Movies: Benjamin Britten

As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a s...

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the overnight run from Euston, London to Glasgow....

An irreverent survey of British Music....

During World War I, British soldier Owen is mortified by the examples of cruelty that surround him in the trenches. He combats these terrifying images by maintaining hope in his love for an army nurse. But he also begins to accept his fate as another...

1935 documentary about the hard working life of Welsh coal miners....

Anthony Dean Griffey creates a haunting portrait of the outcast fisherman who struggles under the burden of presumed guilt. This chilling production by Tony Award-winning director John Doyle also features the superb Patricia Racette as the sympatheti...

Ann Harding plays a lovely but somewhat naive young woman who goes on a European vacation after winning a lottery. Swept off her feet by charming Basil Rathbone, Harding finds herself married before she is fully able to grasp the situation. Slowly bu...

A short GPO documentary showing how undersea telephone cables are repaired....

...

Gustav Von Aschenbach, a passionate composer, arrives in Venice as a result of wanderlust and there meets a young man by whose beauty he becomes obsessed....

Tony Palmer's documentary about the staging of Britten's choral work....

Tony Palmer directs this documentary exploring the life and work of the celebrated English composer, conductor and pianist. Britten is particularly well known for his operas, which include 'Peter Grimes' and 'Death in Venice'. Palmer discusses the li...

Short campaigning documentary putting the case for "peace by reason" rather than through re-arming....

Benjamin Britten's opera as performed by the English National Opera, with Philip Langridge in the title role....

A staging of Britten's opera filmed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in June 2008....

A behind-the-scenes look at the Aldeburgh Festival and the opening by The Queen of the new concert hall at Snape....

This expository film shows the mood of European society on the eve of the Second World War while promoting the values of international cooperation. Using the Swiss office of the BBC as an example, the film describes the functioning of radio and prese...

Based on a poem published in 1810 with more ethnographic than dramatic focus, Britten constructed a sombre parable about the conflict between the masses and the individual. The maritime atmosphere, the crudity of people’s lives and passions, and the ...

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....

Children and childhood fascinated Benjamin Britten throughout his life and inspired some of his greatest music. John Bridcut's compelling film sheds light on the composer's own inner child throiugh interviews with several of Britten's former companio...