12 Apr 1985
Blaue Blumen
Herbert Achternbusch's poetic travel diary assembles images and monologues from a trip to China.
The remote island of St. Helena, a British possession located in the south Atlantic, is perhaps best known as where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled/imprisoned for the final six years of his life and where he died in 1821. His legacy on the island remains today, despite his body being disinterred and moved back to France in 1840. His home was at Longwood, one area of the island now ceded to the French in respect of its former resident. The island was discovered and named by the Portuguese in 1502. Until the British took over, many other European countries had or wanted possession of the island because of its location along natural trade routes. Jamestown is the island's only port, named after King James. With 4,000 inhabitants, St. Helena is self supporting, growing primarily potatoes and flax. However, its primary economic generator is the sale of the rare St. Helena postage stamp.

Narrator (voice)
12 Apr 1985
Herbert Achternbusch's poetic travel diary assembles images and monologues from a trip to China.

26 Nov 2020

Inspired by Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, a girl decides to make her own rendition of Marker's mesmerising voyage through Japan, only for it to turn awry when she encounters another girl - a recurring stranger - haunting her path.
David Lloyd George tours Germany, escorted by Nazi government officials, while his chauffeurs lark about with an SS Officer. Lloyd George was pro-German from the mid-1920s, and met Adolf Hitler in 1936. However, by 1938 he had become a leading opponent of appeasement with Germany. This film is believed to have been shot by George Ryder, Lloyd George's chauffeur.

03 Jun 1925

Sports enthusiast Ernest is to cover 6,000 kilometers on his motorcycle in 15 days, crossing Austria, Italy, Switzerland, the Balkans and Czechoslovakia.

01 Feb 2023

Travel films have an established format with their own conventions, history and baggage. It is a medium that has all too often sought to control, define and dictate perceptions of ”other” places. Comprised of footage shot while travelling on group excursions across Russia in 2019, An Uncountable Number of Threads is an attempt to draw out the ethical restrictions of a travelogue, while questioning how (and why) to make one. At times there is an awkward tourist-gaze, aware of its outsider position. But as a self-reflexive work that considers its own creation, it ultimately unravels, as the artist rationalises themselves out of a particular way of working, inviting the viewer into their uncertainty.
01 Jan 1916
To popularize the idea of automobile travel, Ford Motor Company produced Ford Educational Weekly, a film magazine distributed free to theaters. One 1916 series featured "Visits to American Cities." In this episode, Los Angeles is featured at the very beginning of the boom created by oil, movies and aircraft. On the occasion of its centennial in 1953, Ford donated its film to the National Archives and Records Service; this copy derives from a fine grain master printed from the Archive's preservation negative. Music by Frederick Hodges.

02 Mar 1983

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

02 Jun 1906

Early film of a crowded street scene in an unidentified Indian city.

15 Jun 1966

Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer is one of the first and most influential surf movies of all time. The film documents American surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they travel the world during California’s winter (which, back in 1965 was off-season for surfing) in search of the perfect wave and ultimately, an endless summer.

01 Jan 2009

When Tomoko finds some messages for a 'Mr Smith' on a lost mobile phone, she finds herself on an 'Alice in Wonderland' journey through Tokyo's boulevards and back alleys. From the tyranny of symmetry in soaring office blocks - to buildings that look like space-ships, this creative documentary shows us the city's soul.

29 Sep 2017

The reception ebbs and flows as the unfamiliar landscape whirls by the window of a plane or train or car. Communication is delayed, fragmented, interrupted. Memories of a distant country.

01 Jan 1910

Whistlestop tour of Dartmouth in Devon, taking in the 17th century Butterwalk arcade and medieval castle.

01 May 1962

Take a revealing tour along a coast of contrasts, from the folksy freshness of Whitby to the coaly Tyne, queen of all rivers.

01 May 1916

Pure tranquillity in rural Somerset, a world away from the war raging on the continent.

01 May 1920

Big fan of episcopal residences? Take a rose-tinted look at the historic city of Wells.

01 May 1957

Haunting colour travelogue taking in Ulster, Lewis, Lincoln and Cardiff's Tiger Bay.

01 Jan 1957

However impressive the site is, however bossy the guides are, the visitors of the Musée Napoléon listen only absent-mindedly. Does this young lady really care about the tragic destiny of emperor Napoleon or Europe's changing face or isn't she more interested in her won reflection in a window case? And isn't the camera operator more prone to film the cornet wimples of visiting nuns than the fossilized remains of Napoleon's fallen grandeur...?

10 Feb 2020

Growing up in poverty as a child, Dylan dreamt of travelling the world on a motorcycle. Many years later he broke the shackles of a normal life and took to the road. After journeying 200,000km across four continents, the road from Panama to Colombia comes to an end, swallowed up by an impenetrable jungle. Dylan has no choice but to take to the sea, building a raft powered by his motorcycle engine in the hope of reaching Colombia's road network 700km away. He must brave strong ocean currents and storm batterings in his journey from Central to South America.—Journeyman Pictures

03 Feb 1914

Gorgeously dreamlike colour images of (then) French India – present-day Puducherry.

08 Nov 2021

The documentary tells how Bonaparte's passion - sometimes Bonaparte's obsession - for art and knowledge, has changed the face of modern culture: from the birth of schools, libraries and public museums (including Brera and the Louvre) to foundation of Egyptology thanks to the Egyptian campaign, from the extraordinary archaeological discoveries to the looting of works of art, up to the paintings and sculptures dedicated to him. We will enter the mind of Napoleon and his literary predilections, his psychology, his immoderate passion for self-affirmation, which so much inspired men of power, intellectuals, dictators over the following centuries.