Paul Rotha

In 1944 Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, a band of Dutch resistance fighters plot to covertly rescue dozens of compatriots from the local Nazi prison.

Open details →

A GI deserter frames a girl for killing a blackmailer, and holds her captive while seeking gems.

Open details →

The brilliant British documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha made his feature-film debut with 1950's No Resting Place. Filmed on location in Ireland, the film is a lightly fictionalized study of that country's itinerant workmen. Michael Gough plays tinker Alec Kyle, whose life is thrown into turmoil when he accidentally kills a man. Kyle spends the rest of the film evading Guard Mannigan (Noel Purcell), a civil servant who relies on instinct rather than scientific deduction to get his man. Without ever trying to elicit sympathy for his characters, director Rotha manages to compellingly detail the miserable living and working conditions of Ireland's nomad artisans.

Open details →

A documentary about how trading goods with the rest of the world works to help the UK economy after WWII.

Open details →

Urban utopia beckons in this idealistic vision of postwar Manchester - fascinating to revisit as Northern Powerhouses and city devolution return to the agenda. Sponsored by the city council, it's very ambitious for a local government film. Under the soaring, sweeping direction of Paul Rotha, it takes in themes of industry, energy, leisure and housing, present, past and future.

Open details →

Described as a 'film argument' about homes and houses, this film is in three parts showing houses as they were, houses as they are and houses as they might be.

Open details →

A look at how science is keeping British industry as high-tech and innovative as anywhere else in the world.

Open details →

Documentary on the young builders who'll rebuild Britain after the war.

Open details →

An opening narration explaining that the film's purpose is to examine the "world strategy of food", in terms of its production, distribution and consumption. The film is then divided into three parts: "Food - As It Was", "Food - As It Is" and "Food - As It Might Be".

Open details →

Documentary short depicting night workers in an armament factory making tank components for the war effort, the commentary largely being supplied by the workers themselves.

Open details →

World War II propaganda film that shows the war-time agricultural work of women from the Women's Institute.

Open details →

Childcare for working women during the Second World War.

Open details →

Made with the full cooperation of Imperial Airways and written by novelist Graham Greene, the film examines how a letter could travel from the Australia Outback, across the jungles, mountains, and steppes of the Empire to arrive in England. The Rotha-produced film was careful to draw contrasts between the air delivery of mail and the ancient monuments like the Pyramids and Angkor Wat.

Open details →

Sharjah airport in the 1930's showing the airport, town, Emirate and Imperial Airways staff. An early British documentary produced by many pioneers of the medium.

Open details →

Two case studies highlighting the work of the National Council of Social Service: the conversion of a barn into a village hall in South Cerney, Gloucestershire, and the building of an occupational centre in the depressed mining village of Pentre in the Rhondda Valley, Wales.

Open details →

The film sequences were represented by the premiere of the now thought lost short 'Cover To Cover' directed by Paul Rotha. This short film illustrated the production of a book. Added comments from such luminaries as Julian Huntley and TS. Eliot added class.

Open details →

Short campaigning documentary putting the case for "peace by reason" rather than through re-arming.

Open details →