Bear (10 minutes, 35 seconds) was Steve McQueen's first major film. Although not an overtly political work, for many viewers it raises sensitive issues about race, homoeroticism and violence. It depicts two naked men – one of whom is the artist – tussling and teasing one another in an encounter which shifts between tenderness and aggression. The film is silent but a series of stares, glances and winks between the protagonists creates an optical language of flirtation and threat.

Battleship Potemkin (1925)
A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre.

Nanook of the North (1922)
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (1928)
Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.

Dernier amour (1916)
Ninon, a veteran stage artist, resides in her villa in Provence, surrounded by admirers as veteran or more than her. A film crew arrives at the gardens of the town to film some scenes in that beautiful spot. The director and screenwriter of the team will notice the charms of Ninon.

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919)
The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.

City Lights (1931)
A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.

Pandora's Box (1929)
The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.

The Gold Rush (1925)
A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.

The Mistletoe Bough (1904)
During a game of hide and seek, a new bride hides in a chest and remains undiscovered until a strange visitation thirty years later.

Robin Hood (1913)
Robin Hood and his followers aid the poor and oppressed from their hideout in Sherwood Forest, pursued by the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Faust (1926)
God and Satan wager on the soul of a learned and prayerful alchemist as part of their eternal war over Earth.

The Making of a Man (1911)
A young woman becomes infatuated with the leading man of a traveling theatrical troupe. She sneaks away to join him in the next town, but her father forces her to return home...

The Arab (1924)
Jamil, a soldier in the Bedouin defense forces during a war between Syria and Turkey, deserts his regiment but later returns to save children of a missionary’s orphanage who are at risk of being enslaved or killed by the Turks.

Damn the War (1914)
An army pilot is visiting the home of another army pilot in a neighboring country, and falling in love with his sister, when war breaks out.

Suursalon häät (1924)
After Matti is stabbed to death at his own wedding, Eero of Ojelmiston becomes a suspect, presumed to have avenged his recently deceased wife. Eero escapes with the help of a court judge but surrenders after his mother gets into trouble. At the courthouse, the priest admits that Vieremä Jaska confessed to the crime on his deathbed. The film has survived, but without subtitles.

Muurmanin pakolaiset (1927)
In northern Finland in the fall of 1916, Saima Niva rescues a man drifting in the river, who turns out to be a German lieutenant Braun. Braun and his six comrades have managed to escape the prisoner of war at the Muurmann railway station, but the lieutenant has had to get rid of the lost group. While Braun is recovering, under the good care of Saima, Niva's neighbor and henchman of the gendarmes, the greedy policeman Simpura, gets a tip about the refugees camped in the desert.

Vaihdokas (1927)
When the general manager of the factory, Lumiala returns from his travels, he learns that his wife Anna has hired a young man named Oras as an office assistant. Anna, who feels Oras is the fruit of his youthful sin, is ready to defend the boy despite his family's petitions and Ora's crimes. Ora's girlfriend Pansy also tries to keep him on the right track.