A group of boys, evacuated during World War II from London to a coastal town, form a gang and play war games. Too young to fight in the war and afraid it will be over by the time they come of age, the group members, who are also in the school’s Army Cadet Force initiate a battle with the local teenagers. Based on the novel “The Custard Boys”, by John Rae.
A re-enactment of one of the biggest frauds of all time. In 1969, the Equity Funding Corporation of America lacked the facts to make an accurate profit forecast because of computer troubles. They made a guess – two million dollars too optimistic. So two young executives fed fictitious insurance polices in the computer – all prefixed “99” so that they could easily be cancelled when the temporary loan was paid off. But the temptation to escalate the fraud became irresistible.
Produced in the 1970s, and at the time dubbed “The greatest wildlife film ever” by the BBC, this dramatic film records the struggle in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park to protect elephants from bow and arrow hunters supplying a rampant international ivory trade…. The film follows Tsavo’s warden, the late David Sheldrick, and his ranger force in their daily fight against armed poachers intent on wiping out Tsavo’s magnificent elephant herds and its dwindling population of Black Rhinos. We also follow the story of the baby elephants, rhino and other animals that have been orphaned due to poaching, and watch them as they are hand-reared and eventually return to the wild.
A portrait of Raymond Francombe, jobbing gardener and composer. Ray is a familiar figure around the centre of Bristol. What will not be known by most of those who pass him every day is that for years he has been composing sacred music – and, until this programme was made, he had never actually heard a note of it performed. In this film Derek Jones gets to know Ray, and attempts to have his music professionally assessed.
A young man is in love with an image in a picture frame. To find out if the love he feels is returned he picks a flower and starts picking the petals off it.
In 1974 the film Emmanuelle redefined the adult movie, with the British Board of Film Certification chairman James Ferman describing it as making “sex respectable in cinema”. With an X certificate it made a star of actress Sylvia Kristel and launched one of the most successful film franchises of all time. In the programme film-maker Alex Cox reviews the controversy, the censorship, and the way that Emmanuelle altered what was acceptable for film-makers to show on screen.
Teen angst, incest, and… what exactly is buried in the basement? This macabre, compellingly bizarro coming-of-age tale charts the strange goings-on within a family living in an isolated, rubble-strewn no-man’s land. One day, as 15-year-old Jack masturbates, his father drops dead. Mother follows shortly thereafter. Rather than tell anyone, Jack and older sister Julie assume the roles of father and mother to their two younger siblings—but take things to the extreme. Based on Ian McEwan’s gothic novel, this should-be cult classic is a gripping, wonderfully weird portrait of nontraditional family values.
