The earliest surviving motion-picture film, and believed to be one of the very first moving images ever created, was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the LPCCP Type-1 MkII single-lens camera. It was taken on paper-based photographic film in the garden of Oakwood Grange, the Whitley family house in Roundhay, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire (UK), on 14 October 1888. The film shows Adolphe Le Prince (Le Prince’s son), Mrs. Sarah Whitley (Le Prince’s mother-in-law), Joseph Whitley, and Miss Harriet Hartley walking around in circles, laughing to themselves, and staying within the area framed by the camera. Roundhay Garden Scene is often associated with a recording speed of around 12 frames per second and runs for about 2 to 3 seconds.

A narrator recounts the state of Great Britain near the end of WWII via a visual diary for the titular baby boy born in September 1944.

Made in commemoration and celebration of the Jubilee of King George V, this is the story of the first twenty-five years of his reign, told through the many travels of a penny that was minted in the year of his accession: 1910. Through a series of individual stories, Royal Cavalcade covers a period of striking change in every area of life – from the suffragette movement to the trenches of World War One, the effects of the Depression to single events such as the first ever Royal Command Performance, featuring Anna Pavlova and George Robey.

This early, influential propaganda film blends documentary and studio footage to show the valiant efforts of the Royal Air Force to defend the British people against the Nazis.

The last remaining production of Le Prince's LPCC Type-16 (16-lens camera) is part of a gelatine film shot in 32 images/second, and pictures a man walking around a corner. Le Prince, who was in Leeds (UK) at that time, sent these images to his wife in New York City in a letter dated 18 August 1887.

Described as a 'film argument' about homes and houses, this film is in three parts showing houses as they were, houses as they are and houses as they might be.

Poetry by Rudyard Kipling, John Milton, and William Blake, and excerpts from speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, all read by Laurence Olivier, illuminate documentary footage of England during its defense against the Nazi blitz in World War II. This short film serves as both propaganda and as a rallying cry to the British people.

Herbert Ponting travelled to Antarctica with Captain Scott’s ill-fated South Pole expedition and filmed the stunning images that make up this extraordinary documentary. (Originally released in 1912 as With Captain Scott in the Antarctic, the material was re-edited and re-issued by Ponting in 1924 as The Great White Silence.)

Pioneer filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton was intrigued by the idea of a film about the history of the movies as early as 1915. He finally released a 52-minute feature called The Film Parade that was shown in New York and favorably reviewed by "Variety" in 1933. He continued tinkering with the film for the rest of the decade, and later filmmakers and distributors used Blackton's footage for stock or to produce their own variously titled and truncated versions. -UCLA Film & Television Archive

This early docudrama uses dramatic reenactment, working models of early flying machines, and archival footage to trace man's attempts to fly from ancient times through the 1930s.

A documentary account of the allied invasion of Europe during World War II compiled from the footage shot by nearly 1400 cameramen. It opens as the assembled allied forces plan and train for the D-Day invasion at bases in Great Britain and covers all the major events of the war in Europe from the Normandy landings to the fall of Berlin.

An uncredited Anthony Asquith is one of the directors of this WWII film (a joint UK/US production) which aims to explain British culture and character to the newly arrived American soldier. Starting with the ubiquitous pub visit, the film breezes through geography lessons, food and entertainment on the Home Front.

Drama-documentary, reconstructing a real incident in which a trawler got into difficulties in a North Sea storm. Released 7th March 1938.

A documentary on the life of the people of the Aran Islands, who were believed to contain the essence of the ancient Irish life, represented by a pure uncorrupted peasant existence centred around the struggle between man and his hostile but magnificent surroundings. A blend of documentary and fictional narrative, the film captures the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands.

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

Wartime propaganda short in which a professor enlists the help of a dustman to explain the importance of saving paper, bones and metal to help the war effort.

A behind-the-scenes GPO Film Unit documentary (directed by Stuart Legg) that races from studio rehearsals and newsrooms to control rooms and transmitters, weaving speeches, music, and outside broadcasts—featuring voices like H. G. Wells and Ramsay MacDonald—into a kinetic portrait of how the BBC’s national “voice” is made.

Coventry prepares to rise from the ashes of WWII in this docu-drama written by Dylan Thomas.

JAZZ HOT is a major discovery, a unique sync sound film recorded of Django Reinhardt, greatest of jazz guitarists, here with violinist Stephane Grappelli and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France.

A silent film by John Grierson. It tells the story of Britain's North Sea herring fishery.

A stunning trek from the vale of Kashmir, via Sind Valley and Kargil and Lamayaru Monastry.

A Letter From Ulster (1943). Northern Ireland's greatest film director Brian Desmond Hurst directed the film and his assistant director was fellow Ulsterman William (Bill) MacQuitty who went on to make the ultimate Titanic film A Night to Remember. The script was written by Terence Young who went on to direct the early Bond films. All the components were in place for a fine film and this short (32 minute) by the Crown Film Unit remains an important part of Ulster and America's cultural history. As the opening credit says "This film is dedicated to those members of the US Forces Who are our guests in these islands". The film shows American soldiers landing in Northern Ireland and settling into their new camps. The arrival of mail from 'back home' helps camp moral, however, two brothers receive none. Their commander realises that the two brothers have not sent any letters back to their parents and gives the order to write a letter home- A Letter From Ulster.

Life aboard merchant ships with the Maritime Regiment of the Royal Artillery.

A film produced to celebrate the coronation of George V as King-Emperor at the Imperial Durbar of 1911.

Life on the breadline in the 1930s was hard enough, but times were desperate when you fell beneath it. Hunger marches organised by the National Unemployed Workers' Movement drew attention to the cause, but this left-wing collective picked up a cine-camera. The fictional story at the heart of the film is somewhat melodramatic, but the authentic surroundings give its message realism and weight.

A tribute to the courage and resiliency of Britons during the darkest days of the London Blitz.

A look at a family living in Stoke-on-Trent in the 1940's and what it's like working in the pottery factories that Stoke is famous for.

Allied propaganda in the form of cartoons and newsreels shows the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

A dramatization to promote the Territorial Army.

Amateur film of the passage to India - complete with guest appearance by Gandhi.

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

Military training film, narrated by David Niven during his time away from Hollywood to serve in the Army, and produced to instruct British troops in the history of their American allies.

Two sides of Mysore: down to earth with the field workers and an Indian spectacle for the Maharaja.

A documentary looking at a day at Croydon Airport south of London.

After a masterful Shakespearean performance in a London theater, Ralph Richardson is sought for an autograph by Fred, his dresser. Later, Fred has joined the Fleet Air Arm (Fly Navy) and become a hero, rescuing a pilot from his burning plane. When Fred arrives at Buckingham Palace, it's Ralph's turn to ask for an autograph.

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

Dunkirk to D-Day in 20 minutes flat: this gripping account of Britain's war effort compels us to sit up and pay attention. A 'total war' is one encompassing civilian as well as military life. Here we witness the might of the state mobilising technology, infrastructure, agriculture, industry and above all people. A rapid-fire onslaught of images and information palpably evokes the experience of total war.

A brief sound test made during production of Blackmail (1929), featuring Alfred Hitchcock playfully teasing lead actress Anny Ondra as she struggles to respond on camera. Photographed by Jack E. Cox, the clip was shot to test the new sound recording system for what would become Hitchcock’s first talkie.

A educational drama about Tuberculosis.

After several farmyard analogies featuring chicks and calves, the well-spoken narrator and director of the film, Winifred Holmes, considers the subject of girls and how they reach adulthood and readiness for the 'important job of motherhood.

Poor pedestrian, horse drawn carts, wagons and bus travel across bridge at Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.

Using edited archive footage, mockery is made of Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini.

Re-enactment of World War 2 Battle of Arnhem using the survivors from the battle.

The first part of the film shows an actuality street scene of traffic in the Strand. Behind the traffic we can see the entrance to the Gaiety Theatre on the Strand, advertising its latest show 'My Girl'. The second part is a different film altogether, spliced onto the first and is R W Paul’s Turn Out of a Fire Brigade filmed in November 1896 in Newcastle at the Westgate Road fire station. The film date is 1896.

A fascinating compilation of scenes showing diversity and disparity in 1940s China. The ancient Forbidden City and Great Wall are followed by Shanghai’s metropolitan skyline; primitive farming methods are juxtaposed with mechanised factories; children in rags are contrasted with models wearing the latest fashions; Nationalist commanders and Communist leaders vie for support.

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 animal breeding. Produced as part of a series of seven documentaries for the 1938 Empire Exhibition, the film was created under the supervision of pioneering documentarian John Grierson.

Joe Noble demonstrates how strong bubbles can be.

A momentous act of self sacrifice is caught on camera - Emily Davison is trampled by the King's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby.

The Boxing Kangaroo is an 1896 British short black-and-white silent documentary film, produced and directed by Birt Acres for exhibition on Robert W. Paul’s peep show Kinetoscopes, featuring a young boy boxing with a kangaroo. The film was considered lost until footage from an 1896 Fairground Programme, originally shown in a portable booth at Hull Fair by Midlands photographer George Williams, donated to the National Fairground Archive was identified as being from this film.

Snapshots of colonial life around Tamil Nadu, plus a visit to the Toda tribe.

British educational documentary film about the principal instruments in the modern symphony orchestra, illustrated through Benjamin Britten's composition, "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra", for which it was commissioned.

Join the working men of a northern powerhouse: on the job in Gateshead workshops and at the long wall of a Northumberland pit.

Tom Jones, a shepherd who lived in one of the Ystradfechan Cottages at Old Farm, Treorchy, was employed by the Ocean Coal Company who owned the land above ground and coal (the Park and the Dare Collieries) beneath. A farrier who lived in the adjoining cottage tended to all the Park and Dare pit ponies. Tom Jones was known world-wide as the “Wonder Shepherd” for his remarkable skills as an animal trainer which, together with his concern for his flock, are recorded here.

A large crowd and choir, on an historic day at York Minster, greet the arrival of a replacement big bell, watching and singing as labourers manfully slide the 10 ton bell off a truck.

In the summer of 1924 Claude Friese-Greene, a pioneer of colour cinematography, set out from Cornwall with the aim of recording life on the road between Land’s End and John O’Groats. Entitled The Open Road, his remarkable travelogue was conceived as a series of shorts, 26 episodes in all, to be shown weekly at the cinema. The result is a fascinating portrait of inter-war Britain, in which town and country, people and landscapes are captured as never before, in a truly unique and rich colour palette.

Semi-documentary, focusing on the training young boys receive before they are sent down the mines on their first job.

A short film about how builders help contribute to the war effort.

This short travelogue depicts snippets of locations in Hollywood, California, most of them as seen from the streets. Considerable time is taken showing the kinds of architecture of private homes. There are images of various important buildings, and a depiction of the Hollywood Bowl. Finally, there is a sequence revolving around the premiere of the film “Dirigible” (1931) at the famed Chinese Theatre.

Flock to your local keep fit class - there's a war on and Britain needs its citizens in tip-top shape.