Easy Rider has become synonymous with the counterculture generation. It is a film that attempted to explore the rise and fall of the hippie movement, which had become a major facet of American life during the middle of the 1960s. The hippie movement, certainly within the popular consciousness, mostly revolved around music, the sexual revolution and drug taking. This popular youth movement seemed to coalesce in the ‘Summer of Love’ of 1967; when it is estimated that around 100,000 people travelled to San Francisco that summer to, in the parlance of the time, drop out.

Francois Truffaut is firmly ensconced in the popular canon of directors. His most famous works The 400 Blows, Jules & Jim and Day for Night can be counted amongst the best loved films ever made. His status at the forefront of arguably the most successfully branded set of films within the history of cinema, the French New Wave, is unimpeachable. Whilst the quality of this wave of French films from the late 1950s through to the end of the 1960s is highly debatable, Truffaut certainly provided some of the most thoughtful, warm and greatest achievements of the loosely defined collective.

Over the course of the 20th Century, from every nation, from every year, many a film has disappeared into the ether. There are a variety of reasons for this, perhaps they did not gain significant critical or audience success at the time and as a consequence never managed to secure wider viewing after their initial release, think about the number of films released in the UK on any given month, even a dedicated cinephile isn’t likely to see more than ten of them - what happens to the rest?

Hiroshi Shimizu's Children of the Beehive (1948) is a forgotten gem in the rubble of cinema, a Japanese feature film post World War II with echos of Dickens and a socially aware commentary on the orphans left behind at the end of that great conflict.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

Otto Preminger was an Austro-Hungarian born filmmaker who directed dozens of feature films starting with The Great Love (1931); he moved to the USA for his sophomore effort Under Your Spell (1936) and never looked back.

Otto Preminger is an underrated master of the Noir genre, in Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) the director re-unites the cast of Laura (1944) for one of the grittiest films the genre would offer at the time.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson. Additions written by Wilson McLachlan.

“New Wave” is a term that has been applied to many a national cinematic output at one time or another. The first and most famous of which is undoubtly The French New Wave when the likes of Jean-Luc Goddard began their experiments in cinema rebelling against established norms and inventing the concept of autuerism. Love them or hate them, one has to accept that the French New Wave changed the face of cinema in many respects.

At the start of the British New Wave (AKA: The Angry Young Men) came one of the best British films of that era. Jack Clayton's Room at the Top (1959) is a gritty uncompromising slice of northern life which made Oscar history in several categories but has since been overlooked.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

Hungarian director Milklos Jancso has become the subject of renewed praise in recent years in part due to Second Run DVD re-releasing three of his films which is still staggeringly poor for a film maker with over seventy-five film credits as director. Jancso is highly prolific and is still working today despite being in his late 80's, like Sidney Lumet the word “retirement” does not appear to be part of his vocabulary.

Miklos Jancso's 1966 excellent film about Hungarian prisoners unwittingly engaged in a deadly game of chess with their captors. A forgotten gem which has now resurfaced and has prompted a new evaluation of the directors works.