Melody (PG)

Studio Canal, £14.99

BETTER known to readers of a certain vintage by its original title S.W.A.L.K – an acronym for Sealed With A Loving Kiss – Alan Parker's wonderful 1971 coming-of-age story is one of those once-seen-never-forgotten works which is, unaccountably, rarely shown on television. That said, American director Wes Anderson somehow managed to catch it (he cites it as a major influence on his Oscar-nominated 2012 film Moonrise Kingdom) and it has long had cult status in Japan. Its welcome release on Blu-ray comes as part of Studio Canal's Vintage Classics collection.

Produced by David Putnam, directed by Anglo-Indian film-maker Waris Hussein (who would go on to make A Passage To India) and with a screenplay by Parker, it reunites young actors Mark Lester and Jack Wild and throws them into a multi-cultural London comprehensive where they pretty much take up where they left off in Oliver! three years earlier: Lester is posh new boy Daniel Latimer while Lester brings his Artful Dodger shtick into the role of loveable tyke Ornshaw, who lives alone with his grandfather. Tracy Hyde, 11 at the time, plays Melody, the girl on whom Danny develops an all-consuming crush and who is “married” to him in a rumbustious and anarchic finale in which home-made bombs are thrown to delightful effect, and our heroes disappear into the sunset pursued by teachers and parents.

Charming, vibrant and sizzling with life, the film shows its age only infrequently and Parker's skewering of middle class mores and aspirational snobbishness is as fresh and welcome today as it probably was at the time. The cinematography, much of it shot guerilla-style on London streets still populated by hippies and rag-and-bone men, is by Peter Suschitzky, who would lens The Empire Strikes Back as well as many of the later David Cronenberg films. The icing on the cake, however, is the soundtrack – a collection of now-classic Bee Gees songs including First Of May and To Love Somebody, deployed brilliantly by director Hussein. An absolute gem of a film.

The Olive Tree (15)

Eureka! Entertainment, £14.99

SPANISH actress-turned-filmmaker Iciar Bollain directs this bittersweet story about the relationship between potty-mouthed punk Alma (Anna Castillo) and her dementia-suffering grandfather, an olive farmer forced by his eldest son to sell his most ancient and precious tree. As a child, Alma dubbed it “The Monster” because of the shape of its gnarled, 2000-year-old trunk: in flashback, we see her climbing it and witnessing its traumatic removal. Now an adult working in the family chicken farm, she tracks it down to its eventual resting place – the headquarters of a German energy conglomerate based in Dusseldorf – and sets out to bring it home to her ailing grandfather. Joining her in her mad odyssey are hopeless uncle Alchahofa (Javier Gutierrez) and lovesick colleague Rafa (Pep Ambros).

The script is by Bollain's Scottish screenwriter husband Paul Laverty, Ken Loach's regular collaborator and the writer of his Palme d'Or-winning I, Daniel Blake, and is typical of him: the indomitable, working class characters set out to challenge authority and in their journey from poor, rural Spain to wealthy Germany there's plenty of scope for wry political comment about everything from the relative financial health of the two countries to the pressures on families and communities as they adapt to economic change. As with most of Laverty's work, it's also funny, earthy and ultimately redemptive.

Two Films By Andrea Luka Zimmerman: Taskafa – Stories Of The Street/Estate, A Reverie (U)

Second Run, £12.99

ZIMMERMAN is a 48-year-old German film-maker and artist who grew up on a Munich housing estate, left school at 16 and has lived in London since 1991. Since 1998 she has also made films, among the most recent of which are this pair, from 2013 and 2015 respectively.

The first, a collaboration with the late poet and art critic John Berger, tells the story of Istanbul's army of stray dogs through the prism of one of them, the legendary Taskafa. From the mouths of those street traders and Istanbul natives who knew the dog comes a succession of increasingly tall tales about its various abilities and attributes, the recollections interspersed with Berger's poems, antique photographs of Istanbul street life and a sobering story about an early 20th century attempt to cleanse the city of them. This involved dumping tens of thousands of strays on an uninhabited island and leaving them there to die. Today, a plaque commemorates the event. The film opens and closes on a wonderful shot of a dog lying on its back with all four feet in the air – dead and stiff with rigor mortis? No, just sunning itself – though it's Berger's verse which makes the biggest impression.

Estate, A Reverie, tackles chewier subject matter: social cleansing and gentrification, viewed through the eyes of the remaining residents of an un-loved 1930s housing estate in London which has been earmarked for demolition. Zimmerman is one of them, having spent 17 years on the estate. Over the course of the film she inveigles her way into the homes of a dozen or so other hold-outs – old and young, black and white – and lets them talk about their lives. She follows their efforts at resistance and elicits their memories and stories. Seven years in the making, it's a powerful film drawing together multiple themes.