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Born into a showbiz family in 1914, Jack Cardiff entered films as a child actor four years later and continued to work in the British industry to his death in April 2009. Made over 12 years, this profile captures both the meticulous genius of the most significant Technicolor artist in screen history and the gentle talent for self-promotion that ensured that everybody knew just how good he was.

Structured around a series of intimate interviews with Cardiff and his collaborators and acolytes, this is as much a heartfelt paean as a serious study of cinematic style. Consequently, the likes of Charlton Heston, Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, John Mills and Moira Shearer enthuse about the fact that Cardiff could excel at speed, while Richard Fleischer, Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker offer more considered insight into his painterly eye and gift for lighting. Audio testimony also comes from Michael Powell, for whom Cardiff shot A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). He won an Oscar for the second and much time is devoted to a discussion of the way in which he made matte paintings and studio sets look like genuine Himalayan locations. Kathleen Byron also reminisces about the way he made her appear so demonic in the latter scenes.

But while this is stuffed with anecdotes about photographing such beauties as Marlene Dietrich (Knight Without Armour, 1937), Ava Gardner (Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, 1951), Audrey Hepburn (War and Peace, 1956), Sophia Loren (Legend of the Lost, 1957) and Marilyn Monroe (The Prince and the Showgirl, 1957), McCall also includes clips from Cardiff's home movies and lesser known works. He also mentions such jobs for hire as George Pan Cosmatos's Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). However, having devoted much time to Cardiff's Oscar-nominated efforts on Sons and Lovers (1960) - which brought Freddie Francis an award for his monochrome imagery - McCall largely steers clear of his otherwise indifferent directorial career and dwells instead on his love of painting and his willingness to help newcomers realise their vision.

Nevertheless, this is an affectionate and authoritative tribute to a master craftsman, who became the first cinematographer to receive an Honorary Oscar in 2001. Moreover, it is also hugely entertaining and leaves one wishing that it was 30 minutes longer.

The running time is just about right for Churchill the Man, a collection of four documentaries about Sir Winston Churchill made during the final decade of his remarkable life. Respectively lasting 28, four and 10 minutes and repeating snippets of text, as well as newsreel images, Churchill the Man (1954), Ninety Glorious Years (1964) and This Was a Man (1965) do a steady job in tracing events from his birth in a small room at Blenheim Palace on 30 November 1874 to his death at Chartwell on 24 January 1965 - exactly 70 years after the passing of his illustrious, but reckless father, Lord Randolph Churchill.

His experiences at Harrow, as a heroic reporter in the Boer War and as Home Secretary during the 1911 Sidney Street siege are all related with due solemnity. However, little mention is made of the disastrous Dardenelles campaign that Churchill sponsored in 1915 as First Lord of the Admiralty and the wilderness years are also brushed aside, apart from inevitable mention of his warnings against the rising tide of Fascism in Europe. The segments on Churchill's record as a war leader are more detailed and occasionally verge, somewhat inevitably, on the triumphalist. But the tone is more measured in reflecting upon his second administration and his retirement from public life.

The Other Side of Winston Churchill (1960) is more revealing, even though Churchill is notable by his absence. Based on his 1932 book, Painting As a Pastime, and narrated with suitable gravitas by Paul Scofield, this is a delightful colour account of Churchill's growing obsession with art and the extent to which it enabled him to cope with both the depressions of the 1920s and 30s and the pressures of high office. Complete with rather awkward contributions by Merle Oberon, Lady Rhoda Birley and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery - who each recall the rare honour of receiving a painting from Churchill, who preferred to keep his canvases in his studio at Chartwell - this is an unusual portrait that reveals how stiff even the most renowned figures were before the cameras half a century ago.

Continuing the compilation theme is Dig for Victory, a selection of propaganda films that were produced at the behest of the Ministry of Information and which were screened at the Imperial War Museum during its recent exhibition on the Ministry of Food.

Famous faces like Ted Ray, Ronald Shiner, Arthur Haynes, Charlie Chester, Jimmy Handley, Ralph Richardson and Hubert Gregg were used to stress the importance of using food wisely at this time of shortages and rationing. With transatlantic supply lines being imperilled by German U-boats, the importance of growing one's own vegetables, recycling leftovers and creating tasty dishes from the most unprepossessing ingredients became central to the war effort on the Home Front.

The majority of the shorts on show here adopt a jovial tone that nonetheless emphasises the need for everyone to act responsibly for the greater good. In addition to titles like Food Convoy and Food From the Empire (1940), which demonstrated the difficulty of sustaining imports, the collection also includes such tributes to the country's farmers and the Land Girls assisting them as Fighting Fields (1941) and The Great Harvest (1942), as well as exhortations for viewers to get stuck in themselves like Dig for Victory (1941), Making A Compost Heap (1942) and Willing Hands (1944).

There are also a handful of the famous Food Flashes that were shown in most cinema programmes to offer culinary hints and applaud the work of the Women's Volunteer Service, the Flying Food Squads (who kept the rescue teams fed during air raids) and the British Restaurants that were designed to help coupons go further. Vital documents of daily life in an embattled nation, the likes of Choose Cheese (1940), Eating Out With Tommy Trinder (1941) and The Harvest Shall Come (1942) also make for splendidly nostalgic viewing, while also providing a few hints for modern audiences on how gardens and allotments can be used to encourage healthy eating and reduce the carbon footprint of the average grocery bill.

In the week that Isolation is reviewed on the In Cinemas page, there's a certain irony that They Stand Ready, the third volume in the BFI's Central Office of Information series, should be devoted to the armed forces. Gathering films made over four decades and focusing on the changing face of military duty as the Empire disappeared and Britain adjusted to its new status as a second-rate power in a Cold War world, this is a sobering selection and one that has recently acquired fresh contemporary relevance, as the Ministry of Defence is faced with making drastic cuts in army, navy and air force budgets in order to finance the Trident nuclear deterrent.

An understandable air of rodomontade pervades the earliest examples, as Victory Parade (1946) proclaims the maintenance of Britain's global significance in the immediate postwar period. But the tone changes somewhat in Men of the World (1950), Suez in Perspective (1957) and Routine Adventure (1965), as the respective difficulty of keeping the peace in Malaysia, the Middle East and Aden becomes all-too apparent. It's also interesting to see how the ending of National Service affected the rhetoric of recruiting films and how films like Voyage North (1965), Ark Royal (c.1970), HMS Sheffield (1975) and Tornado (1985) dwell as much on the quality of the kit as the calibre of the personnel.

Perhaps the most intriguing items are Out of the Groove (1950) and When You Wake Up (1974), which were rallying calls aimed specifically at persuading schoolgirls to sign up to the Women's Royal Army Corps. But, whereas the recruiting films targeted at boys promised adventure and a trade for life, these compellingly patronising shorts strive to make working as a driver, typist or switchboard operator sound irresistible by stressing the shopping opportunities in faraway lands and the vast improvement in laundry facilities.

Much less contentious and key to forging Britain's enduring reputation for natural history films, Secrets of Nature, collates the best of the 140+ one-reelers that were produced for this much-loved franchise between 1922-33. Based in Surbuton, British Instructional Films has almost been forgotten today. But anyone who has enjoyed a David Attenborough series will relish the three hours of infotainment on offer here, which not only fostered a greater understanding of the world around us, but which also did much to develop the techniques of time-lapse, underwater and microscopic cinematography that are still key to wildlife filming today.

BIF was founded in 1919 by H. Bruce Woolfe, who launched Secrets of Nature three years later to exploit the talents of such pioneering naturalists as F. Percy Smith, Oliver Pike, W.P. Pycraft, Edgar Chance, Walter Higham, Charles Head and H.M. Lomas. Among the silent gems produced in this period were The Cuckoo's Secret, Fathoms Deep Beneath the Sea, The White Owl and The Battle of the Ants (all 1922). However, the unit received fresh impetus from the appointment of Mary Field as education manager in 1926. Having collaborated on the likes of Floral Co-operative Societies and The Plants of the Pantry (both 1927) , she became the series editor in 1929 and oversaw such minor classics as Peas and Cues, The Aphus (both 1930), The Bittern (1931), Romance in a Pond (1932) and Gathering Moss (1933).

What is so remarkable about many of these films is their ability to communicate the maker's sense of wonderment. The commentaries are occasionally a little twee and prone to anthropomorphism. But the visuals are often dazzling and reflect the works of avant-gardists like Oskar Fischinger and Viking Eggeling, while also anticipating the sublime shorts of Jean Painlevé. Consequently, everyday things like mould and yeast become essential elements in shifting kaleidoscopes of shape and texture. Pea plants spring up with a beauty to match that of a butterfly or a nightingale, while even less enchanting sights like ants milking aphids for honeydew are fascinating for their refusal to avoid Nature's grimmer aspects.

Anyone who enjoyed documentaries like The Living Desert (1953) or Microcosmos (1996) will be spellbound by the 19 films in this exceptional selection. But this should also be essential viewing for students of screen history, as Secrets of Nature was one of British cinema's few success stories before the foundation of the Documentary Movement under John Grierson.

Finally, the wildlife may be plentiful, but it is strictly of secondary importance to a 10 year-old's trek from Suez to South African in Alexander Mackendrick's Sammy Going South (1963).

Having been replaced on The Guns of Navarone and failed to raise the funds for his pet project, Mary, Queen of Scots, Mackendrick accepted Michael Balcon's offer to adapt W.H. Canaway's novel with some reluctance. However, with the producer seeing the story as an innocent's triumph over adversity and the director seeing it as an allegory of imperial corruption, the film rather fell between two stools. Moreover, its occasionally dubious use of racial stereotypes makes it an increasingly difficult picture to like. But even when he misfired, Mackendrick remained an intelligent and provocative film-maker and this is a laudably unsentimental study of disconcerted childhood.

When his parents are killed in an air raid on Port Said in November 1956, young Fergus McClelland realises that he has to find aunt Zena Walker in Durban. However, he has no idea just how far away South Africa really is and he is soon reliant on Syrian trader Zia Mohyeddin after his compass takes him out into the desert. A campfire accident ends their liaison, however, and McClelland trudges on with the dead man's wallet and donkeys.

Fetching up in Luxor, a month later, the exhausted boy is succoured by American tourist Constance Cummings. However, her travelling companions are suspicious of his story and he only just manages to evade tour guide Paul Stassino and catch a train heading south. By January 1957, McClelland has reached the White Nile and pilgrim Orlando Martins helps him buy a steerage ticket on a riverboat. But Stassino is determined to earn Cummings's reward for McClelland's recapture and he dupes the lad into accompanying him to a doctor in the Sudan for some inoculations.

But McClelland is soon on the lam again and he strays into the territory where diamond smuggler Edward G. Robinson has his base. Despite the misgivings of pilot Harry H. Corbett, Robinson allows the kid to stay and they strike up an unconventional friendship after McClelland kills a leopard about to pounce on his host. However, with district commissioner Jack Gwillim closing in on his secret lair, Robinson pretends to betray McClelland to trick him into flying to safety with Corbett. But the boy slips away once more and Robinson begs Walker from his cell to allow him to find his own way to her guest house so that he will have completed his mission unaided.

With Robinson suffering a heart attack, Cummings being injured in a car crash and two crew members being bitten by snakes, this was a consistently difficult shoot. The BBFC also demanded the removal of footage suggesting that Mohyeddin was aiding McClelland solely for immoral purposes and the scene in which the child brutally stones some crabs on a beach in a sinister echo of his family's demise. But Mackendrick still manages to convey his notion that McClelland brings nothing but ill on all he encounters. Thus, there's something a touch disquieting about the supposedly happy ending.

McClelland delivers a bullish performance and is particularly impressive opposite Robinson, who twinkles with a maverick roguishness that belies his avarice and exploitation of the local tribes. But this contented interlude feels more contrived than the less predictable trek sequences. Moreover, it also seems visually underwhelming after Erwin Hillier's string of extraordinary Eastmancolor vistas. Nevertheless, Mackendrick completes his saga with a sensitivity that characterised his other films about children, Mandy (1952) and A High Wind in Jamaica (1965).