Directed by Stuart A. Staples • Documentary • With tindersticks • 2016 • 55 minutes
This meditative, immersive film by tindersticks' Stuart A. Staples is a tribute to the astonishing work and achievements of naturalist, inventor and pioneering British filmmaker F. Percy Smith (1880-1945).
Based in a studio in north London in the early years of the 20th century, Percy Smith developed the use of time-lapse, animation and micro-photographic techniques to capture nature's secrets in action. He worked in a number of public roles, including the Royal Navy and British Instructional Films, Smith was prolific and driven, often directing several films simultaneously, apparently on a mission to explore and capture nature's hidden terrains.
Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith is an interpretative work that combines Smith's original film footage - preserved within the BFI National Archive - with a new contemporary score by tindersticks with Thomas Belhom and Christine Ott. It creates a hypnotic, alien yet familiar dreamscape that connects us to the sense of wonder Smith must have felt as he peered through his own lenses and saw these micro-worlds for the first time.
Directed by Karel Reisz & Tony Richardson • Documentary • With Chris Barber, Monty Sunshine, Pat Halcox, Ron Bowden • 1956 • 22 minutes
This lively Free Cinema short captures a night out at the Wood Green Jazz Club, where teenagers jive to trad jazz. Funded by the BFI Experimental Film Fund,...
Directed by Basil Charles Wright • Documentary • With Lionel Wendt, Alberto Cavalcanti, John Grierson, Stuart Legg, Basil Charles Wright • 1934 • 38 minutes
The Song of Ceylon was originally commissioned as a series of short travelogues, but spawned an ambitious film transforming travelogue (exo...
Directed by Sue Clayton & Jonathan Curling • Documentary • With Martha Gibson, Geraldine Pilgrim, Anna Mcniff, Liz Myers, Jill Greenhalgh, • 1979 • 135 minutes
The plight of women in the 1840s London rag trade is explored and deconstructed. Informed by experimental film practice and evoking ...
