Transmitted as part of BBC Schools series Scene, 8 March 1973. Actor improvisations around the theme of gambling devised by Mike Leigh.
Social & External
Martin
Carol
Steve
Food is a unifying force across our communities. In this short film, we share the stories of three Latinos - each from a different country but now living in the same American city - who come together to share flavors of their homeland, all of which include one central ingredient.
Originating in Europe in the 16th century, the Mennonites are a Protestant religious sect, related to the Amish. Instead of compromising their way of life, they have been continually forced to migrate around the world to maintain their freedom to live as they choose and have found a home in Mexico.
A mother's quest to find her missing son leads her to the gates of Mictlán, a mystical place where souls parade to their final destination.
An almost dialogueless, poetic impression of an insecure teenager’s dilemma. Alexander spends his first holiday alone in an old beach cabin. Longing for affection, but searching for his identity, he stays inside. From the cabin, he watches the people on the beach. On a diving board, in the middle of the sand, he spots someone who is making some dance moves. Hesitant at first, but increasingly uninhibited, Alexander mimics him, which yields a cautious dance duet at a safe distance. Will he dare to make the next move?
Night. A man drowns in a rough sea. A lighthouse guard risks his life to save a drowned man. He gives him food, gives him his bed. When the lighthouse guard falls asleep, the rescued man steals his boat. As the next lighthouse approaches, he submerges the boat and starts shouting for help.
Emil and Adam are two guys in their 20's. They are close friends, and after a night at the movies, Emil is going to sleep over at Adam's. Emil has unspoken feelings for Adam - feelings that are tested when they are sleeping in the same double bed.
Adolfo Kaminsky started saving lives when chance and necessity made him a master forger. As a teenager, he became a member of the French Resistance and used his talent to save the lives of thousands of Jews. The Forger is a well-crafted origin story of a real-life superhero.
'Sacrifice' follows the love story between James Hunter and Blake Robinson as they begin a new phase in their life together. Forces out of their control tear them apart but to what extent and consequence? How much will they sacrifice? A traditional military love story from a perspective which has not yet been seen before.
The testimonies of the Mashteuiatsh Puakuteu women's committee punctuate this intimate short film about mourning and healing. Throughout the doll-making workshops, the women share their doubts and hopes and build a space filled with strength and solidarity.
A personal, subjective journey into the mind of Greta Thunberg, before realizing her calling as a climate activist. While struggling with mental health issues and bullying because of her Aspergers, she also grapples with the sense of impending doom due to the climate crisis. These same struggles and fears drive her to make change and become the person she is today.
Based on the true story of the rise and fall of poker legend Stu "The Kid" Ungar.
This is the story of a young man being held in prison, recounting his life as a college dropout who had met and fallen in love with a beautiful girl named Nona while aimlessly hitchhiking in search of his father's tomb. He is then seduced by Nona into murdering several innocent bystanders. Somewhere near Stephen King's fictional town of Castle Rock, Nona lures the narrator to a graveyard, and, when asking the repeated question 'Do you love?' leads him to madness. It is not immediately clear whether or not the narrator has encountered a supernatural force, or if Nona is a figment of insanity until the last unexpected twist.
While preparing for the anticipated summer party in a cramped bathroom, Mercedes navigates her blossoming desires.
A young man confesses his sexual past to an unseen phone sex operator. He reflects on his sexual identity as we follow him on a solitary excursion to a beach.
Nicolas and Sofia's path cross by chance in the subway, and together they spend the night talking about their existential crises, desires and their life filosofies. They fall in love as the hours fly by, but they both know it will be the first and last night together.
"The Big Meet" follows drunken writer Blake (Lane Carlson) on an absurd adventure with a macho stranger called Nate (Mike Genovese) he meets in a bar. Several drinks later, the impaired writer is lured into a haphazard plot to murder his newfound companion.
Fragile in Love is an experimental short that rebels against the suppression of electronic music culture and gay house parties.
Two joggers attempt to restart their run after their paths intersect.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
A dramatization of the life of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Don Cheadle), with a lot of factual based occurrences. A reformed junkie returns from prison to clean up his act and devote the rest of his life to the young kids of Harlem. 1996 was the 25th anniversary of the first tournament named after him.
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Two great lawyers argue the case for and against a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution.
Based on the true story of the notorious 1957 ‘mob summit’ in upstate New York. Spearheaded by Vito Genovese, more than 50 leaders of the organized crime syndicates from around the country converged on the sleepy town to discuss upcoming expansion plans. Their plans are foiled when local police trooper Ed Croswell discovers their activities and, consequently, exposes the mob to the American public. Croswell’s actions shed light on the massive web of corruption and changed the face of law enforcement forever.
An African-American woman becomes an unwitting pioneer for medical breakthroughs when her cells are used to create the first immortal human cell line in the early 1950s.
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
After a dispute over a winning lottery ticket turns into a deadly hostage situation, the witnesses must decide exactly how far they’ll go—and how much blood they’re willing to spill—for a cut of the $156 million.
In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.
Tiffany, Charlie and Vernon are con artists looking to up the ante from their typical scams. They figure a good way of doing this is taking down Dean "The Dean" Stevens, a well-known cardsharp, in a rigged game. However, they first need enough money to enter a game with Stevens, so they decide to strike a deal with fellow crook Larry Jennings to scam a local gangster -- which turns out to be a bad idea.
An interpol agent and an attorney are determined to bring one of the world's most powerful banks to justice. Uncovering money laundering, arms trading, and conspiracy to destabilize world governments, their investigation takes them from Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul. Finding themselves in a chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk.
Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.
Based on true events. A disgraced police detective seeking redemption goes undercover to expose a violent crime syndicate. But as he sinks deeper into the mob, the price for absolution may be higher than he can afford.
Two brothers, on either side of the law, face off over organized crime in Brooklyn during the 1970s.
Eddie Dodd is a burnt out former civil rights lawyer who now specializes in defending drug dealers. Roger Baron, newly graduated from law school, has followed Eddie's great cases and now wants to learn at his feet. With Roger's idealistic prodding, Eddie reluctantly takes on a case of a young Korean man who, according to his mother, has been in jail for eight years for a murder he didn't commit.
Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
A Midwestern husband and father announces his plan to have a sex change operation.
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.
