Steel - the world's most important metal

The drama and spectacle of steelmaking at Ebbw Vale.

A window on to a futuristic vision of concrete, glass and steel.

At Rotherham a revolution in steelmaking has human consequences.

Sparks fly in an industrial film that captures the exciting visual drama of steel production in Consett.

An industrial epic plays out in steelmaking South Wales.

After a glorious history, Baldwin's iron and steelworks in Swindon, Staffordshire, faces closure.

Owen Humberstone Prosser, an expert on railways and canals, captured the Crumlin Viaduct on film in 1959, before its demolition in 1967, a victim of the Beeching rail cuts.

RTB, the Ebbw Vale steel company, records a town highlight, preparations for which have been in train a year, involving organisers, competitors, quarrymen and steel workers.

Richard Thomas & Co. Ltd (later Richard Thomas and Baldwins) brings government-backed hope to depressed Ebbw Vale with new steelworks.

The steel industry: the men engage with gigantic machines on a huge scale; the apprentice boys help and holiday; the women have their hair done with the stars.

Only connect: a little Welsh Lady doll, a steel rocking horse, burning Schnapps and the “Limestone Special”.

A cinematic catalogue of the flat rolled steel products of Richard Thomas and Baldwins, showing some of their typical applications - car parts, cooker hobs, tins, wheelbarrows.

The director of a documentary about British funk pioneers Cymande joins the band at BFI Southbank to talk about the film.

Plotting world domination, Devil Doctor Fu-Manchu steals plans for a new aero-torpedo in this earliest surviving thrill-a-minute serial instalment.

Filmmakers Jane Giles and Ali Catterall discuss their documentary Scala!!!, revisiting the legendary and inspirational cinema venue and some of the most notorious films that screened there.

Long thought lost, this Powell-directed promotional short for a veteran’s charity was only rediscovered in 2003.

A poignant, stirring letter from a recently deceased pilot to his mother is read by John Gielgud.

Former Bristol Poet Laureate, Miles Chambers reads a poem specially commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the NHS.