Loosely based around the actress Felicity Kendal's childhood in India, we follow her family's Shakespearian theatre group as they travel the country performing to an ever dwindling audience, the terminal victims of a burgeoning Bollywood. Shakespeare Wallah is one of the earliest Merchant Ivory films and is a delicate, intimate portrait of colonial demise and Indian self assertion. find out more...

Huge epic, set during the heyday of Republican Rome, in all its ostentatious glory. The story details the purchase and selection of slaves, the harsh discipline and routine of the gladiators' school, the new comradeship balked by the realisation that a gladiator must kill or be killed. Then the film really comes into its own with the superbly staged revolt and escape, led by the slave who, with his unlikely army, holds the Roman army at bay for four years. Magnificent, masterful....a classic! find out more...

Adapted from a Novokshenov novel this semi-ethnographic, semi-polemical epic follows a Mongol uprising against British occupiers not long after the communist revolution in Russia. When a young herdsman is captured by the British a twist of fate leads them to believe he is a descendant of Genghis Khan and, hoping that such a presence will pacify the people, he is dully installed as a puppet leader. This as you might expect turns out to be a terrible error of judgement on the part of the interlope find out more...

A 1960s indictment of both war and 19th Century British imperialism which caricatures the aristocracy as blood-thirsty snobs and the workers as cap doffing morons, a blend that led to disaster. A well researched, thought provoking drama starring just about any British thespian who wanted a job. Included on the DVD is the 1912 silent version of the Charge of the Light Brigade, from the studio of Thomas Edison. find out more...

Newly restored to its original splendour, this is a definitive Hollywood epic that charts the intrigues surrounding the Imperial throne, held by Marcus Aurelius and coveted by the corrupt Commodus, that led to the Romans' downfall at the hands of the Barbarians. Superbly portrayed, a cast of thousands, spectacular battle scenes, while La Loren provides the passion. Stunning sets and a stirring score.

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Sierra Leone 1942; Trevor Howard gives perhaps his best performance as the humane deputy police commissioner in debt to a local trader and being blackmailed for having an affair outside his failed marriage. In the book, riddled with guilt, he kills himself, one of the deepest sins of his Catholic faith, but in the film his death is accidental. Nevertheless this tale of torment is an atmospheric and noteworthy adaptation of one of Greene's works and a superbly acted depictation of religious and m find out more...

Between 1900-1913, filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon roamed the country filming the everyday lives of people at work and play. Discovered and restored by the British Film Institute, this is a remarkable and fascinating observation of Great Britain before the arrival of the World Wars. find out more...

Visually stunning biopic of Napoleon tracing his rise to power after exile in Elba and culminating in defeat by Wellington at Waterloo, and taking in along the way the consequences of the ravages of war on the common people. Aesthetically and technically impressive, though historically debatable. find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...

The good old English upper-lip is presented as a small band of squaddies face insurmountable odds against thousands of screaming darkies in a further attempt to paint the world map red. Seen "Custer's Last Stand" Mr Botha? Now try this for size. find out more...