The story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of 19th century English farm labourers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages.
The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an...
When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.
The story of the extraordinary friendship between Scottish film maker Bill Douglas and his lifelong companion and collaborator Peter Jewell. Bill Douglas was Scotland’s finest director, celebrated by the likes of Lynne Ramsay, Lenny Abrahamson, Satajit Ray and Yuliya Solntseva. Bill’s life was...
Jamie leaves the children's home to live with his paternal grandmother. After working in a mine and in a tailor's shop, he is conscripted into the RAF, and goes to Egypt, where he is befriended by Robert, whose undemanding companionship releases Jamie from self-pity.
Celebrated filmmaker Bill Douglas’s early student short follows two men who meet in a cafe on a Southend pier. Glances, body language and very brief snatches of lewd dialogue suggest a pick-up, but the atmosphere soon darkens and events take an unexpected twist.
Set in the Necropolis graveyard, Glasgow. A comic and magical tale about the meaning of life and a hunt for a missing diamond ring. An ex-B movie starlet and her daughter search for the ring, lost many years ago whilst the mother was making love with a travelling salesman. Their antics are observed...
A Hitchcockian psychodrama about an introverted man who pursues a woman with whom he becomes obsessed, demonstrating Bill’s improving grasp of advanced film language.
Displaying the cinematic influence of Bunuel and Cocteau, and inspired by a short story by French writer JMG Le Clézio, Bill’s most experimental short depicts a psychiatric patient who travels to Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park, to warn anyone who will listen about the impending nuclear holocaust.
An elderly woman is admitted to an asylum and all her possessions are removed by the council. The idea came from Peter Jewell, who was working as a social worker at the time, but is reminiscent of Bill's own family history.
Playing with the tropes of the spy genre, The Water Cress File charts the progress of a mysterious briefcase, passed between several characters on the streets of Soho and, in a metaphysical flourish, into a film showing in the Pavilion cinema.
A rare “talkie” displaying Bill’s gift for dialogue, Small World is a comedy of manners about two married couples who meet by chance at an outdoor café and think they have met before.
