaining, ever-changing roster of short items with live musical accompaniment. 100 years on, this special compilation from the BFI National Archive recreates the glorious miscellany of comedies, dramas, travelogues and newsreels which would have constituted a typical night out in 1914. Our selection includes a comic short about a face-pulling competition, a sensational episode of The Perils of Pauline, scenes of Allied troops celebrating Christmas at the Front, and an early sighting of one of cinema’s greatest icons.

Mara'akame's Dream

Nieri is an indigenous teenage boy from the Wixarika culture, who is being indoctrinated by his father on the path of dreaming to reach the Blue Deer and become a Marakame. However, Nieri doubts about having the gift that is necessary to become a Marakame. His real dream is to play Mexican country music and to go to Mexico City to play there with his friends.

Third Wedding

Martin, a homosexual widower and whimsical of fifty years, sees itself propose to contract a marriage white with a Congolese of twenty years, Tamara. These two beings that everything separates are going to believe in their love against the authorities of migration and to force to pretend.

Shark

His first girlfriend was hit by a car. His second girlfriend fell off a cliff. His wife has come prepared.

Harry Potter: A History Of Magic

A thrilling journey through legends, belief and folklore, this film goes behind the scenes with the British Library as they search to tell that story through objects in their collection, in an ambitious new exhibition: Harry Potter: A History Of Magic. J.K. Rowling, who is lending unseen manuscripts, drawings and drafts from her private archives (which will sit alongside treasures from the British Library, as well as original drafts and drawings from Jim Kay) talks about some of the personal items she has lent to the exhibition and gives new insight into her writing, looking at some of the objects from the exhibition that have fired her imagination.

Elton John - Estadio Do Flamengo, Rio, Brasil 1995

The thousands of fans waiting in Rio de Janeiro on November 25, 1995 to see Elton John on his “Made in England Tour”, his first time ever touring in Brazil, were launched with the drop of a curtain into a dancing, flag-waving, multi-hour sing-a-long frenzy! In fact, Elton gets so caught up in taking in the crowd, he misses his singing cue in opener, “I’m Still Standing”! Over the course of 90-minutes he more than makes up for it, delivering a set from that year’s “Made In England”, greatest hits and deep cuts.

Dhruva

A committed police officer is on a very dangerous mission to destroy the most corrupt person in the country, Siddharth Abhimanyu.

Chiang Khan Story

Two childhood friends who bonded at their town's cinema reunite as adults when their big-screen passions bring them together on the same movie set.

The Sitter Downers

The stooges are suitors who go on a sit down strike when their prospective father-in-law refuses to consent the marriages. The strike wins them fame and they receive numerous gifts including a lot and a prefabricated house. They win the strike and get married, but the wives decree no honeymoon until the house is built. The boys have some problems with the construction, especially since Curly burned up the plans. The eventually finish the house, a monstrosity that collapses when one post is accidentally moved.

Leaving Las Vegas

Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.

Bend It Like Beckham

Jess Bhamra, the daughter of a strict Indian couple in London, is not permitted to play organized soccer, even though she is 18. When Jess is playing for fun one day, her impressive skills are seen by Jules Paxton, who then convinces Jess to play for her semi-pro team. Jess uses elaborate excuses to hide her matches from her family while also dealing with her romantic feelings for her coach, Joe.

Brute

Shipped off to a Romanian orphanage to finish his sentence, a British criminal finds romance but also discovers corruption inside the facility.

Monster

An emotionally scarred highway drifter shoots a sadistic trick who rapes her, and ultimately becomes America's first female serial killer.

Killing Zoe

Zed is an American vault-cracker who travels to Paris to meet up with his old friend Eric. Eric and his gang have planned to raid the only bank in the city which is open on Bastille day. After offering his services, Zed soon finds himself trapped in a situation beyond his control when heroin abuse, poor planning and a call-girl named Zoe all conspire to turn the robbery into a very bloody siege.

Love Actually

Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

David, a robotic boy—the first of his kind programmed to love—is adopted as a test case by a Cybertronics employee and his wife. Though he gradually becomes their child, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for David.

Belle de Jour

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

Oldboy

With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate man seeks revenge on his captors.

Faces

Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. As Richard takes up with a younger woman, Maria enjoys a night on the town with her friends and meets a younger man. As the couple and those around them confront a seemingly futile search for what they've lost -- love, excitement, passion -- this classic American independent film explores themes of aging and alienation.

Lemming

After the death of his boss's wife, a young engineer faces the sudden psychological metamorphosis of his own wife, seemingly possessed by the soul of the deceased...

Our Mother's House

Seven children bury their mother and hide her death - until their long-lost father returns.

Death at a Funeral

A myriad of outrageous calamities befalls an eccentric English clan with more than a few skeletons in its closets when the family's patriarch dies an unexpected death.

Nightwatch

A law student takes a job as a night watchman at a morgue and begins to discover clues that implicate him as the suspect in a series of murders.

Teheran '43

This story starts in 1980 in Paris as the memories of Andrei Borodin, a Soviet agent, take the action back to 1943 during the Teheran meetings of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. A high-ranking Nazi officer developed a plan to assassinate the three world leaders in order to undermine the Allied forces. He commissioned the German agent Max Richard to carry out his plan, but it failed miserably due to the quick action and thinking of Andrei. While in Teheran, Andrei met a French woman, Marie Louni, living in the city and they had a brief but intense affair. Nearly four decades later, the Nazi officer has been captured - but not for long. Freed by terrorists, the officer is hunting down the German agent who failed to carry out the planned assassinations. Max lives at Françoise, a young French woman, who hides him.

9 Songs

Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.

Blade Runner

In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.

Léon: The Professional

Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.

Match Point

Chris, a former tennis pro, takes a job as an instructor and befriends his wealthy young student, Tom. After being introduced to his family, Chris is soon engaged to Tom's sister, Chloe. Despite the professional and financial advantages that this relationship affords him, Chris becomes obsessed with Tom's fiancee, American actress Nola.

Freaks

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

Groundhog Day

A narcissistic TV weatherman, along with his attractive-but-distant producer, and his mawkish cameraman, is sent to report on Groundhog Day in the small town of Punxsutawney, where he finds himself repeating the same day over and over.

Mifune

Kresten, newly wed, is on the threshold of a great career success in his father-in-law’s company. But when the death of his own father takes him back to his poverty-stricken childhood home, far out in the country, his career plans fall apart. For one thing he has to deal with his loveable, backward brother, who is now all alone; for another, he meets a stunning woman who comes to the farm as a housekeeper, in disguise of her real profession as a call-girl.

Breaking the Waves

In a small, conservative Scottish village, an oilman is paralyzed in an accident. His wife, who prayed for his return, feels guilty; even more, when he urges her to have sex with another.

Blackmail

London, 1929. Frank Webber, a very busy Scotland Yard detective, seems to be more interested in his work than in Alice White, his girlfriend. Feeling herself ignored, Alice agrees to go out with an elegant and well-mannered artist who invites her to visit his fancy apartment.

Fight Club

A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.

The Hours

The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.

Full Metal Jacket

A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the U.S.-Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.

Easy Rider

Wyatt and Billy, two Harley-riding hippies, complete a drug deal in Southern California and decide to travel cross-country in search of spiritual truth.

Trainspotting

Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind as Begbie and Sick Boy come knocking.

Bridget Jones's Diary

Bridget Jones is an average woman struggling against her age, her weight, her job, her lack of a man, and her various imperfections. As a New Year's resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. The fireworks begin when her charming though disreputable boss takes an interest in the quirky Miss Jones. Thrown into the mix are Bridget's band of slightly eccentric friends and a rather disagreeable acquaintance into whom Bridget cannot seem to stop running or help finding quietly attractive.

Finding Neverland

During a writing slump, playwright J.M. Barrie meets a widow and her four children, all young boys—who soon become an important part of Barrie’s life and the inspiration that lead him to create his masterpiece. Peter Pan.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.

Natural Born Killers

Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

About a Boy

Will Freeman is a good-looking, smooth-talking bachelor whose primary goal in life is avoiding any kind of responsibility. But when he invents an imaginary son in order to meet attractive single moms, Will gets a hilarious lesson about life from a bright, but hopelessly geeky 12-year-old named Marcus. Now, as Will struggles to teach Marcus the art of being cool, Marcus teaches Will that you're never too old to grow up.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien who has come to Earth in search of water to save his home planet. Aided by lawyer Oliver Farnsworth, Thomas uses his knowledge of advanced technology to create profitable inventions. While developing a method to transport water, Thomas meets Mary-Lou, a quiet hotel clerk, and begins to fall in love with her. Just as he is ready to leave Earth, Thomas is intercepted by the U.S. government, and his entire plan is threatened.

Straw Dogs

David Sumner, a mild-mannered academic from the United States, marries Amy, an Englishwoman. In order to escape a hectic stateside lifestyle, David and his wife relocate to the small town in rural Cornwall where Amy was raised. There, David is ostracized by the brutish men of the village, including Amy's old flame, Charlie. Eventually the taunts escalate.

Blow-Up

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

The Prestige

A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.

Princesses

Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.

El Topo

El Topo decides to confront warrior Masters on a trans-formative desert journey he begins with his 6 year old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man.

Kidulthood

A day in the life of a group of troubled 15-year-olds growing up in west London.

Flawless

A female executive and a night janitor conspire to commit a daring diamond heist from their mutual employer, The London Diamond Corporation.

Mesocafé

A few weeks before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an underground blogger risks his life by travelling from Baghdad to London to campaign for the lifting of UN Sanctions on Iraq. As political intrigue thwarts his heartfelt attempts to highlight the suffering of his people under the sanctions, he takes refuge at Mesocafé, a little Baghdad in West London. With their Arab, Assyrian, Jewish and Kurdish heritage, members of the Iraqi community allow him into their lives, sharing with him their stories and dreams. It is here that he meets the beautiful Bisan.

Last Swim

It’s summer in London. On her final day of freedom, Ziba, a promising British-Iranian teen, leads her friends on an eventful journey, while secretly grappling with a life-changing decision.

All the Truth About Schelps

Three men are united around the coffin of a woman they have never seen before. They have been summoned to the morgue by their old school-friend, now a factory boss, who promised the old, lonely lady a decent funeral.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

Vanishing Point

Kowalski works for a car delivery service, and takes delivery of a 1970 Dodge Challenger to drive from Colorado to San Francisco. Shortly after pickup, he takes a bet to get the car there in less than 15 hours.

Betty Blue

A lackadaisical handyman and aspiring novelist tries to support his younger girlfriend as she slowly succumbs to madness.

Pink Floyd: The Wall

A troubled rock star descends into madness in the midst of his physical and social isolation from everyone.

The Hunger

Five-thousand-year-old vampire Miriam promises her lovers the gift of eternal life. When John, her cellist companion for centuries, discovers that he has suddenly begun growing old, he attempts to seek out the help of Dr. Sarah Roberts, a researcher on the mechanisms of aging.

Following

Bill, an idle, unemployed aspiring writer, walks the crowded streets of London following randomly chosen strangers, a seemingly innocent entertainment that becomes dangerous when he crosses paths with a mysterious character.

The Commitments

Jimmy Rabbitte, just a thick-ya out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.

Stroszek

Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.

Love, Money, Love

David, a recently fired scrapyard worker and Marie, a prostitute, both about 20 years old, meet on New Year's Eve in Berlin and decide to run away together. As David's arm is plastered from an accident Marie continues to prostitute herself to finance their restless journey through the Ruhr area. Their love and their will to survive guide them though all problems.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

London, England, on the eve of World War II. Guinevere Pettigrew, a strict governess who is unable to keep a job, is fired again. Lost in the hostile city, a series of fortunate circumstances lead her to meet Delysia LaFosse, a glamorous and dazzling American jazz singer whose life is a chaos ruled by indecision, a continuous battle between love and fame.

Cashback

After a painful breakup, Ben develops insomnia. To kill time, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket, where his artistic imagination runs wild.

Repulsion

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

Somers Town

Two teenagers, both newcomers to London, forge an unlikely friendship over the course of a hot summer. Tomo is a runaway from Nottingham; Marek lives in the district of Somers Town, between King's Cross and Euston stations, where his dad is working on a new rail link.

Great Expectations

In this Dickens adaptation, orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.

Black Bag

When intelligence agent Kathryn Woodhouse is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband – also a legendary agent – faces the ultimate test of whether to be loyal to his marriage, or his country.

The Dead Girl

The clues to a young woman's death come together as the lives of seemingly unrelated women begin to intersect.

Mes amis, mes amours

Two divorced fathers Mathias and Antoine, decide to raise their children together in London. Their lives consist of Sophie the pretty florist secretly in love with Antoine, Yvonne who runs the 'bistrot français' and has a very maternal outlook on life and Mac Enzie, the boss of Antoine's agency who is completley in love with Yvonne despite the big age difference.

if....

In an English boys' boarding school, social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. Three Lower Sixth students, Wallace, Johnny and leader Mick Travis decide on a shocking course of action to redress the balance of privilege once and for all.

Zulu

In 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War, man-of-the-people Lt. Chard and snooty Lt. Bromhead are in charge of defending the isolated and vastly outnumbered Natal outpost of Rorke's Drift from tribal hordes.

Hyena

Good policing doesn't necessarily mean doing everything by the book. But as the business of crime in London turns to favour the Albanians and Turks, how does a "good" policeman survive?

Deceiver

The gruesome death of a prostitute brings suspicion on one of her clients, James Wayland, a brilliant, self-destructive and epileptic heir to a textile fortune. So detectives Braxton and Kennesaw take Wayland in for questioning, thinking they can break the man. But despite his troubles, Wayland is a master of manipulation, and during the interrogation, he begins to turn the tables on the investigators, forcing them to reveal their own sinister sides.

The Long Good Friday

In the late 1970s, Cockney crime boss Harold Shand, a gangster trying to become a legitimate property mogul, has big plans to get the American Mafia to bankroll his transformation of a derelict area of London into the possible venue for a future Olympic Games. However, a series of bombings targets his empire on the very weekend the Americans are in town. Shand is convinced there is a traitor in his organization, and sets out to eliminate the rat in typically ruthless fashion.

London to Brighton

It's 3:07am and two girls burst into a run down London toilet. Joanne is crying her eyes out and her clothing is ripped. Kelly's face is bruised and starting to swell. Duncan Allen lies in his bathroom bleeding to death. Duncan's son finds his father and wants answers. Derek – Kelly's pimp – needs to find Kelly or it will be him who pays.

Sid and Nancy

January 1978. After their success in England, the punk rock band Sex Pistols venture out on their tour of the southern United States. Temperamental bassist Sid Vicious is forced by his band mates to travel without his troubled girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, who will meet him in New York. When the band breaks up and Sid begins his solo career in a hostile city, the turbulent couple definitely falls into the depths of drug addiction.

All or Nothing

Penny works at a supermarket and Phil is a gentle taxi-driver. Penny’s love for Phil has run dry and they lead joyless lives with their two children, Rachel, a cleaner, and Rory, who is unemployed and aggressive.

Accattone

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.

Shadows in the Sun

An aspiring young writer tracks a literary titan suffering from writers block to his refuge in rural Italy and learns about life and love from the irascible genius and his daughters.

Sabotage

Karl Anton Verloc and his wife own a small cinema in a quiet London suburb where they live seemingly happily. But Mrs. Verloc does not know that her husband has a secret that will affect their relationship and threaten her teenage brother's life.

Taxali Gate

In the red light district of Lahore, when the daughter of an underprivileged wedding dancer is raped by the powerful Choudhary's son, the neighbourhood pimp and the top prostitute help the pair seek justice.

The Brown Bunny

Bud Clay races motorcycles in the 250cc Formula II class of road racing. After a race in New Hampshire, he has five days to get to his next race in California. During his road trip, he is haunted by memories of the last time he saw Daisy, his true love.

Croupier

Jack Manfred is an aspiring writer who to make ends meet, takes a job as a croupier. Jack remains an observer, knowing that everything in life is a gamble and that gamblers are born to lose. Inevitably, he gets sucked into the world of the casino which takes its toll on his relationships and the novel he is writing.