Ian McMillan

A wonderfully atmospheric film by John Nunn, featuring the National Association of Local Government Officers holiday camp in Cayton. The film shows chaps in shirts and jackets playing beach cricket, and girls with ribbons in their hair racing towards a finishing tape.

An astonishingly moving film, made by Frank Dean, a filmmaker and lifelong worker on the railways. It brings tears to my eyes from the opening scene with a shot of a newspaper headline showing the then transport minister Lord Beeching’s cuts to the Whitby Line in the 1960s. Later in the film Frank gets access to the last train going down the line, long after the passenger service has closed; it’s a train full of demolition men and at one point we see a station clock, forever stopped at 3.15.

One of my favourite films is John Turner’s slice of cinema verite, which does what it says on the film tin. Men in caps, women in scarves, lads with quiffs and lasses in cardigans, just going about their business. It proves that film has always been a medium for us all to record our lives, to make art out of the comings and goings of “ordinary” people and to give unregarded places a kind of majesty.

This is a fantastic animation about a dastardly mill-owner who sells his soul to the devil; I love this film because of its energy, its vigour and the glorious way it refuses to take t’Yorksher stereotypes seriously. It also challenges the idea that archive film should all be about kids skipping in back yards and elderly blokes waving from trams.

This wonderful film made me whoop with delight and shout to people in the next room to come and have a look! It’s about the ancient game of Knurr and Spell, in this case played in Cowling in West Yorkshire, and the film examines the equipment used, the rules and regulations, and the place of the game right in the heart of the community. The voiceover is done in magnificent Yorkshire language, refusing to compromise or patronize. Whoop!

This atmospheric film is about the dangers of drink-driving and the primitive and visceral excitement of New Orleans Jazz; it makes a Yorkshire pub where a jazz band is playing feel like the Left Bank of Paris and the impossibly handsome man and the beautiful woman seem like they’ve stepped out of something by Godard. The film follows the couple as they step out of the pub and into the car and the music reaches a climax and terrible things happen. A morality tale as old as the hills and as modern as the fast cuts and the sharp quiffs.