William Thatcher is a poor peasant squire, but he finds he has an aptitude for the world of jousting and having successfully passed himself off as a knight he sets about taking the world of the medieval privileged by storm. A Knight's Tale is a completely irreverent take on the swashbuckler movies of old and history in general, but it's a highly entertaining adventure comedy, with a good heart and an endearingly executed lack of originality, while a down on his luck Chaucer is constantly in dang find out more...

Back in 1348 the Black Death was ravaging England and, with superstition rampant, scapegoats were being sought. A young monk has a secret lover whom he advises to retreat to her native woods, but to follow her means abandoning his monastery and betraying God. His opportunity arises with the arrival a band of men (think the Inquisition), who seek out an isolated village near the woods where the locals have supposedly avoided death by following the practices of a necromancer. It is in this villa find out more...

A weird story, based on legend, about a mother and her daughter-in-law who survived in times of hardship by murdering Samurai and selling their armour to buy rice. A wonderfully strange and visually striking Japanese folk tale, unusual in itself, but also a beautiful and detailed character study. find out more...

The BBC's exhaustive and typically exemplary adaptations of some of the great bard's best known plays and a number of his lesser known works. All filmed between the late 1970s and early 1980s and performed by pretty much the cream of British theatre. find out more...

Earning a nomination at the Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film in 1998, this collection of nine animated tales is cleverly and faithfully adapted from one of the most audacious and astonishing works in English literature. Via impressionistic drawings and cel and clay animation the viewer is transported on a vivid journey to medieval times taking in chivalry, love, lust, the Black Death, rape, deception and chickens. Introducing a group of men and women from various strands of society on find out more...

Adaptated from nine stories from Bocaccio's 14th Century classic "Decameron", this is a lewd and bawdy movie for those who like their lew and bawd to have a bit of style and class. find out more...

A young disgraced priest falls in with a small travelling theatre while roaming the countryside. Arriving in a small town the group are witness to the trial of a woman accused of witchcraft and murder. Suspicious that all is not as it would like to appear the actors decide to put on a play based on the events they have observed, a decision that begins to unravel the dark collusion surrounding the woman's trial. The Reckoning is a visually rich medieval whodunit that sits comfortably in the shado find out more...

Bergman's fascinating and acclaimed allegorical search for a meaning for human existance. A disillusioned soldier returns from the Crusades to find plague ravaging Europe. Death arrives in person to take his soul, but by beating him at chess he earns a reprieve. Repressive, dark, medieval and superb! find out more...

An atmospheric medieval allegory for which Bergman won his first Oscar and International Critics Prize at Cannes. On her way to church, a 15-year-old peasant girl is raped and murdered by two goatherds. Later, in a bizarre twist of fate, the culprits ask for food and shelter at the house of the dead girl's parents. Discovering the truth, when the goatherds offer to sell them their dead daughter's bloodstained clothes, the parents exact a brutal revenge. The formal simplicity and overt symbolism, find out more...