Gaumont-British Instructional

Poetic tribute to Mrs Turner's vegetable growing prowess, plus the delights of "wartime steaks".

A dramatization to promote the Territorial Army.

Story of how two youngsters round up crooks planning to blow up the British fleet off Gibraltar.

Part two of two teaching films about human anatomy which is devoted to the action of the skeletal muscles in producing movement of the bones at the joints of the human skeleton. It uses live action and animated medical illustrations as well as an actual skeleton with commentary. A man, naked to the waist, also demonstrates the relevant physical processes such as respiration.

In Australia, five children pursue horse thieves through the mountains.

King Penguins are first seen in their natural habitat, the Antarctic, after which we see them in the Edinburgh Zoo. With slow-motion pictures we see how they swim with the use of their flippers and feet. Their mating and incubating of their eggs and later, the hatching of them; the rearing of the young at various stages of their growth are also shown.

Claustrophobic train-set comedy-thriller (produced by H.G. Wells son) with an ace reporter coming up against crooks intent on stealing a gold shipment on the Scotland to London express. A scatterbrained scientist, a gun-toting dame with revenge on her mind and a pair of eccentric spinster crime novelists – who steal the film – round out the motley band of passengers who cross the path of our intrepid hero as he tries to get his big scoop.

The Case of The Missing Scene is a children's crime thriller that has been designed in the tradition of classic British children's films. A camera team takes pictures of rare birds from a hide when a poacher happens to get into the picture. The evidence (namely shot 63) disappears under mysterious circumstances. As always in these films, the case can only be solved with the help of a few bright children.

Go with the flow: to gentle but spellbinding effect this innovative natural history film glimpses marine life astride rising tides at Millport on the Isle of Cumbrae. Urchins, lugworm, weaver-fish and crabs are the shy-but-elegant stars coaxed onto the screen (with the assistance of Millport’s local research station) for this archetypal edition of Gaumont-British Instructional’s 1930s cinema series Secrets of Life.

The lecturer shows a microcinematographic sequence of spirochaetes and drawings of the gonoccus (the bacteria responsible for syphilis and gonorrhea). He then turns to an easel and begins to draw 'the road of health'; the cartoon takes this up in magic drawing, in a style that is highly reminiscent of the 'Giro the Germ' series made for the Health and Cleanliness Council a few years before.

Explore London Zoo with one of its greediest residents, Sally the sparrow.

Adventures on a fishing boat as told by two young boys who experience what it takes to be a fisherman at sea.

Time-travel to a 1940s classroom with this exemplary educational film.

How to distinguish and deal with various insects that destroy vegetables.

A brisk visual summary of the changing faces of the English town throughout the ages, from the ancients and their hill-forts to the Second World War -- enlivened by the appearance of ghostly denizens to defend their eras against the narrator's various strictures!

In this dramatized warning to young women of the risks of venereal disease, Betty, a shop girl, pays a severe price for just one 'slip'.

The Secrets of Life series (1934-50) may not conform to modern expectations of nature filmmaking, inclined as it is towards giving cute fluffy creatures human names and characteristics. But it couldn't be accused of shielding kiddies from the harsher realities of the food chain, as this exercise in ruthless Darwinism demonstrates to unintentionally hilarious effect. A more than usually eccentric narrator introduces us to the newborn bunny quartet of Donald, James, Charles and Clifford, but as the film's title gives away, "the boys" aren't all long for this world as they face an assault course of hungry owls, predatory badgers, shotgun-happy gardeners and aerial bombardment (no harm in a little anti-Nazi detour, this is 1942 after all). (from http://player.bfi.org.uk/film/watch-once-we-were-four-1942/)

A party of children take an eye-opening tour of John Brown's Shipyard in Clydebank.

A look at the Lake District and its famous poet.

Documentary about the building of ships at Barrow-in-Furness.