Eastward Ho!

Eastward Ho! is a major collection of 100 titles weaving together a century of film and television from the BFI National Archive and the East Anglian Film Archive.

Explore the historic city with early sound documentary Cambridge (1931) and 1958 feature Bachelor of Hearts. A 1922 newsreel captures the Lent Races, while legendary academics are portrayed in Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein (1993) and BBC drama Hawking (2004). Beyond the city, rare colour film captures a 30s country idyll, and military personnel recall life at Duxford (One of Our Airfields, 1976).

Elsewhere, the striking landscapes of East Anglia inspire, from classics of British cinema to the arrival of North Sea gas in Pipeline Through the Fens (1968). Edwardian Yarmouth (1902) and precious records of folk traditions (Here’s a Health to the Barley Mow, 1955) are available alongside contemporary TV treats (Anglian Lives: Alan Partridge, 2003) and Home Counties outings to Sunny Clacton (1939) and Bernard Shaw’s Village (1951).

Ten to try

Dreams of Toyland (1908)

Night falls on St Albans and the toy box comes alive in this pioneering stop-motion animation.

Toot-an-kum-in (1923)

Boisterous Cambridge students embrace all things Egyptian for Rag Week.

Opening of the British Instructional Films Studio (1928)

VIPs brave the mud at Welwyn Garden City’s answer to Elstree Studios.

The Go-Between (1971)

Illicit passion and a long, hot Norfolk summer.

English Harvest (1938)

Humphrey Jenning’s newly-restored Dufaycolor short evokes a Cambridgeshire country idyll.

War of the Worlds (1952)

The budding thespians of Clacton County Youth Centre go sci-fi.

The Questioning City (1959)

Michael Redgrave narrates a glorious Technicolor tour of Cambridge University.

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968)

A Cambridge don encounters unnameable terror on the windswept Norfolk coast.

Milk (1998)

Winner of Best Short at Cannes, shot in Cambridge by Andrea Arnold (Red Road).

Ooh Aah Delia (2001)

The queen of TV cookery takes the reigns at Norwich City FC.