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Political Pictures
When asked what a government most fears, one prime minister declared, "Events, dear boy. Events". These films chart events and people, real and imagined, who dared to ask for change, for power and for more.
From the revolutionary stirrings of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin to the intellectual interrogation of The Stuart Hall Project, our collection offers an entryist route into cinema's body-politic: where radical thought meets imperative image-making.
Land and FreedomLand and Freedom
War 1995 105 minsDirector: Ken Loach
Ken Loach’s passionate war drama follows an idealistic young Liverpudlian (Ian Hart) who fights for the international brigade during the Spanish Civil War.
The Stuart Hall ProjectThe Stuart Hall Project
Documentary 2013 99 minsDirector: John Akomfrah
Composed of film, music and photographs from the archives, a fascinating portrait of the life and times of the founder of cultural studies and the New Left Experience.
ComradesComrades
Historical drama 1987 182 minsDirector: Bill Douglas
Bill Douglas' epic story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, six Dorset labourers deported to Australia in the 1830s for forming a trade union.
WinstanleyWinstanley
Biopic 1976 96 minsDirector: Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo
An authentic historical drama about the visionary Gerrard Winstanley who led a group of impoverished 'Diggers' to assert their common rights.
SkinflickerSkinflicker
Drama 1973 41 minsSilentDirector: Tony Bicât
Tony Bicât’s radical, found-footage record of a revolutionary act, in which three dissidents kidnap a cabinet and torture a cabinet minister.
Little MalcolmLittle Malcolm
Drama 1975 111 minsDirector: Stuart Cooper
Delusional revolutionary Malcolm Scrawdyke (John Hurt) leads his Party of Dynamic Erection in a battle against an unseen nemesis in this dark comedy.
Laboured PartyLaboured Party
Documentary 1975 20 minsDirector: Stephen Dwoskin
An unsuspecting Labour Party canvasser stumbles onto an experimental film set and is drawn into a strange atmosphere of uninhibited abandon.
Riddles of the SphinxRiddles of the Sphinx
Drama 1977 87 minsDirector: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen
Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s visually accomplished and intellectually rigorous film is one of the most important avant-garde films of the 1970s.
Before the RevolutionBefore the Revolution
Drama 1964 107 minsDirector: Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci's beautifully operatic film celebrates the passion and ideology of the 1960s, winner of the Cannes Critics' Week prize in 1964.
AscendancyAscendancy
Drama 1983 82 minsDirector: Edward Bennett
An English aristocrat is driven to despair over the effects of violence on her family, in this powerful meditation on the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
That Hamilton WomanThat Hamilton Woman
Biopic 1941 120 minsDirector: Alexander Korda
Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier bring Hollywood glitz to the love affair between Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton in the midst of political turmoil.
The Birth of a NationThe Birth of a Nation
Historical drama 1915 191 minsSilentDirector: D.W. Griffith
D W Griffith's highly controversial and abhorrently racist, yet historically significant American silent epic about the American Civil War and its aftermath.
Battleship PotemkinBattleship Potemkin
Historical drama 1925 69 minsSilentDirector: Sergei M. Eisenstein
A fixture in the critical canon almost since its premiere, Eisenstein’s film about a 1905 naval mutiny was revolutionary in both form and content.