John Eldridge

In rural Norfolk, villagers are spurred to action when it is announced that the nearby RAF station is taking over the Island of Children, a much-loved and untouched bird sanctuary, for rocket practice.

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A starchy parliamentary delegation is sent to a remote Scottish Highlands community, where the residents are protesting the poor condition of their road by withholding their taxes, and spend a few days among the locals.

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A young couple get involved with a smuggler

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A documentary that follows the flight of a BOAC Lancastrian airliner travelling from London to Sydney that offers some observations from the passengers and of the places en route (Sicily, Lydda, Karachi, Singapore and Darwin).

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Waverley Steps - subtitled ‘a visit to Edinburgh’ - is an evocative minor classic. John Eldridge’s film takes the semi-documentary form of a collage of scripted vignettes, at first disconnected but gradually overlapping. With visual grace, and a certain wit, the film entwines a coalman’s working day with students’ revels by night, the proceedings of a court with the rituals of a courtship.

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A soldier returns home from the Far Eastern theatre of conflict, but discovers that life back home isn't quite what he expected.

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Coventry prepares to rise from the ashes of WWII in this docu-drama written by Dylan Thomas.

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A romantic tour of Britain set to Dylan Thomas's poetry.

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An impressionistic survey, scripted by Dylan Thomas, of Wales at war. Continuity is provided by film of the Welsh countryside, which underlines the imagery of 'mountains' in which the whole film is couched: the balance of the film, which exists principally to illustrate the soundtrack, shows the castles left by the old war (against England), as an introduction to the new war - steelworkers - dockers - pithead scenes from the Rhondda mines - agriculture - sheep farming - agricultural research at Aberystwyth - quarrying - Welsh chapels - children - women (sewing, and at the whist drive) - Druids. Film concludes with a reminder of recent Welsh history - the social and economic changes that industry brought to the valleys, and the hardships of the depression, from which only the arrival of new industry with the war brought relief - "Remember the march of the old young men/It shall not happen again."

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Sheffield stands in as 'Smokedale', an industrial Everytown, in this stirring call for "new schools, new hospitals, new roads, new life", after WWII.

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Made in 1941, this stirring Ministry of Information dramatisation tells the story of a Crusader tank crew trapped behind enemy lines in the Desert. With no intercom, a wounded crewman and little fuel, they must fight their way through an Italian column to freedom.

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From Stonehenge to the reinforced concrete constructions of the 20th Century, 'Architects of England' takes us on a tour of Britain's architecture throughout the ages.

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A documentary about the Penlee Lifeboat and her crew, based around the Cornish fishing village of Mousehole.

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A real Buckinghamshire schoolteacher - the kindly Mrs James - is the star of this persuasive WWII propaganda film. Shot on location in Ashley Green, it shows how evacuees from surrounding towns adapt to village life and wartime conditions. With its images of happy, healthy children, the film was clearly designed to give reassurance to city-dwelling mothers separated from their offspring.

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Four teen-aged Teds are persuaded to form a rock group and undertake the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme to keep them out of trouble.

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When Germany invades Holland in 1940, a British intelligence officer and two Dutch diamond merchants go to Amsterdam to persuade the Dutch diamond merchants to evacuate their diamond supplies to England.

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The Cat Gang is a group of precocious British kids. They have a habit of hanging around a grown-up customs official who wishes that they'd beat it. But the Gang comes in handy when a smuggling gang arrives on the scene.

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Jean and Bill are a married couple trying to scrape a living. Out of the blue they receive a telegram informing them Bill's long-lost uncle has died and left them his business—a cinema in the town of Sloughborough. Unfortunately they can't sell it for the fortune they hoped as they discover it is falling down and almost worthless.

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The efforts of test pilot John Mitchell to make a better life for his wife Mary and their two children seem doomed to failure and he blames himself. At the Conway Aero-Manufacturing Company of Wolverhampton, Mitchell is to take the company's new rocket-propulsion transport plane up for tests, fully loaded and carrying two important passengers - Ministry official Crabtree and buyer's representative Ashmore. Mitchell learns from his boss, Reg Conway, that if Ashmore does not recommend the plane, the company will be out of business and Mitchell out of a job, since the plane is not even insured as the firm's entire capital is tied up in the plane. Aloft, an engine catches fire and the passengers and other crew bail out, but Mitchell refuses to obey orders to jettison the plane in the Irish Sea.

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