sons and daughters of the pioneering explorers see their fathers‘ remarkable footage for the very first time. to see this film makes me feel very proud of him. i'm in awe of what he managed to do. they went into the unknown without any consideration for their safety. these are some of britain's great explorations. the british film institute‘s national archive is a treasure trove of britain's past. among the thousands of films stored in this vault are some shot by young explorers as they travelled to unexplored parts of the globe. now they're being digitised and put online so that we can all relive their incredible stories. among them is this film, released by gaumont british in 193a. it's the first flight over mount everest. this view from the top of mount everest had never been seen before. the footage is also helping scientists today learn more about the impact of climate change. will you give me a hand with this strap? certainly! it was shot by major latham valentine stewart blacker, a former fighter pilot and war hero. he was a real—life biggles. the film is a staged re—enactment of the first flight over everest, but it includes the actual aerial footage shot during the expedition and stars the original aviators. well, do you realise you could put everest on the map in three hours? you're still thinking of the alps. why not? a good plane, camera shooting down, and you could record every detail. i wonder... don't be fooled by the ham acting — this film won an oscar. the men risked their lives, flying higher than anyone had flown before to capture this historic footage. wings over everest is part of the royal geographical society's archive of expeditions it sponsored in the early part of the 20th century. what was the motivation? what was the purpose of the society? the purpose of the society has always been to undertake scientific exploration and improve understanding of the world, its people and places. the society has a collection of over two million items, it's the world's largest collection of geographically related maps, photographs, artefacts, diaries, notebooks and publications. and this film collection, which has been housed for the society at the british film institute for many years, is the last portion of our collections that has not been made more accessible. this is the earliest known film of tibet. it was shown in cinemas all across the uk. audiences were gripped by this astonishing footage of a strange and mysterious new world. they were taken by a young army officer on the first attempt to reach the summit of mount everest in 1922. before they set off, the climbers seek a blessing at a monastery. they're treated as honoured guests and shown ritual dances. this one is a tale of reincarnation. around their waists are aprons made from a lattice of human bones. and theirface masks are made from stretched human skin. the cameraman was captainjohn noel. although it was shown in cinemas, his daughter has actually never seen the film — until now. he suggested to the mount everest committee that they took film, and they pooh—poohed this idea, said, "no, it would vulgarise the expedition." but he nevertheless persuaded them, and he said, you know, "this is a record that we need to make, like scott of the antarctic." this was going to be a world event. it was a bit like the moon landings. yes, it was, it was, yes, we'd just come back through the war, you know, we were impoverished, people had very little to be excited about, and here was this expedition to mount everest. john noel climbed treacherous rock faces with his camera equipment by day, and by night he would develop his footage. he had this purpose—built tent he'd taken with him to base camp, and at night, using water from the glaciers and yak dung as a source of heat, he processed 10,000 feet of film on the mountain to be sure that he'd got the right composition and good exposures. what was your father's motivation? it was the fact that it had not been climbed, a feeling of doing this for king and country, and that it should be the british who should at least make an attempt on the mountain. you see, they're just strolling around in very casual clothes. but it does look as though it's a sort of ramble in the lake district, doesn't it? yes! it was all hand—knitted at home and tweed jackets. there's a lovely photograph of my father with a pocket handkerchief and a tie down at base camp! mount everest, that's how he prepared ? ever the gentleman, you know, i mean, that's how they presented themselves. i think not only were they born in the victorian era, but i think the war had moulded them. they had seen so much carnage that they were ready for anything. and it made them very stoic and fearless. they went into the unknown without any consideration for their safety. and the footage is of scientific as well as historical value. it's just absolutely fabulous, these images from 1922. david breashears has literally followed in captain noel‘s footsteps, and he's taken his own images of mount everest from the very same places as the early explorers. and here is the glacier we're looking at right here, the east rongbuk glacier is the glacier here, right through here. he provides the old and new images to scientists. they use them to determine the impact climate change has had on the himalayas over the past hundred years. but until now, he's only had a handful of still images from the early expeditions. so the availability of captain noel‘s footage will give him — and climate scientists — much more data to work with. the historic imagery in the archives of the royal geographical society is this unlimited gift and a treasure to scientists. these are time—stamped images, essentially. we know when they were taken and where they were taken. we can find the same positions and take a picture of the exact same place and very clearly, and with extremely high resolution, take note of the difference. and all that difference is in loss — loss of a mass in the glacier. it's irrefutable, it's clear, it sends the same signal to all who see it. in the end, captain noel and his fellow climbers‘ attempt to reach the summit failed. they came so close — they were just half a kilometre short of the summit. at these high altitudes, the air became too thin for them, and so they were forced to turn back. they were just overwhelmed by everything — the terrain, the difficulty of the climb, this constant wind, which i think they weren't expecting. but the team had climbed higher than anyone had climbed before and laid the groundwork for the eventual ascent to the summitjust 30 years later by tenzing norgay and sir edmund hillary. here at the bfi, conservation specialists are painstakingly restoring 138 films of some of britain's greatest explorations, frame by frame. one of them is of a young army officer crossing the vast expanse of the libyan desert by motorcar. ralph bagnold and his friends are on a journey that will take them into uncharted territory. bagnold was a pioneer of desert exploration. he was an army officer stationed in egypt. his expeditions involved driving thousands of miles into the blistering heat of the libyan desert. no—one had crossed it. no, no—one had crossed it, no—one had crossed it by car before. his son stephen has heard stories of these incredible expeditions, but it's the first time he's seen them. that's my father driving there, and you can see the bonnet is off, and you can see the pipe running from the radiator into the... that was a modification? that was the modification to prevent loss of water through evaporation in the radiator. it was a journey that pushed bagnold, his men and the cars to their very limits. they had to take everything they needed to survive with them. it was all rationed, water, i think it was three pints a day — one at breakfast, one at lunch... all for drinking, you washed in the sand, you washed your plates and stuff in the sand. they travelled thousands of miles across the featureless terrain. bagnold invented a sun compass which enabled them to navigate with incredible position. they never strayed more than a mile from their intended destination. the experts proclaimed it couldn't be done. and not, i think, because he wanted to show them who was the master, butjust because it tickled his fancy that maybe, with clear planning and with the right equipment and stuff, there could be a way. when one of the cars broke down, it was cannibalised for spare parts and abandoned — and they're still out there somewhere, buried among the dunes. the vehicles would often get stuck in the sand, and each time bagnold and his team would find ever more ingenious ways of extricating them. it looks as though they are using strips of metal that they bought in cairo that had been intended to go on the roof, but it appeared to do the job well. they're basically laying tracks — or a surface from which the car can get out. 0nce out, you had to keep going, otherwise you'd just sink again into the same patch of soft sand. bagnold took careful measurements to understand how the sand is moved by the wind. he wrote several books on the subject and was elected to the royal society, a group of the country's most distinguished scientists. to see this film makes me feel very proud of him, of course, and i'm in awe of what he managed to do. his research has helped nasa explore mars. these features on the martian surface are named the bagnold dunes in honour of the great explorer. all the wheels are coming into alignment. abbie hutty has taken up his legacy. she's developing europe's first mars rover at this test—bed in stevenage outside london. abbie is trying to develop new ways to cross the martian sand — just as bagnold did in libya 80 years earlier. he was the first one to really look at the materials that the sand was made out of, and the wind forces and the distribution, and how friction played a part and all of those things, and that's how we predict what it's going to be like on mars. it's all about that dry, dusty nature of the sand, and trying to drive over that without sinking into it — that's our biggest challenge. i really do think he'd be absolutely delighted, amazed and delighted if he knew that the work he'd done all that time ago had an application, and a very real application too, to the exploration of mars — i think he'd be tickled pink. this is the bfi‘s grading room, where the final adjustments are made before the films are released to the public. this one is from a news bulletin from 1951 which may well be one of the first examples of fake news. we're off on the track of that abominable snowman, and our first clues are these footprints, photographed by eric shipton, leader of the 1951 everest expedition... so what made the footprints? some zoologists thought that the himalayan bear, seen here, might be the snowman. or maybe it's the american mountain bear — but if so, how did he wander into tibet? the experts were baffled. here, we can compare the plaster casts of various animal footprints with the photos published in the times. but was it really all just a publicity stunt for the times newspaper, which was raising money for the next everest expedition? meantime, everest guards says her secret. i think it's more about how the story is used by the times to promote awareness of this attempt in ‘51, so today, i suppose, we would see it as being a kind of a hook for news. in 1951, it's the year in london of the festival of london, so there's a huge resurgence in optimism after the second world war, and the whole idea that britain is going to try to reach the summit of everest first is taking shape. thousands of miles away in yemen, a pilot, aubrey rickards, filmed the hadhramaut, a region that is home to an ancient civilisation. the film shows skyscrapers built in the 16th century — from mud. some are 11 storeys high. there are even whitewashed mud constructions that look like vast grand palaces. they're still inhabited to this day. this was the first metropolis. it's the very first film footage of yemen. from the air, you see the extraordinary landscape of the hadhramaut, which is an area full of wadis, where water would flow down and enabled human habitation from prehistory onwards. and what you're seeing is what i think is one of the most extraordinarily sophisticated developments of urban living, because you have people living in adobe—constructed, mud—constructed multistorey habitations. the first skyscrapers. they're often described as the manhattan of the desert. in the actual manhattan, during the late ‘60s, eastern mysticism was popularised by the hippy culture of the time. young people in many western countries were inspired to find love, peace and harmony in their lives. but these ideas have their roots in asia, from films shot in the 1930s across the himalayan ranges, of journeys through bhutan and tibet. the men who shot this footage thought they had discovered paradise among the himalayan mountains. george sherriff and frank ludlow filmed scenes of a simpler way of life, where people were happy, content, and lived to a ripe old age. they stumbled on what they thought was a brighter, more hopeful world — a contrast to the grim desolation of europe after the first world war. this map, dug out from the archives of the royal geographical society by professor mike heffernan, shows seven of sherriff and ludlow‘s expeditions. each colour represents a different journey. well, essentially, it's these remarkable routes they took along a river valley, and their primary concern was essentially to map the area, so this is a sort of sketch map produced at the end of all of their expeditions. when sherriff and ludlow begin their expeditions in this area of tibet in 1933, it's exactly the same year whenjames hilton publishes lost horizon, which introduces the idea of shangri—la, this kind of perfect place. this was a mountain kingdom, a vestigial world of peace and harmony, precisely the world that had been so obviously left behind by industrial warfare that they'd gone through, the world where people could live extraordinary long lives of peace and harmony. and a better world. 450 feet of rock soaring out of the north atlantic, known as the old man of hoy, and a very crumbling old man he is. in1967, 15 million people in the uk watched live asjoe brown and five others took on the old man of hoy in 0rkney, off the coast of scotland. we just had a bit of a slight tangle in the rope there, which stopped me pulling the rope into the carabiner to secure myself. he was then, and still is, among the world's most well—known climbers. but his greatest achievement was nearly 30 years earlier in the himalayas, scaling the unclimbed mountain of kangchenjunga. it's almost as high as everest but harder to climb. some of his fellow mountaineers were involved in the successful ascent of everest two years earlier. they were climbing royalty — joe was a builder from manchester. this was my kangchenjunga axe that i was supplied with. joe recalls how surprised he was when the expedition leader asked him tojoin. when i received a telegram, saying, "invited on kangchenjunga expedition, letter following, wants to meet you in london, et cetera," i was... i mean, it wasjust incredible, ijust couldn't believe it. the mountain was prone to avalanches, and its terrain was treacherous — butjoe was fearless. that's me. camp 1 was actually in a crevasse, and while we were there, i decided to go and take a bathroom break, so i walked without any fear until i got round the corner, where there was this massive hole. it was the deepest, biggest crevasse i'd ever seen, and i was standing on the same thin bridge that was on the opposite side of the hole, so i very carefully turned around and tried to make myself weightless and crept back round the corner to where it was solid. but it was very nervy stuff. job and his fellow climber george band stopped just short of the summit. it was a promise they'd made to the nepalese authorities — to respect local beliefs that the peak was home to the gods. i got to the top, i just pulled over, and there was just a snow cone rising up about 15 or 20 feet. i shouted down to him, "we're there, george." and the feeling is not of whoopee — you just think, "i don't have to go any further!" it's just a fantastic feeling of relief. these great explorations are from an age when the first portable film cameras made it possible for a mass audience to see many of the world's most inaccessible wonders for the very first time. adventurers risked their lives to explore a world that still held so many mysteries. and now we're all able to see what they saw, as they journeyed to the ends of the earth, drawn by the thrill of the unknown, and spurred on by challenge that they found irresistible. hello there. it's felt a little more like autumn for some this week and although high pressure will build into next week and we'll hopefully see more of these skylines, this was sent in late in the day on friday, before that we will have yet more rain, strong and blustery winds with some sunshine, warm sunshine dispersed, so not a great weekend for heading to the mountains or a small boat. after the rain there will also be more showers following on. this is the area of cloud, the area of low pressure that will bring that disturbed weather through the weekend. not a washout for all but certainly quite a bit of rain to come. the north—east of scotland may start quite chilly with a bit of fog around, the south and east brightening up quite quickly but with the south—westerly wind pushing that rain into the welsh mountains and cumbrian fells, we could see the wettest weather here, 20 to a0 millimetres. once it clears away, northern ireland will have a warmer and brighter afternoon, warmer and brighterfor the northern isles and northern scotland than yesterday, perhaps 20 here and even with the rain, not especially cold, quite grey with lots of murky low cloud and hill fog. whilst we come out of that cloud and back into the sunshine in central and eastern areas and we could see temperatures at 2a or 25 degrees, so some very warm and muggy airaround. touch and go for the cricket at edgbaston, england—australia, just because you're close to that rain band, hopefully we will get some play and bad light won't spoil the affair. through the evening that rain will advance further eastwards so eventually we will see patchy rain even in southern and eastern areas and then the wind will push the showers into the north and west of scotland, so again not a cold night but a particularly warm one stuck under that weather front in central and eastern england and here it is on sunday. although the main rain is clearing on sunday with low pressure sat to the north—west, it does means it won't be a particularly settled day, some tightly packed isobars indicating some rather strong winds at times, gusting winds with those showers, northern ireland, scotland, north—western parts of england and wales could be heavy with hail and thunder. the cloud is meandering south and east so after a bright start some patchy rain before the rain returns in the evening and not as warm as a result across the south and east, fresher air following on behind that weather front. into that fresher air on monday, still a blustery breeze with showers around, especially in the north, not so much in the south but nevertheless not ruling out the risk. gradually the azores high will be just building northwards, pushing more warmth and sunshine north, keeping these weather fronts at bay and keeping them to the north and west. as ever, more detail on the website. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is duncan golestani. our top stories: theresa may's forced to form a minority government after a bruising night in britain's general election. the prime minister's back in downing street but to stay there she'll have to broker a deal with northern ireland's democratic unionists. in other news: president trump calls the sacked fbi directorjames comey —— brexit talks begin injust over a week and theresa may says they will go ahead as planned. in other news: president trump calls the sacked fbi directorjames comey a liar, and says he's willing to testify under oath.