Gaumont-British Instructional

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

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

A dramatization to promote the Territorial Army.

A teaching film about the human skeleton with animated medical illustrations as well as an actual skeleton with commentary. A man, naked to the waist, also demonstrates the relevant anatomy. X-ray cineradiography illustrates the movement of the arm.

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

Part of the archive's Junior Biology series, this study of maize is aided by diagrammatic, time-lapse, and microscopic footage.

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

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

A film based on a story by Leo Tolstoy about a cabinet maker, his wife and an angel punished by God.

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.

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'.

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!

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/)

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

A study of heredity in man, showing how both good and bad characteristics are passed on from one generation to the next.

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.

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.

This documentary starts with the theory as proposed by John Dalton in 1808, and outlines the progress made during the nineteenth century bringing in Faraday's early experiments in electrolysis, Mendeleeff's Periodic Table, and ending with ideas of the size of molecules and atoms then current. (Part 1 of 6)

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

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