Cyril Raymond

BRIEFEST ENCOUNTERS has been quietly waiting in the wings for decades to be told. Journalist and filmmaker Joanna Crosse uncovers the hidden past of her grandfather – actor Cyril Raymond - who played the cuckolded husband in the film. In an uncanny twist of fate, Cyril had a ‘brief encounter’ with fellow actor Janet Morrison during a transatlantic stage production which resulted in a child being born out of wedlock. This documentary is where cinema myth meets lived experience. Through interviews, letters, diaries and archive material, Briefest Encounters shows how interrupted love, inherited silence and duty shaped family lives for generations. Some love stories don’t end. They echo.

Former OSS officer Alan Holiday, now living in London, is visited on New Year's Eve by Catherine Carrel who says she is a close friend of Jules Lemoine who served with Holiday during the war. Lemoine urgently requests that Holiday go to Paris on a secret mission. Lemoine visits and wants Alan to deliver a reel of tape which he gives him, and keeps a fake reel himself to deceive enemy agents. Lemoine is killed and the fake tape stolen. Holiday, poses as an assistant to photographer Louis Vernay, and they take three models along to further the ruse.

An innocent girl is "groomed" over the telephone, and nearly becomes the victim of an attacker.

After a bunch of no-hopers approaches an employment agency, the anarchy mounts as they do a series of odd jobs, including a chimp's tea party, trying to stay sober at a wine tasting… and demolishing a house.

A young couple, David and Catherine Robinson, has to turn their large country house into a money-making proposition. Their solution is to invite the kids of the rich and famous to spend a summer enjoying all the loving care and attention they miss at home. After the youngsters arrive, David quickly realizes what the offensive little punks need is some real discipline, and so the summer begins.

A British Corporal in France finds himself responsible for the lives of his men when their officer is killed. He has to get them back to Britain somehow. Meanwhile, British civilians are being dragged into the war with Operation Dynamo, the scheme to get the French and British forces back from the Dunkirk beaches. Some come forward to help, others were less willing.

Safe cracker, Colley Dawson, is recruited to steal a list of Nazi agents from a safe in a Nazi occupied chateau in Belgium.

A new career opens for Charley Moon when, during his army service, he is detailed to appear in a unit concert. In doing so, he becomes friendly with Harold Armytage, a peacetime actor of the old school. Hearing that Charley has no job to go to when demobilized, Armytage suggests they team up as stage comics. Things are not easy; jobs are few and far between, and when they can be found they are in the tattiest of theatres, but Charley gains the experience he needs. They then decide to try their luck in London.

A new career opens for Charley Moon when, during his army service, he is detailed to appear in a unit concert. In doing so, he becomes friendly with Harold Armytage, a peacetime actor of the old school. Hearing that Charley has no job to go to when demobilized, Armytage suggests they team up as stage comics. Things are not easy; jobs are few and far between, and when they can be found they are in the tattiest of theatres, but Charley gains the experience he needs. They then decide to try their luck in London.

After a quayside mix-up with the Italian family of his fiancée, Able Seaman Knocker White finds himself literally left holding the baby. Unable to return it before his ship sails he enlists the help of best mate Puncher Roberts to smuggle the child aboard. But babies are surprisingly demanding and gradually the whole crew is drawn into helping keep it fed and washed - and undiscovered. Even so, the officers above deck start to puzzle over the increasingly strange happenings on board.