Movies: Gaumont British Instructional

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

They Made the Land (1938) is a documentary showcasing how land in Scotland was reclaimed and cultivated for agriculture. It explores the challenges of making a living from the land while highlighting the contributions of agricultural research and ani...

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...

A dramatization to promote the Territorial Army....

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 t...

A Secrets of Life short about the sawfly....

This film shows how and why the animals which inhabit a pond are dependent one on another for their survival. We see the minnow in pursuit of water fleas and a stickleback seeking worms to satisfy his need of fuel. Carbon-dioxide, we are reminded, is...

A retired Major's efforts to hone his golf skills are thwarted by the diminutive but defiant common daisy....

E.V.H. Emmett narrates this propaganda short about how sacrifices on the home front support the war effort....

A Secrets of Life short about the movement of animals....

A Secrets of Life short about the Sparrow Hawk....

A Secrets of Life short about waterfowl....

Explores the natural history of the otter, depicted through the fictitious account of a day in the life of Otto the Otter and his mother. The narrator claims that the short features "the first film ever taken of an otter swimming underwater."...

History - and natural history - filmed on location in Selborne, East Hampshire. This unusual edition of the long-running series Secrets of Life tells the story of the village's famous son, Rev Gilbert White, whose 1789 book The Natural History and An...

A Secrets of Life short....

A Secrets of Life short about the tawny owl....

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

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 he...

"If they were as rare as orchids we would probably rave about them" opens this film in the Secrets of Nature series, directed by the prolific Mary Field. The mesmerising time-lapse photography is offset by a jokey commentary voiced by EVH Emmett, the...

A Secrets of Life short about the production of seeds....