Production

John Archer

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Home poster
NR

For the people of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides, life changed dramatically in the latter part of the last century. Traditional ways of life eroded, and many families were forced to move away. Drawing on rare 8mm colour film of Berneray, directors Andy MacKinnon and Kirsty MacDonald offer a bridge between the contemporary citizens and their not-so-distant past. The result is a film of great emotion that speaks to the importance of place and the resilience of culture through language, song and memories.

Home

2022

My Old School poster
7.0

In 1993, 16-year-old Brandon Lee enrolled at Bearsden Academy, a secondary school in a well-to-do suburb of Glasgow, Scotland. What followed over the next two years would become the stuff of legend.

My Old School

2022

No artwork available
NR

In the 1970s, Mark Vonnegut, son of renowned sci-fi author Kurt Vonnegut, leads his friends out of Nixon's broken America to Eden, where they can build something good. His friends are in paradise but Mark begins hearing strange voices. Becoming increasingly threatening, Mark must battle to keep Eden alive.

The Eden Express

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock poster
6.7

Directed by Mark Cousins, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock re-examines the vast filmography and legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock, through a new lens: through the auteur’s own voice.

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock

2023

Bogancloch poster
7.5

Bogancloch is where Jake Williams lives, nestled in a vast highland forest of Scotland. The film portrays his life throughout the seasons, with other people occasionally crossing into his otherwise solitary life. At the heart a song, an argument between life and death, each stating their case to rule over the world. The film is without exposition, it aims at something less recognisable, a different existence of reality observed in discrete moments. A sequel to Two Years at Sea (2011), charting a subtly changing life in a radically changing world.

Bogancloch

2025

Tish poster
9.0

A working-class photographer captures the impact of Thatcherism on the north of England but is unable to escape the poverty and inequality she exposed.

Tish

2023

The Golden Spurtle poster
7.3

In a quaint Scottish village in the Highlands, contenders from around the globe gather to compete for the title of World Porridge Champion armed only with oats, salt and water. As the ailing Porridge Chieftain's tenure ends, he embarks on a mission to find a successor. Amidst intense rivalries and the charm of eccentric locals, this documentary delves into the legacy of the village and unveils a captivating culinary spectacle.

The Golden Spurtle

2025

Stop All the Clocks: W.H. Auden in an Age of Anxiety poster
NR

Thirty years after his BBC film The Auden Landscape, director Adam Low returns to the poet and his work. Following surges of popularity - from featuring in Four Weddings And A Funeral to being the poet New Yorkers turned to after 9/11 - Low reveals how Auden’s poetry helps us to better understand the 21st century and the tumultuous political climate in which we now live.

Stop All the Clocks: W.H. Auden in an Age of Anxiety

2017

Dream Me Up Scotty! poster
NR

Alex Norton discovers how showbusiness has handled the portrayal of the Scottish accent. For over 100 years audiences have struggled to understand our braw brogue: silent Harry Lauder films attempted an accent in the captions, and in Hollywood's golden era , everyone wanted to paint their tonsils tartan- but as examples from Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles and Richard Chamberlain show, they couldnae. Then Disney made Brave and proved that it disnae have to be all bad!

Dream Me Up Scotty!

2013

Make Me Up poster
6.2

Siri wakes to find herself trapped inside a brutalist candy-coloured dreamhouse. Despite the cutesy decor, the place is far from benign, and she and her inmates are encouraged to compete for survival while being watched over by surveillance cameras, 24/7. Presiding over the group is an authoritarian diva who speaks entirely with the voice of Kenneth Clark from the 1960s BBC series Civilisation. As she forces the women to go head-to-head in a series of demeaning tasks, Siri, with the help of fellow inmate Alexa, starts subverting the rules and soon reveals the sinister truth that underpins their world.

Make Me Up

2018

Songs from the Life of Leonard Cohen poster
7.0

Portrait of Canadian singer, songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen, recorded in 1988. Featuring interviews, archive film and live performances from London, Paris, Athens and New York.

Songs from the Life of Leonard Cohen

1988

No artwork available
5.5

Tracing the history and influence of Iranian cinema and its filmmakers.

Cinema Iran

2005

Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise poster
6.7

Using only archive film and a new musical score by the band Mogwai, Mark Cousins presents an impressionistic kaleidoscope of our nuclear times – protest marches, Cold War sabre-rattling, Chernobyl and Fukishima – but also the sublime beauty of the atomic world, and how x-rays and MRI scans have improved human lives. The nuclear age has been a nightmare, but dreamlike too.

Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise

2015

No artwork available
NR

Why are so many Scots throwing off their clothes in wild abandon to embrace the midges and chilly climate of Scotland?

Wearing the One Button Suit

2003

The Story of Film: A New Generation poster
7.4

The final chapter of his exceptional 15-part documentary exploring the history of cinema, The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Mark Cousins builds a bridge between the “before” of the health crisis, and the “after”.

The Story of Film: A New Generation

2021

Oscar Marzaroli - Man with a Camera poster
NR

Paris had Cartier-Bresson, New York - Diane Arbus and Glasgow - Oscar Marzaroli. Man with a Camera celebrates the life and work of Glasgow's pre-eminent photographer, using some of the 50,000 shots taken over thirty years - a moving portrait of a love affair between a man and his city, and the affection in which he is held today. Marzaroli's black-and-white photographs have become synonymous with a post-war Scotland in the throes of regeneration. They captured both the aspects of the old, such as the rag-and-bone man in the Gorbals or the cockle gatherers of Barra, and the paraphernalia of the new - cranes, towers and construction at Glasgow's Charing Cross. As Glasgow's landscape changes once again and the high-rises that Marzaroli documented going up are gradually being razed to the ground, this film celebrates Marzaroli's remarkable photographic legacy.

Oscar Marzaroli - Man with a Camera

2014

I Am Belfast poster
6.6

Belfast, it's a city that is changing, changing because the people are leaving? But one came back, a 10,000 year old woman who claims that she is the city itself.

I Am Belfast

2016