For forty years we have specialised in making about the arts and performance, as well as media about religion, history, and ideas. Our regular Blog was about these films, and about the arts, the future of television, and digital media in general. Our Film Shop continues to sell many of these films for streaming and download.
We have produced more than 300 documentaries and performance films for television and worked with numerous artists and creative filmmakers. Visual art is a particular focus of ours, but so too is dance, music, and the theatre, as well as historical subjects and religious topics.
Important productions include Hamlet (2009) with David Tennant, Macbeth (2010) with Patrick Stewart, and the Royal Shakespeare Company Julius Caesar (2012).
Recent productions include Phyllida Lloyd’s Shakespeare Trilogy (Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and The Tempest), co-produced with the Donmar (2017), the Almeida Theatre and Robert Icke’s Hamlet (2017) with Andrew Scott, and Hofesh Shechter’s dance work, Clowns (2018) for BBC2.
We have filmed many exquisite Matthew Bourne performances live on stage at Sadler’s Wells, including The Car Man (2015), Cinderella (2017), Swan Lake (2018), Romeo + Juliet (2019), The Red Shoes (2020), Nutcracker! (2021), and most recently, Sleeping Beauty, (2022) for both the BBC and Sky Arts.
In 2020 we produced an important documentary for BBC4, Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast on the BBC. This was closely followed by Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain, also for the BBC in 2021.
Our work has been recognised by both an International Emmy and a BAFTA, as well as numerous other awards and festival screenings. We are proud of our international reputation for intelligent and innovative filmmaking.
There’s much more about our history here.
We produce, publish, and distribute an outstanding catalogue of films available for streaming and download. All can be purchased directly through this website and licensed for educational or exhibition use. Please note that prices quoted in the Film Shop are for individual or personal use only. For educational and institutional viewing, screening rights must be purchased separately. Please get in touch with us for further details.
In collaboration with Touch Press, Faber and Faber, and The Arden Shakespeare, a highly-praised version of Shakespeare’s Sonnets was released for the iPad and DVD. In 2013 we produced a box set of the BBC series, An Age of Kings (1960), unseen in the UK for more than 50 years. In April 2016 we published The Wars of the Roses (1965) to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Deborah Warner’s ground-breaking Richard II is also part of the Screen Plays series.
Our close collaboration with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures has seen the release for DVD/Blu-ray, streaming and download of The Car Man (2017), Cinderella (2018), Swan Lake, Romeo + Juliet (2020), and The Red Shoes (2021). Nutcracker! and Sleeping Beauty will be released for streaming and download in 2025.
Further films for streaming and download via our website and other platforms include Macbeth (Patrick Stewart), Julius Caesar, Richard II, Being Shakespeare, and Macbeth (Antony Sher). Our best-selling visual arts series, theEYE, an impressive collection of 44 short documentary films, is also available for digital purchase.
Click through to our Film Shop here.