Carmen, a sultry woman, seduces a young soldier, Joe, in order to avoid imprisonment. However, when she leaves Joe for another man, he seeks revenge.

There’s no sexier pairing in the history of black cinema than Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. She died tragically young but this performance sees her at her best – vivacious, talented, full of agency and power - Catharine Des Forges

Dorothy Dandridge as Carmen Jones stands right at the top of my list. No compet find out more...

One of the most stylish and beautiful films ever made and a cult classic that helped to repopularise French cinema over here. A courier obsessed with a beautiful black opera singer enters an underworld of visual splendour and tortuous emotions where love and desire go a long way to realising dreams. Brilliant! find out more...

Delphine and Solange are twins, whose mother owns a cafe around which most of the action takes place, living in the seaside resort of Rochefort. One is a dancer the other a musician and both hope to further themselves and move on from the town. But both fall in love, Delphine with a sailor on shore leave and Solange with an American composer. "The Young Girls of Rochefort" is a lush homage to the heyday of Hollywood musicals, highly enjoyable with wonderful songs, dance and awesome pastel-shaded find out more...

Carmen is a terrorist who falls in love with a young cop guarding a bank that she and her gang try to rob. She leads him on, the pair of them legging it to her film-maker uncle's beach pad, while dragging the two of them closer to their ultimate doom. Carmen runs around naked a lot, string quartets play Beethoven, uncle (Godard himself) can't get his film act together and the romance fizzles out. As for you Bizet fans out there, make of it what you will, but 'Carmen' is in there, albeit in a con find out more...

It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

On the eve of World War One a magical drama unfolds as Tamino sets forth on a perilous journey in pursuit of love, light and peace in a world afflicted by darkness, death and destruction. The Magic Flute is Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Mozart's classic opera. find out more...

Powell and Pressburger's follow-up to The Red Shoes is a trio of stories concerning the perils and heartbreak of unrequited love. Although at times uneven and perilously close to kitsch, Hoffman remains a lavish and sumptuous spectacle of dance, music and film. find out more...

Based on Bizet's classic work but relocated to a South African township, U-Carmen is a hugely original piece of film making from director Mark Dornford-May. The film is sung and spoken in Xhosa, and features a truly outstanding performance from Pauline Malefane in the title role. The film won the Golden Bear at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival. find out more...