The collection

Selected films

• Captain Zip Video Trip: Don't Dream It See It
• Charlie on the Ocean
• Deadly the Harvest
• Elizabethan Express
• Funeral of Queen Victoria: The Marble Arch
• Holiday
• International Brigade
• Mitchell and Kenyon 58: Pendlebury Colliery
• South: Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Glorious Epic of the Antarctic
• The Vanishing Street

Contact and access

Don’t Dream It – See It Date: 1978 Film maker / Commissioner: Phil Munnoch Original Format: 8mm Viewing Format: VHS Sound / Silent: silent B&W / Colour: colour Copyright: contact the archive for further details Extracts supplied courtesy of The British Film Institute National Film and Television Archive

click to play: high medium low help

Phil Munnoch aka Captain Zip has made some 200 films on 8mm and Super 8, ranging from records of events taking place in 1960s London to recent films of London’s S&M scene. Examples from this extensive output are held in the NFTVA. ‘Don’t Dream It – See It’ (1978) was the second of eight films he made between 1978 and 1981 under the series title of 'The Captain Zip Video Trip'. Munnoch/Zip had become involved in London’s punk scene and decided to start filming it for posterity. He reports spending every spare weekend filming on the Kings Road, where this footage was taken. While the punk scene was the subject of much television reportage and some independent film making, also preserved in the NFTVA, 'The Captain Zip Video Trip' is unusual in focussing exclusively on the everyday grassroots punk scene from the viewpoint of those directly involved. However threatening Middle England may have found Punk at the time, one of the films’ most interesting features today is their resemblance to other home movies: innocent and exuberant records of people having fun together and playing up for the camera.