Illuminations Films Movies

One morning, Jessica Holland, a Scottish orchid farmer visiting her sister in Bogotá, is woken by a loud ‘bang’. This haunting sound dispels her sleep for days, calling into question her identity and guiding her from recording studios to secluded jungle villag...

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Conte...

When a childless couple learn that they cannot have children, it causes great distress. To ease his wife's pain, the man finds a piece of root in the backyard and chops it and varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman takes the root as her baby...

In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past.

In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and...

Identicals is a highly unconventional romantic thriller: an obsessive love story stripped down and re-arranged into the looping logic of a nightmare.

Two-part Arena special celebrating the life and distinguished career of one of Britain's best-loved public figures. Lord Attenborough's film CV as actor stretches from Brighton Rock to Jurassic Park, while as director he has been responsible for Oh! What a Lov...

George Melly explores his lifelong relationship with surrealism in all its forms and prominent personalities.

A filmmaker captures images that characterize the violence and repression as well as the hope of rebirth and remembrance in northeastern Thailand.

This cross-media documentary (film, installation and website) explores the life and writings of Daniel Paul Schreber. Now famous as an Outsider Artist, Schreber was a successful lawyer, who in 1893, started to receive messages from God via a ‘Writing Down Mach...

Shifting between fact and fiction in a hotel situated along the Mekong River, a filmmaker rehearses a movie expressing the bonds between a vampire-like mother and daughter.

A poetic look at the life and legacy of legendary author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982),who wrote over over a hundred short stories and 44 novels of mind-bending sci-fi, exploring themes of authority, drugs, theology, mental illness and much more.

The Private Lives of Pompeii concentrates on the people that lived and worked in Pompeii at the time of its destruction, as depicted in the archaeology of their houses, their tombs and the surviving documents that relate to them. Emilia Fox introduces us to th...

Nobel Lecture delivered on video by the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature Harold Pinter (1930–2008),who was at the time hospitalised and unable to travel to Stockholm to deliver it in person.

A richly textured essay film on landscape, art, history, life and loss, Patience (After Sebald) offers a unique exploration of the work of internationally acclaimed writer W.G. Max Sebald (1944 - 2001) via a walk through East Anglia tracking his most influenti...

Matthew Bourne choreographs this version of Tchaikovsky's ballet performed at Sadler's Wells Theatre. Bourne sets the first part of the story in 1890, the year in which Tchaikovsky completed his version of Charles Perrault's classic fairy tale, with Beauty pri...

This TV documentary shows some of the colourful residents of and people connected with the New York Chelsea Hotel. Some highlights include Andy Warhol and William Burroughs having dinner; Quentin Crisp pontificating in a blue rinse hairdo on his balcony and Ni...

Documentary exploration of Dirk Bogarde's private life and long-term affair with manager, Anthony Forwood, seen through home movies and excerpts from Bogarde's memoirs.

A re-edit of Petit’s Radio On (1980)

Documentary with fictional elements exploring issues around housing in the United Kingdom.