Premiere. Kenneth Tynan talks to Laurence Olivier about Lilian Baylis and The Old Vic; plus, a film about David Hockney's sets for "The Rake's Progress", now on tour after its success at Glyndebourne.
The first of a regular series, taking a fortnightly look at the world of the visual arts, fashion, photography and design. This week's guest columnist is George Melly on how they sold the 70s; plus, a this week Arena features a unique event in the arts calendar: the opening of the Space Studios with 150 one-man shows in 20 days.
An interview with Howard Barker, author of 'Stripwell', and an extract from same; commentary by Kenneth Tynan; and an investigation of 'Birds of Paradise'.
Cartoonist Mel Caiman on the New Yorker magazine and its artists; Richard Hamilton at the Serpentine Gallery; and a new documentary exhibition from Jarrow.
Peter Hall talks about the history and new South Bank location of the National Theatre, where he is artistic director.
Observer critic William Feaver on Painting the End of the World; Bill Brandt's selection of landscape photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum; and the best of science fiction illustration.
Extract from a contemporary play, and Kenneth Tynan opines.
Shirley Conran is the guest columnist; fashion photographer Barry Lategan is filmed working; and Victorian painter Edward Burne-Jones' London exhibition.
Deborah Norton reviews British stage events; a play extract; and Kenneth Tynan opines about the theatre.
Guest columnist Terry Measham of the Tate Gallery on Landscape into Art, and a report on the work of contemporary British artists featuring the work of painter and poet Charles Tomlinson.
Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova rehearse for a BBC New Year Gala Performance; Kenneth Tynan draws a portrait of Albert Finney.
This month sees the end of European Architectural Heritage Year. A report by the SAVE Campaign comes out this week, which contains the alarming news that, in the first six months of this of all years, 182 buildings listed for their historical or aesthetic value were destroyed. Why does the 'spirit of our age' seem to be demolition? Film-maker Roger Graef and journalist Simon Jenkins explore our 'forgotten heritage,' and some of the ways in which it might be conserved and put to new use.
Deborah Norton returns with reports, interviews and extracts from what is liveliest and best in the British theatrical scene.
A fortnightly look at the world of the visual arts, fashion, photography and design.
Jonathan Miller introduces this week's look at what is most stimulating and enjoyable on the theatrical scene.
Photographer Paul Strand is now considered by many as one of the major artists of the 20th century, and his work has done much to establish photography as one of the fine arts, which is moving away from photo-journalism and towards a more independent and personal approach, with a new kind of social commitment focussed on the community.
Ayckbourn is the only contemporary playwright ever to have had five different plays running simultaneously in the West End. Here is a chance to watch the author himself directing his latest play and to follow this production through from the first read-through to dress-rehearsal.
An increasing number of visual artists, reacting to the gap which divides them from the mainstream of ordinary life, have abandoned their ivory towers to work more directly with people. Arena looks at aspects of community art and the work of painter Keith Grant, artist-in-residence at the New Charing Cross Hospital.
Claire Bloom and Kenneth Tynan discuss three performances—amongst them, Peggy Ashcroft in an extract from Beckett's 'Happy Days' and Judi Dench in Shaw's 'Too True to be Good'. Plus, a rare treat, filmed on Broadway: Irene Worth in her triumphant success in Tennessee Williams's 'Sweet Bird of Youth'.
Tonight's Arena is about some of the latest developments in sculpture, and features Robert Janz and Dante Leonelli, two artists concerned with incorporating a fourth dimension—time—into their work.
Arena brings extracts from Paris' contemporary theatre season, including Frank Wedekind's 'Lulu' and Marguerite Duras' 'Days in the Tree', and an interview with Delphine Seyrig.
Tonight "Arena" presents the work of British and American artists who use video—the machinery of television—breaking out from the limits set in conventional broadcasting and transforming the medium's capacity for communication.
Barbara Jefford, Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Kenneth Tynan, Billie Whitelaw, and many of the other people behind the scenes say goodbye to the Old Vic building.
Liverpool poet and painter Adrian Henri visits 'The Face of Merseyside', an exhibition at the Williamson Museum, Birkenhead, and reflects on the contrasting realist style in contemporary China and the USA. The programme also features the work of Boyd and Evans who use photographs as the basis of their explorations of everyday life.
On 2 April, 1956, the English Stage Company was born. It started with a season of modern plays and its first hit was a new work by a young actor John Osborne, 'Look Back in Anger'. This was followed by a long line of new and exciting playwrights: Arnold Wesker, John Arden, David Storey, Christopher Hampton, Edward Bond. Twenty years later their plays are performed all over the world and are set books in many of our schools. Many happy returns, with Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Peter Gill, Christopher Hampton, Jocelyn Herbert, Michael Hordern, Helen Mirren, John Osborne, Tony Richardson, Arnold Wesker and the pupils of Quintin Kynaston School, London.
How does an unknown artist become famous, and his work part of the currency of the international art market? Barrie Penrose investigates a multi-national art empire and the artists and methods that created it, and talks to, amongst others, Henry Moore and Sir John Rothenstein.
Features Elisabeth Schwarzkopf; Galina Visnevskaya in the Scottish Opera's production of Macbeth; the Kantor Theatre Company from Poland; and Fenella Fielding in a late-night revue.
Features the La Mama Theatre Company from New York; Bunraku, traditional Japanese Puppet Theatre; a recital by Frederica Von Stade; and Judith Blegen as Susanna in 'The Marriage of Figaro'.
Writer Germaine Greer and her god-daughter Ruby take a look at a child's Edinburgh Festival and some of the fringe activities, including Gruppo Teatro Libero from Rome and Quentin Crisp.
A look at the launch of the Manchester Royal Exchange, an exciting new theatrical event in the context of Manchester's theatre background, and its creators will discuss their ideas and aspirations.
Gavin Miller interviews the director Robert Altman on "M*A*S*H", "Nashville", "Buffalo Bill and the Indians" and more.
Last month, self-confessed imitator of paintings Tom Keating emerged from hiding to reveal that there are many more of his works in circulation in addition to the Samuel Palmer pictures. David Gould, the expert who discovered the Palmer imitations, and who stayed firmly in the background during the journalistic revelations, now makes his first appearance to show Arena the process of identifying and analysing suspected pictures.
Gavin Millar talks with Frank Westmore, whose family has dominated the make-up departments of American cinema for decades.
Writer Peter Shaffer talks about his plays, his life and the theatre. With an extract from the 1976 stage production of 'Equus', starring Colin Blakely and Gerry Sundquist.
Arena: Cinema goes to Paris for a unique interview with Eric Rohmer, the most retiring of filmmakers, who once turned up for the New York premiere of his own 'My Night with Maud' in a false moustache for fear of being recognised. Rohmer was one of the nucleus, with Godard, Chabrol, Truffaut and Rivette, who edited Cahiers du Cinema, and who became the shock troops of the New Wave. His recent films, such as 'Claire's Knee' and 'Love in the Afternoon', are witty, intelligent conversation-pieces about sex, which he calls his 'moral tales'.
Every day of our lives, without entering an art gallery, we are subjected to a barrage of images created by hundreds of contemporary artists. Yet they themselves remain anonymous. They are the illustrators who draw and paint for advertisement hoardings, for magazines, newspapers, book jackets, record covers. Arena filmed two British illustrators working on their current projects.
Artist Chris Orr probes the dreadful truth behind the net curtains of suburbia.
John Wayne's latest film, 'The Shootist', the story of the last days of a dying gunfighter, is just about to go on general release. It is the work of Don Siegel, who also directed 'Charley Varrick', 'Coogan's Bluff', 'Dirty Harry' and many other violent thrillers. In Hollywood, Siegel talks about the problems of the director who is typecast by his success in one specialised genre.
The London visit of France's Théâtre National Populaire is the first of several international seasons at The National Theatre. It brings two of the most brilliant European directors to London: Patrice Chéreau, who directed this year's 'Ring Cycle' at Bayreuth, and Roger Planchon. Arena went to Lyons where the Théâtre National Populaire, one of France's leading theatres, has found a permanent home to film Chéreau's original and much discussed 'La Dispute' by Marivaux and Planchon's highly acclaimed 'Tartuffe'.
This week the 20th London Film Festival opens. Of the 40-odd feature-length films to be shown, only two are British—and if past years are anything to go by, only a minute proportion of the total will be shown even in London, let alone on general distribution. What is wrong with our film industry? Why, with all our technical resources and professional skills, can we make so few good films ourselves? And why will the world's best work not reach our cinemas?
At a special Tate Gallery exhibition, how one visitor "sees" the sculpture—and perhaps helps to sharpen our own perception of it.
A young photographer turns the camera on herself.
A revival of his war pictures this week in print and on exhibition, some of them hitherto unpublished.
It is one year since Franco's death, and Spanish film-makers are now beginning to test the new political atmosphere, heralded in 1973 by the extraordinary 'Spirit of the Beehive'. Arena: Cinema went to Spain to talk with several Spanish directors—Bardem, Saura, Borau, Camino—about the problems of a country where a bad review can still mean jail.
Songs! Battles! Laughter! Tragedy! Playwrights Edward Bond and Peter Barnes, and actress Janet Suzman, make their personal contributions to this special 20th anniversary tribute to Bertolt Brecht at Newcastle's University Theatre.
A look at the Disney exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum; an interview with 'The Ritz' director Dick Lester and actress Rita Moreno; an excerpt from Buster Keaton's 'Spite Marriage'; and the results of the Titles Competition.
Gavin Millar talks to Mel Brooks just before the London release of 'Silent Movie'.
An introduction to the magical world of wood-sculptor Sam Smith, plus a look at one of this month's major exhibitions.
Gavin Miller talks to director Martin Ritt, writer Walter Bernstein, and actors Woody Allen and Zero Mostel about 'The Front'.
Does a history of the bicycle sound a surprising way of looking at the changes in society since the turn of the century? It's Stewart Parker 's theme in his new musical play 'Spokesong'—one of the most cheering pieces of work to have come out of Northern Ireland in recent years.
Richard Goolden first played the part of Mole in 'Toad of Toad Hall' in 1930. He now lives in mole-like surroundings in Chelsea, where a lifetime's enthusiasm for music-hall, French poetry, interior decorating, famous murders, etc., has piled up around him. This short profile of the 81-year-old actor includes scenes from 'Toad of Toad Hall' and Tom Stoppard's 'Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land', in which he is appearing at the Arts Theatre.
A fortnightly look at the big screen at home and abroad. News, views and interviews presented by Gavin Millar.
Ralph Steadman illustrates a children's anti-war story, caricatures at his local pub, and speaks about his drawing techniques and his work, including Alice, and impressions of the Patty Hearst trial and the Watergate hearings.
Gavin Miller discusses 'Network' with director Sidney Lumet and Robert Kee; plus, Alberto Cavalcanti talks about his film career on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
Next week, Germany's best theatre company is coming to London for the first time. In the 50s and 60s it was obligatory for theatre fans and critics from all over Germany to make the pilgrimage to East Berlin to see each new production of Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. Now, just across the wall, Die Schaubuhne, a young and politically committed theatre co-operative, has by general international consensus replaced the Berliner Ensemble as the finest German company.
Gavin Millar talks to New Yorker critic Pauline Kael about Costa-Gavras' 'Z' and 'Section Speciale', along with her passion for the movies and how she wields her power.
What is a Hologram? It looks real but has no substance... It's a ghost created by science... We investigate this futuristic phenomenon and its potential in the Arts.
Inspired by the landscape, the wildlife, and by his village neighbours, artist Kit Williams conjures up in his paintings a vivid folklore of his own. This magical world comes alive in a Gloucestershire valley, for this Arena film.
On the occasion of the release of the third film version of 'A Star is Born', James Mason talks about the curious business of stardom and how it has changed.
Arena visits three theatres - the Mercury Theater in Colchester, the Humberside Theatre in Hull, and the Duke's Playhouse in Lancaster - to find out what they are doing, how they are doing it and why they think they should go on doing it.
A look at Ealing Studios, including excerpts of many of their popular films.
Philip Sutton is perhaps best known as a portrait painter; his principal subject is his family—his wife Heather, son, and three daughters. Tonight's film looks at the way he has recorded them, and at the way they have recorded him.
In April 1917, the poet Edward Thomas was killed by a shell in his dug-out at Arras, France; bBehind the German lines was a young artist, Helmut Weissenborn. Now 79 and living in England, Weissenborn shows Arena how he recently illustrated with wood engravings the hitherto unpublished war diary of Edward Thomas.
A look at a superb collection of Gothic art from Cologne.
In the first part of a two-part special edition from Rome, Gavin Millar interviews Bernardo Bertolucci, director of 'Last Tango in Paris' and '1900'; he also reports Fellini's new film, 'Casanova', and speaks to Gore Vidal about Hollywood and 'Cinecitta'.
Prospect Theatre Company reopens the Old Vic. Includes rehearsal footage from 'St Joan', 'Hamlet', 'Antony and Cleopatra', and 'War Music', a new musical adaptation of 'The Iliad' by Christopher Logue.
In the second part of a two-part special edition from Rome, Gavin Millar talks to director Bernardo Bertolucci about '1900', his new five-and-a-half-hour film, as well as his earlier work.
"11.20 am, 12 February 1974: a man in a new overcoat and an astrakhan hat, the weekend shopping in his arms, walking along the pavement barking loudly like a dog." Ten years ago, Ian Breakwell discarded paints and canvas to dedicate himself to his diary, a day-by-day record in words and pictures.
Jim Dine, the American artist who first became famous in the New York pop-art scene of the early 60s, explains why he has recently felt the need to go back to drawing the human figure.
More and more cinemas are turning to sex as a last resort to stop dwindling audiences. Is there anything to be said for erotic cinema? Are all films about sex sexy films? Is there a good and a bad in erotic films and should you be allowed to decide for yourself? Or is the whole subject unspeakable?
An interview with Sophia Loren on the occasion of the opening of 'The Cassandra Crossing'.
Mr Universe, the Crazy Horse Girls de Paris, Yum Yum Shaw, superstars with police escorts, topless bathing beauties—the Cannes Film Festival still sometimes seems more like a circus than a trade fair. But for all that, film people find it an indispensable fortnight in their calendar. A report on the business and the ballyhoo.
In the last ten years an astonishing number of new writers have emerged: Barrie Keeffe, John McGrath, David Hare, Howard Barker, Howard Brenton, Trevor Griffiths and Stephen Poliakoff have written plays about violence, sex and politics. Writer and critic Albert Hunt assesses this renaissance of British playwrights, which has given the theatre of the 70s a distinctive voice.
Report from the 1977 Edinburgh International Festival—the experimental shows, Film Festival, Television Festival, and art galleries. Includes a new production of 'Carmen'.
Gavin Millar returns for a new season after a visit to Hollywood, which despite rumours of slump and panic is still the unquestioned capital of the cinema world. We talked to one of its ruling princes, John Frankenheimer, director of 'The Manchurian Candidate' and 'Grand Prix', about his career in the Dream Factory, and especially his latest suspense thriller 'Black Sunday'.
Martin Scorsese's film 'New York, New York', starring Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli, is his most ambitious film to date. Not just a nostalgic homage to the Hollywood musical but a personal work that means as much to him, says Scorsese, as 'Mean Streets' and 'Taxi Driver'. Gavin Millar talks to Scorsese in San Francisco and the programme includes rare interviews with Robert De Niro, Liza Minnelli, and Jodie Foster.
William Feaver introduces the latest work of this unique and controversial artist, known since the 60s as our foremost concrete poet.
Diane Keaton and Woody Allen talk about the filming of 'Annie Hall' and their long friendship.
Second only to North Sea oil, the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre is Scotland's most staggering and unlikely success story. Despite its location on a devastated patch of Gorbals' ground, it attracts a large and dedicated audience for its bold and often spectacular productions. A look at the company, its policy, its audience and its plays.
The tiny Half Moon Theatre in London's East End is fighting for its life. Its long campaign to acquire Wilton's Music Hall as a theatre and community centre is threatened by a bid from a major property group. A report on the important issues involved.
The Colonels have gone - and Greek cinema is emerging again. Gavin Millar talks to Melina Mercouri in Athens where she is finishing her first film since her return from exile. He also talks to Theodor Angelopoulos, the director of 'The Travelling Players'.
Richard Seifert created much of the new sky-line of London. His high-rise blocks—most notably Centre Point—have been the cause of controversy and scandal, while the architect himself has remained an elusive and enigmatic figure. Now he talks to Arena about his career, his personal reason for city planning, and his present attitude to high-rise building.
Cleveland Brown is a truly original naive painter from North London, whose subjects include the Spaghetti House Siege and the Queen's Jubilee.
An exhibition of dazzling patchwork pictures made by the wives of political prisoners in Chile.
A fortnightly look at the big screen at home and abroad. News, views and interviews presented by Gavin Millar.
Messing around with the classics has a long and honoured history. Nevertheless a fascinating and vitriolic debate is now raging over the border line between interpretation and vandalism. Tonight's extended edition of Arena looks at the issues behind this debate and the great productions of the last 20 years, to find out whether it is ever possible to keep our "hands off the classics."
This week sees the opening of the 21st London Film Festival—the festival of festivals—with new films from 24 countries. Bertolucci, Angelopoulos, Herzog, James Ivory, Marguerite Duras and most of the brightest names in cinema will be here to see their films screened.
Michael Bennett introduces Uncle Cyril, and other members of his own family whom he has immortalised in an exhibition of photographs.
The artist Christo has parcelled up buildings, coastlines, and human beings, hung an orange curtain across a Colorado gulf, and created a two-million-dollar nylon fence along 25 miles of American farmland. Last week Christo was in London, and he explained to Arena his latest project—wrapping up the Reichstag in Berlin.
A look at some beautifully designed wireless sets, and a nostalgic reminder of the sounds they once transmitted.
This year's London Film Festival has been one of the biggest ever, with a wider spread of films—in scale, nationality, genre, and politics—than ever before. But one of the constant themes in pictures big and small has been the political struggle of Left and Right. Fascism still seems everybody's favourite subject.
Arena looks at two virtuoso solo performances: Leonard Rossiter is currently tackling his most demanding role, alone on stage for two hours as the mad 18th-century painter Benjamin Haydon, whose life of wild fantasy and ambition ended in suicide; meanwhile, Nola Rae is a mime artist, clown, and one of the funniest women on the stage.
'The Deep' opens in London this week. Written by the man who wrote 'Jaws', Peter Benchley, it's been the biggest grosser in the USA this year—after Star Wars, of course. Although it features an underwater Jacqueline Bisset menaced by a moray eel, it has nothing to do with 'Jaws', swears its British director Peter Yates.
Star Wars - the biggest and fastest money-maker in the history of the movies - has opened in Britain at last. What on earth - or in heaven - has caused the phenomenal success of this galactic romp-cum-morality tale? Gavin Millar talks to the producer Gary Kurtz, the designer John Barry, and to Mark Hamill, who plays the young hero Luke Skywalker.
Jazz singer, writer and self-confessed surrealist George Melly takes a day trip through rooms, streets, a strange cafe, with brief and curious encounters on the way. Among them, the last of the surrealists in England and a top punk rock band. His destination - the Hayward Gallery, and a major show of pictures and objects from the days of Dada and surrealism. But what is 'the journey', as they called it, and is it possible to make it today and still be surprised?
Our greatest living sculptor confronts the superb anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, and talks about them in relation to his own life-long study of the human body.
Howard Hawks' career spanned the history of Hollywood. As well as designing and racing sports cars, motorbikes and aeroplanes he wrote, directed and produced every kind of Hollywood movie. 'The Big Sleep', 'Red River', 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' and 'Bringing Up Baby' are amongst the best examples of their genre. Gavin Millar talked to him at his home in Palm Springs just before his 80th birthday.
With the advent of two major new productions of The Cherry Orchard, at the National Theatre and Riverside Studios, Arena: Theatre addresses itself to the recurring debate about Chekhov the 'comic' dramatist.
A British film 'The Duellists', starring Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel and Albert Finney, won the Special Jury Award at Cannes last year and opened in London last week. It is a finely photographed period film set in the beautiful Dordogne, but the most admirable thing about it may be that it is as faithful an adaptation of Conrad as any the screen has seen - and there have been many, from a 1926 silent version of 'Nostromo' to Richard Brooks's 'Lord Jim' and Hitchcock's 'Sabotage'.
Arena looks at three new exhibitions: the letters and paintings of the tragic artist Carrington; works by Robert Motherwell, a giant of contemporary art; and Michael MicKinnon's explorations of the new landscapes of space-age technology.
The man who in 1936 shot Jean Renoir's 'Partie de Campagne', the lyrical masterpiece of petit-bourgeois life in the 90s, nowadays finds himself tackling the somewhat different territory of James Bond. Arena: Cinema talks to Claude Renoir about all sides of his long, fascinating career as a top feature film cameraman.
This month Arena: Theatre looks at the hard facts (and the familiar cliches) behind a new British Musical revival—a bitter-sweet story, with song and dance—as told by ex-'trouper' Glyn Worsnip. With sneak previews from The Travelling Music Show Kings and Clowns Kismet, and featuring Bruce Forsyth, Lionel Bart, Anthony Newley Lesley Bricusse, Frank Finlay, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber.
'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - with UFOs - was shot last year in Hollywood on a strictly closed set. No TV cameras were allowed in to see what Steven Spielberg, the young director of Jaws, was cooking-up this time. But Arena: Cinema sneaked in on the last day of shooting to watch Spielberg at work and to talk to him about the movie which looks like being the science fiction - science fact? - sensation of 1978.
A film about the controversial American artist Carl Andre, whose brick 'sculpture' caused a storm of protest when first exhibited at the Tate Gallery two years ago. Prior to a major one-man show at the Whitechapel Gallery, Arena meets him in London and New York.
Vera Stravinsky—designer, painter, and widow of the great Russian composer—talks to Ronald Harwood about her remarkable life.
Shirley MacLaine starring with Mikhail Baryshnikov makes a powerful return to the screen in The Turning Point as an ex-dancer. In Monte Carlo at the World Premiere, she talks about her life on screen and off.
James Ivory 's new film follows the fortunes of the lonely at New York's famous old-time dance hall.
For the last ten years The Red Ladder Company have played in pubs, clubs and community halls, mostly to audiences who have never set foot inside a theatre. 'Taking Our Time' is their latest play. Set in 1842, it uses drama, comedy and songs to tell the story of a turning-point in British history—when the hand-loom weavers of the North rose up against the newly-mechanised world of the Industrial Revolution. Filmed among the industrial museums and the weaving and wool-combing factories of West Yorkshire, this programme shows the making and performance of a new work by one of Britain's most adventurous theatre companies.
First of two films about highly-individual artists from the West Country. Patrick Hughes runs a home for retired rainbows in the port of St Ives. It's the latest project in a lifetime's work spent exploring visual puns, paradoxes and jokes.
Second of two films about highly-individual artists from the West Country. John Abbott left the Royal College of Art and a hectic life in London six years ago. He now lives on his own in a remote and beautiful Dartmoor cottage but his work is still haunted by disturbing images of city life.
Arena goes to Amsterdam to film the spectacular Japanese theatre company, Tenjosajiki, prior to their first visit to England. Renowned for their fantasy plays based on ceremonial and literary themes, the astonishing virtuosity and imaginative range of this company have earned them both fame and notoriety throughout the world. Their latest production 'Directions to Servants' is typical of their work - a combination of daring visual style and rigorous discipline which makes them unique.
This special edition of Arena examines the current controversy over the boundaries between drama, and documentary and looks at the problems which face programme makers who use the conventions of fiction to represent 'the facts'.
Byrne is a Scottish writer with a highly-original comic talent. Arena visits him in Scotland and enters the world of 'The Slab Boys' - his latest play set in a carpet factory in Glasgow and based on his own experiences.
Arnold Wesker's celebrated 'Roots' trilogy is being revived at the Shaw Theatre, London. It provides a unique chance to reassess a work many regard as an undoubted modern classic. Wesker talks about the trilogy and about his life and work in the 20 years since its first performance.
A special edition featuring the most sensational rock band of the 70s. The Tubes parody the excesses of the 20th-century dream with a dazzling, mind-blowing mixture of rock music, theatre and dance.
Gavin Millar talks to the French director. From his first film, 'The Four Hundred Blows'—which looks affectionately at the making of a young delinquent—to 'Small Change', made a couple of years ago, his films have often had children at their centre.
Gavin Millar talks to Bill Douglas, whose recently completed trilogy about a poor Scottish childhood - 'My Childhood', 'My Ain Folk', 'My Way Home' - is regarded by many as the most important contribution to the British cinema for years.
In recent years her skills as an actress have been somewhat overshadowed by the publicity surrounding her political activities. Now, after an absence of five years, Vanessa Redgrave returns to the English stage. This programme offers a rare opportunity to see her in rehearsal and performance in Ibsen's play 'The Lady from the Sea', and to hear her talk about her commitment to her acting career.
Gavin Millar talks to Christopher Isherwood, Neil Simon, and David Puttnam about their lives and careers in Los Angeles.
A preview of another adaptation of John Buchan's classic novel, including a look back at two earlier times it was filmed—by Hitchcock in 1935, and by Ralph Thomas in 1960.
This year's London Film Festival contained five entries from India—a reminder that the UK hardly sees any of the output of the biggest film industry in the world. Gavin Millar reports from Bombay, including interviews with Satyajtt Ray, Shyam Benegal, and two of India's heart-throbs, Shashi Kapoor and Parveen Babi.
Arena takes you on a guided tour of the smallest museum in the world - its 'curator', Swiss artist Herbert Distel, has transformed a small chest-of-drawers into a miniature museum. Originally used to store cotton reels, the Museum of Drawers now houses a collection to rival any major gallery - 500 original works contributed by many of the world's leading artists.
Recently awarded the accolade of a one-man show at the Royal Academy, Anthony Green is one of the most original and approachable of all figurative painters working in Britain today. He looks back on the growth of his family—and his painting—since his first encounter with the BBC's cameras nearly ten years ago.
A film on two of the greatest photographers of the 20th century: Jacques Henri Lartigue and Roman Vishniac. Lartigue began taking photographs at the age of seven in 1902, and his celebrated 'Diary of a Century' is a photographic record of his life from that time until the present day; meanwhile, Vishniac—a Russian Jew born in St Petersburg in 1897—is famous for his striking images of life in the Jewish ghettos, taken with a concealed camera just before the last world war.
Gavin Millar presents another edition in his regular series about the cinema today. He talks to Robert Altman about his new film 'A Wedding'; plus, Karel Reisz's 'Dog Soldiers' and other turn-of-the-year news.
Two years ago Marion Elliott, a 20-year-old from Brixton, gave up working in Woolworths and became punk singer Poly Styrene. Having created her own plastic image, she formed a band, X-Ray Spex, and set about reflecting life in the synthetic 70s with songs like 'The Day the World Turned Day-Glo' and 'Germ-Free Adolescents'. This film observes the differing worlds of Marion Elliott and Poly Styrene.
Aloe: a genus of plant indigenous to South Africa, noted for its ability to survive under the most adverse conditions. Athol Fugard is the author of such celebrated plays as 'The Blood Knot', 'The Island', and 'Sizwe Bansi is Dead'. He is known throughout the world for his opposition to Apartheid, and, more importantly, for his determination to express these views through the theatre and within South Africa. Last month his latest play, 'A Lesson from Aloes', opened in Johannesburg. It was both written and directed by Fugard, and Arena was there from the first day of rehearsals until the opening night. The film offers a unique insight into the evolution of a play and the remarkable tenacity of its author.
'Assault on Precinct 13' and 'Dark Star' were two of the 'sleepers' of the last two years - small-budget films from the USA that struck a chord right round the world. Their young writer/director John Carpenter's third feature film, 'Halloween', has opened in London. Gavin Millar interviews John Carpenter and star Donald Pleasence on location in Los Angeles.
Fibreglass carcasses, a flaming typewriter, and a troop of girl guides—each has been a key ingredient in a work of art by Leopoldo Maler. Deliberately provocative, surprise and spectacle are key elements in Maler's work.
How do the verbal images of poetry relate to the visual images of painting? Charles Tomlinson, one of England's finest poets, is also a painter. In this film he explores the landscapes—urban and natural—which have inspired his work.
The sell-out success of this year's Royal Shakespeare season at Stratford is the musical play 'Piaf'. Jane Lapotaire, television's Marie Curie, has won universal critical acclaim for her performance as the great French singer. Tonight Jane Lapotaire talks about imitating the inimitable.
A cast of 50 actors and musicians playing over 200 parts were commandeered by Ken Campbell for his marathon production of 'The Warp' at London's ICA. They were there to perform an epic cycle of ten plays running an uninterrupted 22 hours. Arena was there to witness the event—and to film the cast prior to their collapse.
John Barry (designer of 'Star Wars' and 'Superman') is now directing 'Saturn 3'. Ridley Scott ('The Duellists') is shooting 'The Alien'. Gavin Millar reports on these two new British SF films.
Lifers in prison cages, comedians in Hollywood, adolescents in the East End and female androids on the edge of the galaxy have all been subjects for Glasgow play-wright Tom McGrath in a career which started only in 1976. Arena profiles an original new talent. With extracts from 'The Hard Man' and 'Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy'.
More like 'Tom and Jerry' than Marcel Marceau, this highly unconventional group has attracted a cult following by combining traditional mime with their own fast-moving cartoon style. Unusual, original and very funny.
Isabelle Huppert is 23 - 'a stunning actress', says Claude Chabrol; Best Actress at Cannes in 1978 for 'Violette Noziere', the new Chabrol thriller. We talk to her in Paris.
Alberta Hunter is 83, a classic blues singer who performs the soundtrack of Alan Rudolph's 'Remember My Name'. We catch her singing at The Cookery, New York.
The television premiere of Geoff Dunbar's brilliant animation film. Based on Alfred Jarry's notorious surrealist hero, Pere Ubu, it chronicles the rise to power of a kind of punk Macbeth, a lewd and unscrupulous despot with the mentality of a petit bourgeois and with absolutely no redeeming qualities. Ubu Roi was originally written by Jarry as a schoolboy in 1888 and eventually presented to an outraged public in 1896. For his version of the story Dunbar has invented a brutal and graphic style to recreate the explosive impact of Jarry's original production.
"My Way" has become an anthem. It's been recorded over 140 times and for every artist who has put it on wax, countless others sing it in pubs, clubs and private homes. Arena investigates the appeal and staying power of a phenomenally popular song.
Twenty-three years ago Don Siegel made his famous horror pic 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. Now there is a new 'Invasion', even more chilling than the original; make-up effects by the man who dreamed up the aliens in 'Close Encounters'; special sound effects by the man who 'voiced' R2D2 in Star Wars. Gavin Millar talks to star Donald Sutherland and director Philip Kaufman.
In this, the first-ever exclusive Arts Documentary about a living legend, our cameras probe and etch the enigma which is Dame Edna. Meet her in the privacy of her fabulously appointed penthouse suite atop the Dorchester Hotel, London, W1. Witness the fabled finale of her current West End hit, A Night with Dame Edna. Visit her Melbourne home suburb, Moonee Ponds, now a national monument... and suffer with her the tears, terror and triumph as she claws her way to the top. Dame Edna talks fearlessly about her fame, her wealth and her humility, whilst wearing no less than ten unique couturier-simulated gowns. And much, much more.
At the height of the American depression in the summer of 1936, writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans travelled south to Alabama. There they lived with a family of poor-white farmers recording their daily lives in intimate detail. What finally emerged was an extraordinary and personal account of deprivation and poverty. The book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men has become a classic. More than 40 years later Arena returned to Alabama, in the foot-steps of Agee and Evans, to trace the survivors of that original family.
Everybody knows about Kung Fu, Run Run Shaw and Bruce Lee. They probably know less about the young film-makers who are trying to get a few of Hong Kong's more pressing problems on to the screen: over-crowding, poverty, refugees, and worries about China. There are, too, the glamorous invaders from Hollywood who see Hong Kong as another exotic backdrop where two hearts might beat as one. Candice Bergen has been there starring in Oliver's Story, the sequel to Love Story. 'Where's the real Hong Kong gone?' she asks.
Rock band Sham 69 have a large and loyal following of working-class kids, who call themselves 'The Sham Army'. They have a reputation for causing trouble, and Sham concerts have often been disrupted and brought to an end by fighting. Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer, has struggled to prevent these outbreaks, but the violent and conflicting passions aroused at Sham concerts have placed him in an increasingly difficult position. Sham's latest album 'That's Life' portrays the pressures that face the kids who follow the band. Arena this week recreates scenes from that album and follows the story of one Sham concert which threatened to explode.
For David Oxtoby, Elvis is king. He's been painting rock'n'roll stars since the 50s, much to the bemusement of the art establishment. Most of the paintings in this film—of Presley, Haley, Gene Vincent, etc.—were stolen and subsequently burnt by Italian bandits, and so Arena presents a unique chance to view the work of this entertaining but ill-starred artist.
Last year the artist Mark Boyle attained the singular distinction of occupying the entire British pavilion at the Venice Biennale, astonishing visitors with a Sardinian mountainside, a ploughed field and a Liverpool pavement. Since pioneering light shows with Jimi Hendrix and the Soft Machine he has devoted his life to travelling the world, recreating with uncanny accuracy six-foot-square replicas of the Earth's surface.
Arena presents a film about the strange art of ventriloquism with Tattersall and his amazing life-size doll.
A film about the popular reggae band Steel Pulse, whose highly successful debut album 'Handsworth Revolution' launched them last summer on the road to fame. Although their roots are in Jamaica, Steel Pulse is very much an indigenous British band.
One in six people in Britain will spend some time in a mental hospital. For 50 years, painting or drawing have provided an important key to the problems of the mentally ill. This Arena film presents some of the extraordinary and moving pictures of the mind produced in Europe since the war.
John Hoyland is reckoned by many both here and abroad to be this country's finest abstract painter. A key figure for younger artists and critics, he has been both loved and hated to excess. As a major retrospective of his work opens in London, here is a film that stays close to the artist during six days when he faces hostile criticism, starts a new painting and explains why, in bleaker moments, painting can seem ' like flicking away in a corner with a feather duster '.
Arena presents a profile of Richard Rogers, one of the most original and controversial talents in architecture today.
Formerly a professional screamer in horror films, and a belly-dancer in the Middle East, Lene Lovich has now emerged as one of the most original performers in rock music - aided and abetted by a bizarre appearance and an extraordinary vocal range.
Arena presents the extraordinary story of Tim Page, war photographer and Vietnam legend - a tale first told in Michael Herr's celebrated book about Vietnam, 'Dispatches'. Page was wounded four times in Vietnam. The fourth and final time, he was logged 'dead on arrival'. But he survived against all the odds. Tonight, he tells his story.
Arena presents a hilarious and touching portrait of the great Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, filmed on location in Brooklyn, New York, and featuring friends, relatives and other 'odd-balls'.
First of two films about highly-individual women artists. Peggy Taub has always wanted to sculpt like the classic Greeks—but whenever she leans over the clay bin an animal head appears. An American writer and artist who now lives in London, Taub's work centres on the belief that the main difference between people and animals 'lies in the placement of the ears'.
Second of two films about highly-individual women artists. Arena looks at the work of Thalma Goldman, one of the most original artist-animators around, after her film 'Stanley' is nominated as Britain's entry to the Berlin Film Festival.
Irish folk music is one of the oldest unbroken cultural traditions in Europe. As the Sense of Ireland festival of arts comes to London, Arena presents some of the finest Irish musicians of today. In tonight's programme the Bothy Band and Planxty - two of the best folk groups of recent years - play and sing with their families and friends on location in Dublin and on the west coast of Ireland.
The growth of black consciousness through the 1970s has produced an explosion of original new theatre in black South Africa. At a secret performance in the backyard of a Soweto shop, a radical poet recites his banned work accompanied by drums and songs. In a ghetto hall, two men in chains portray their escape from prison and their dream of liberation - a dream that is shattered by the grim reality of working in Johannesburg's mines "6,000 feet underground ... in the dusty caves of gold". And the women of Crossroads shanty town re-enact their fight with the police and the bulldozers which have harassed them for years. Tonight's film investigates the remarkable emergence of a vivid and defiant theatrical life.
Adrian Thrills investigates a new and exhilarating musical blend which is taking the country by storm. 2-tone is a unique mix of music, fusing together reggae, rock, soul, ska, blue beat and punk. With its home in Coventry and its roots in reggae, it derives its name and identity from the co-existence of its black and white members.
A profile of Liverpool playwright Alan Bleasdale. With two new productions packing them in, in the North of England, Alan Bleasdale continues to build on the popular success of his TV plays 'The Black Stuff' and 'Scully's New Year's Eve'. Arena looks at the people and places - the tarmac gang, the school, the hospital and the docks - around which he has woven his plays.
A double profile: as prizewinning writer/performer Victoria Wood opens in her latest play, 'Good Fun', Arena looks at her talent to amuse through her witty and engaging songs; and teenage playwright Andrea Dunbar's remarkable first play, 'The Arbor', is now running at the Royal Court—it was written when she was only 15, it draws on her own experience as a schoolgirl mother.
"Failure can be fun" is the motto of self-confessed failures David McGillivray and Stephen Pile. McGillivray was commissioned to write a book about failure but failed to write it; Pile's 'Book of Heroic Failures' has got into the best-sellers list, which meant he was thrown out of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain (which he founded).
The story of an unusual collaboration between rock musician Brian Eno and artist illustrator Russell Mills. The 65 works in Russell Mills' new series of paintings provide a remarkable visual counterpoint for 38 of Brian Eno's songs. It's a project they have both pursued obsessively for over seven years.
An anthology of songs that never made the charts. Yet they are some of the most provocative and entertaining songs of the 70s. Satirical, polemical, rousing, sad, originally written for the theatre and probing different aspects of the welfare state we're in, from love and marriage to law and order. These songs are the fringe benefits of that thriving development, outside traditional theatre, of small community theatres and travelling companies, taking plays and music to often non-theatre-going audiences in venues ranging- from factories to social clubs.
The outrageous hats of designer David Shilling, modelled by his mother Gertrude—doyenne of Ascot Day.
A bizarre musical entertainment from 'Swankey Modes'. Mel, Judy, Esmé and Willie—four girls who have created a unique fashion house in a corner shop in Camden Town—launch their new collection in a most unusual way.
One after another mighty politicians have fallen victim to the savage caricatures of Peter Fluck and Roger Law, better known as Luck and Flaw. Among their most memorable targets are Henry Kissinger as the Statue of Liberty, Jeremy Thorpe as Saint Sebastian and Keith Joseph as Dracula. Uncannily modelled in plasticine, the victims are then photographed for magazines and newspapers all over the world. The results are bizarre, witty and unapologetically extreme.
First of two films where women photographers turn the camera on themselves. For over a year Linda Benedict-Jones photographed herself by using the time release on her Pentax camera. The results - studies in and out of doors, at home, in hospital, in the bath and in the bedroom - provide a witty and sometimes poignant self-portrait of this extremely talented photographer.
Second of two films where women photographers turn the camera on themselves. At the age of 40, having spent most of her working life photographing other people for a living, Jo Spence began to have serious doubts about what she was doing and why. Overnight she stopped taking photographs altogether and turned instead to an exploration of her own image as seen by others—snapshots of herself from the family album.
Stanley Kubrick's long-awaited film 'The Shining' opens in London this week and throughout the country from tomorrow. To mark the event Arena offers a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on the set of the legendary but elusive film director. Kubrick's youngest daughter Vivian, having obtained her father's reluctant consent, was on location throughout the filming armed with an Aaton camera and a miniature tape recorder. The result is some unusually candid scenes of the director at work with his stars - Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall.
Not so long ago they were playing in London pubs. This week - 16 platinum discs, 21 gold and a triumphant world tour later, Dire Straits return to the London stage. Tonight's Arena film features the superb concert they played on their last visit to The Rainbow, and band members talk about their music and the pressures and consequences of their astonishing success.
Documentary about the Chelsea Hotel in New York, a legendary haven for the some of the greatest artistic talent of the 20th century, from Mark Twain to Dylan Thomas. Andy Warhol and William Burroughs have dinner in the room where Arthur C Clarke wrote '2001', and Quentin Crisp, who lived in the hotel for more than 35 years, recalls moving in.
Arena eavesdrops on the writing of a new adventure for James Hazell, popular cockney private eye. He is the creation of Terry Venables, manager of Queen's Park Rangers, and Gordon Williams, author of 'Straw Dogs'. Now the TV series has ended, who, after Nicholas Ball, could possibly take over the part? Both authors have definite ideas about how their hero should be portrayed. In tonight's film John Bindon and Michael Elphick try out the role... and indulge in a little eavesdropping of their own.
Uncle Sidney is the kindly old soul in charge of an institute for the disabled: he tucks them up at night and keeps them supplied with back numbers of the 'Reader's Digest'. But his crippled charges have had enough of him, and 'Side-show', the Graeae Theatre Company's highly successful play, tells the story of their escape. Arena marks the International Year of the Disabled with a profile of this extraordinary company of disabled actors.
Arena investigates the grassroots of rock today with John Peel and John Walters. John Peel's radio show provides a unique platform for the thousands of groups who have been making music entirely outside the big business of the record industry. Tonight's programme does not begin in a 36-track recording studio in Los Angeles but in a bedroom in Carshalton Beeches, a tasteful suburb just outside Croydon. Featuring The Nightingales from Birmingham; The Liggers from Manchester; The Skids from Dunfermline; and introducing, from Carshalton Beeches, Move to India.
Arena marks a major retrospective exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery with a film about the great American realist painter Edward Hopper. His subject is the face of America - haunting, unforgettable images of late-night bars, lonely hotel rooms, sunlit buildings and isolated figures. Through them we glimpse an aspect of America, austere and un-idealised, which we now recognise as familiar. But Hopper was not a recorder of externals.
For the past ten years Peter Brook and his unique company of actors have travelled the world with a series of extraordinary theatrical ventures. The last stage of their journey was Australia. Here, in a disused quarry in the hills above Adelaide they perform some of their most popular plays, and a remarkable meeting takes place with tribal Aboriginal performers who have travelled 1,000 miles to see a production of 'The Ik'. This story, of the breakdown of a traditional tribal community, provides a moving parallel to the problems faced by the Aborigines themselves.
Tonight, from a converted cowshed in the wilds of Scotland, Arena presents The Smallest Theatre in Great Britain. Immortalised in the Guinness Book of Records, Barrie and Marianne Hesketh have for the past 17 years been the sole designers, directors and cast for every production, including their famous two-man version of 'The Tempest'.
There were these five guys round the table: the Lightweight Boxing Champion of California; an expert on Pre-Columbian art; an honorary lieutenant in the Mexican army; an architect admired by Frank Lloyd Wright ; and a man of whom Marilyn Monroe said, 'No woman can be around him for long without falling in love'. What had they in common? They were all John Huston , who also happened to direct 'The Maltese Falcon', 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre', 'The African Queen', 'The Misfits' and 25 others. At the age of 74 he started work last week on the $30-million screen version of 'Annie'. Gavin Millar visited him at his Mexican hideaway to mark the publication of his autobiography 'An Open Book'.
Documentary profile of leading Israeli writer, Amos Oz in which he talks about t he thirty year history of the Israeli state whilst touring his home city of Jerusalem.
William Gerhardie, who died at the age of 82 in 1977, was a legend in the world of letters. Born of English parents in Imperial Russia, he was reluctantly 'discovered' with his hugely acclaimed first novel 'Futility', written at the age of 26. He was destined, however, to remain a prodigy. Despite the great success of his next novel, 'The Polyglots', he lived out the rest of his life in a small London flat and busy obscurity. The remarkable book he was working on much of this time - 'God's Fifth Column' - was published this month.
Five years ago Gary Glitter announced his retirement - unfortunately the world took him at his word. Once he lived the life of a millionaire in a Sussex mansion, now he lives in Earls Court, hopelessly in debt. But the man who seemed to be just another in a long line of rock casualties has returned in triumph, welcomed back from the scrapheap by the punk generation for whom he's an idol and a legend.
Lupino Lane, the man who made the 'Lambeth Walk' famous, was a comic who once rivalled Chaplin and Keaton. With the advent of the talkies, his small studio folded and all the negatives of over 40 films were destroyed. After years of painstaking research film historian Philip Jenkinson has managed to track down and restore 14 of the original films. Tonight's programme picks out some of the best moments from the lost legacy of Lupino Lane.
This week Arena patrols the skies above Metropolis in search of the legend that is Superman. Meet Kirk Alyn, the first celluloid-Superman, and Christopher Reeve the latest; Dr Fredric Wertham, Superman's greatest living adversary; Joanne, the model for Lois Lane; Dave 'Darth Vader' Prowse, who turned a 13-stone weakling into The Man of Steel; and, for the first time on British television, Superman's creators, the legendary Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
"Rene Clair is the French cinema," one critic wrote in the 40s, and few people would have disagreed. It seems a surprising judgment now since Clair's reputation suffered a steep decline while other veteran filmmakers, such as Renoir and Came, grew in esteem and the New Wave stole the limelight. Clair died earlier this year at the age of 82, still the only man of the cinema to have been elected to the Académie Frangaise. Gavin Millar introduces two of his most famous films and offers a reminder of just why he was, for a whole generation, the epitome of Gallic wit, elegance and charm.
As a child, trapped in a crazy Jewish household in a poor Chicago tenement, the American artist Robert Natkin had to find a way to change his life. His imagination was engulfed by movies from Fred Astaire to 'The Wizard of Oz', and by the vast collection of modern European paintings at the Chicago Institute. In 'Life' magazine he read an article on Jackson Pollock and realised "even a schmuck like me can become an artist". This film is about some of the paradoxes of his success, about how and why he paints the way he does, and why the English critic Peter Fuller - author of a recent provocative book on art and psychoanalysis - thinks these particular abstract paintings matter.
Britain's musical reputation is second to none, and depends ultimately on an exceptional tradition of youth orchestras. The educational ideals which underlie this tradition are exemplified in Leicestershire. Here, for the past 30 years, music and art have been central to school curricula; consequently, children of all backgrounds have had the opportunity to pursue a musical career. The present cuts threaten this unique tradition.
Derek Jacobi, Helen Mirren, Martin Jarvis, playwrights Peter Terson and Barrie Keefe - all products of the National Youth Theatre, a unique organisation, which every summer brings 600 Young amateurs to London to work on new productions and present them to West End audiences. Over the years it has introduced actors like David Hemmings and Simon Ward, encouraged young playwrights, and won praise around the world. In two days' time, the NYT opens its 25th anniversary season. But last December it seemed that this, the biggest season ever, might be the last - the Arts Council canceled the Youth Theatre's grant. Tonight's programme examines the issues behind the cut, charts the company's struggle to survive, and outlines its history.
For 25 years the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda has been making some of the most exciting and boldly critical films in Eastern Europe. He was filmed in Warsaw and Cracow shortly after he had returned from the Cannes Film Festival, where he won the Palm d'Or. How has he managed, in a long career in film and theatre, not to be silenced by censorship? How does he view his films, and his obsession with Polish history, in the urgent mood of today?
From Brooklyn to Beverly Hills, the life and times of a great comic film director. Tonight on BBC2 Mel Brooks, creator of 'Blazing Saddles', 'Young Frankenstein', and 'The Producers', reveals practically everything. Filmed on location in Hollywood with Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise, Sid Caesar. and Mr Brooks 's lawyer.
She is two-and-a-half feet tall and nearly 500 years old. She hangs in The Louvre behind plate-glass - an unsigned, undated portrait of a smiling woman, the most idolised and abused woman in the history of art. She can be found in The Louvre, on the pavement in Buckingham Palace Road, on 'Doctor Who', and on biscuit tins. There's only one Mona Lisa, but she's everywhere. Tonight Arena looks behind the Gioconda smile.
When Joint Stock began their latest project four months ago, they had a writer but no script, actors but no roles. 'Borderline', by award-winning young playwright Hanif Kureishi, finally emerged out of the remarkable working process unique to the Joint Stock Company. Kureishi wanted to write a play about the problems faced by the Asian community in Britain, and his final script was the result of research, workshops and improvisation involving the whole company - writer, director and actors.
Only a short while ago Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were forgotten names in cinema history. Now, some of the greatest filmmakers in the world are their ardent fans. Arena tells the story of two men who confronted the complacency and parochialism of the British cinema with a series of brilliant, subversive and often mystifying films.
A contrast in visual style: the art of Radio Times and the jaundiced eye of Private Eye. Arena raids the Radio Times archives and talks to long-term contributor Eric Fraser, and watches the latest edition of Private Eye, with its maverick visual style, take shape.
Arena profiles one of the most dazzling literary talents of recent years - Saiman Rushdie, a storyteller extraordinaire and winner of this year's Booker Prize. 'Midnight's Children', his fantastic epic novel about life in 20th-century India, has established him as the new star of English fiction. From the quiet of Kentish Town, Salman Rushdie looks at the turbulent history of India through the eyes of his hero, Saleem Sinai.
Documentary in which Jamaican-born poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, now resident in Brixton, visits Carifesta, a festival of West Indian culture held in Barbados, and surveys a small part of the very diverse cultural activity of the Islands. Performers include: South Stars - Trinidad; Network - Trinidad; Shake Keane - St Vincent; Bahamas National Dance Company; The Soulful Groovers - the Bahamas; Rebirth; the Renegades - Trinidad; Drama Group - Montserrat; the Mighty Arrow - Montserrat; Chronicle Atlantic Symphony Steel Orchestra; Michael Smith - Jamaica; the Dicey Doh Singers - Bahamas; the Mighty Sparrow - Trinidad; Irakere - Cuba.
A ski run in Italy, a supermarket manager in Luton, a sandwich bar in London EC2 - Arena opens the bonnet of the Ford Cortina, Britain's most popular, most stolen, and most misunderstood car. "Dagenham dustbin"? "Poor man's Rolls-Royce"? In the year that may well see the end of a legend, some of the motoring public, including Sir John Betjeman, Tom Robinson, Alexei Sayle, Sir Terence Beckett and Magnus Magnusson take apart the Ford Cortina.
John Updike 's new book, 'Rabbit is Rich', is the third in the Rabbit series from the author of 'Rabbit, Run', 'Couples' and 'The Coup'. At 50, Updike is at the height of his powers and reputation. His novels amount to a chronicle of Middle America in the liberated and disillusioned post-Kennedy years. Art, sex and religion - he has described these as "the Three Great Secret Things," and in this film, the first full-length study of Updike, he looks at his own life and art in the light of his strictly religious Pennsylvania past, and wonders about the drives that make Rabbit run.
Osip Mandelstam, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, died in a prison camp somewhere in Siberia in the 1930s. No one knows precisely how or when. He was imprisoned not for his political activity but for writing a poem. All we know of the life of this remarkable man comes from two classic books by his widow, Nadezhda Mandelstam: 'Hope Against Hope' and 'Hope Abandoned'. In tonight's Arena, poet and novelist D. M. Thomas, author of The White Hotel, traces the the career of this great lyric poet, with the help of Nadezhda Mandelstam and exiled Russian poet Joseph Brodsky.
In a month of continuing controversy about the aims and methods of the 'documentary', Arena presents a classic film by one of the pioneers of the movement: Humphrey Jennings's 'Listen to Britain'. Made in 1941, it will be seen here, complete, for the first time on British television.
Gavin Millar looks at the craft of recent documentary makers, focusing on the techniques of the BBC's current 'Police' series.
Arena celebrates Roy Plomley's Desert Island Discs with the help of many celebrity castaways, including Paul McCartney, Frankie Howerd, Russell Harty, Trevor Brooking, the Lord Mayor of London, Professor J.K. Galbraith and Arthur Askey. The special guest for the 40th anniversary programme was Paul McCartney who was also a fan of the show: "I love its homeliness. It conjures up the best in traditional British pleasure, like the great British breakfast. It's an honour to be asked."
Made in 1935 by Arthur Elton and Edgar Anstey, simply 'reported' from the heart of London's East End slums, giving ordinary people a voice for the first time in cinema history. The 'father' of documentary, John Grierson, hoped it would give people "a living sense of what is going on."
Two-part film profile of Orson Welles, looking at his life and career in theatre, radio and particularly film. Part One with Jeanne Moreau, John Huston, Peter Bogdanovitch, Robert Wise, Charlton Heston, and a detailed interview with Welles himself. This part deals with his work up to 'Touch of Evil'.
Two-part film profile of Orson Welles, looking at his life and career in theatre, radio and particularly film. This is the second of the two-part profile of Orson Welles, looking at films including 'The Trial', 'Chimes at Midnight', 'The Immortal Story' and 'F for Fake', and discussing his many unfinished projects, including 'The Other Side of the Wind' and 'Don Quixote'.
Explores the early career of the English writer and film director Mike Leigh and the actor-centered process of collaborative creation that he has developed in his devised dramas for theatre, television, and the cinema.
In April 1967, at the peak of his career as a dramatist, Joe Orton was murdered by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. Arena presents a documentary portrait of the author of 'Loot' and 'Entertaining Mr Sloane', whose daring and sense of style added a new word - "Ortonesque" - to the English critical vocabulary. Although he was widely attacked for presenting the world as a bizarre and savage place, this film presents the case that Orton's life was, on occasion, quite as curious and extravagant as his work.
One of the most spectacular and unlikely theatre events of last year took place a long way from the West End of London in the small Dorset town of Bridport. 'The Poor Man's Friend', written by playwright Howard Barker and performed by hundreds of townspeople, was the inspiration of Ann Jellicoe, best known as the author of 'The Knack'. During the past five years her ambition to create true community theatre has produced amazing results.
It is commonly thought that poets are university-trained intellectuals who occasionally produce slim volumes about their personal feelings. This is not so with Michael Smith, an electrifying performer and exponent of 'dub' poetry, which draws on talk culture, reggae music and the rich rhythms of Caribbean native speech. At school in Jamaica Smith was taught the standard works of English Literature, but poems about 'The Daffodils ' and 'Westminster Bridge' had little relevance to his upbringing in the ghettos of Kingston. Tonight's Arena follows Smith on his recent British tour and features the great Marxist historian C. L. R. James, Lynton Kwesi Johnson, the pioneer of dub poetry, and film of the late Boh Marley.
Documentary which looks at the life and premature death of rock'n'roll star Eddie Cochran, with comment from Larry Parnes, Adam Faith, Marty Wilde, Joe Brown, Cochran's mother, and his fiancee Sharon Sheeley.
For nearly 50 years everybody who was anybody in the British theatre passed before the lens of Angus McBean - Gielgud, Olivier, Thorndike, Coward. He was known as the photographer who resolutely flattered his sitters. Tonight, after a ten-year absence, McBean demonstrates his skill with his old friend Sir Ralph Richardson. He discusses for the first time his astonishing surreal pictures of the 30s and 40s, and photographer Jo Spence faces up to herself and looks beyond the smiling pictures in her own family album.
Arena presents the first programme in a Samuel Beckett season, providing a unique opportunity to see famous interpretations of his work. The playwright himself directed this production of his classic play 'Happy Days', and Billie Whitelaw, Beckett's favourite actress, plays Winnie - one of the strangest parts in modern theatre. Winnie, buried to her waist in a sandy mound, struggles to get through her day, searching for distractions that will stave off the panic of having nothing to say, nothing to do, no reason to continue living. Willie, her husband, offers little help. Out of this bizarre and improbable setting Beckett makes a play with many comic and touching moments.
Continues the Samuel Beckett season. A rare opportunity to see an early television premiere. Recorded in 1966, tonight's presentation has only one visible actor, the late Jack MacGowran who, with Patrick Magee, was one of the principal interpreters of Samuel Beckett's work. Unseen is an actress, Sian Phillips. She is the voice of a woman whom Joe once loved. He sits remembering, and his memories recall a life whose hypocrisy and faithlessness have brought tragedy - as much for Joe as for the woman.
Arena continues the Samuel Beckett season with a unique record of his new play 'Rockaby', which has just opened at the National Theatre. Premiered in America, it was filmed in rehearsal and performance by the celebrated film maker D.A. Pennebaker. The programme follows Billie Whitelaw's preparations for her latest Beckett role. Attend the opening night in Buffalo, New York, and see the strange and haunting play, with an old woman rocking herself into death.
Continues the Samuel Beckett Season. In one of the most extraordinary pieces of modern drama, Billie Whitelaw, Beckett's foremost interpreter, performs this astonishing tour de force. 'Not I' - the mouth suspended in space - caused a sensation when it was first performed at the Royal Court in 1973. Beckett himself is a great admirer of this television version.
A play without words. 'Quad' has a musical structure. It is a kind of canon or catch - a mysterious square-dance. Four hooded figures move along the sides of the square. Each has his own particular itinerary. A pattern emerges and collisions are just avoided. From these permutations, Beckett, as writer and director, creates an image of life that is both highly charged and strangely funny.
One of the best-known Beckett monologues, starring its creator, the late Patrick Magee. Krapp, an old man, is alone with his memories and the reels of tape he has recorded during his life. As he reviews the years listening to his diary, he finally makes a conclusion about the most important thing that ever happened to him.
Last year a £13-million painting travelled in top secret from America to Spain. Next day it was headline news that Picasso's masterpiece 'Guernica' had come home at last, after 40 years in exile. This Arena special tells the story of an extraordinary work of art, and talks to survivors of the terrible event that inspired it.
On Saturday 26 February 1938, 17-year-old Georg Klaar went to his first ball in Vienna. It was also his last. Two weeks later Hitler annexed Austria. The comfortable world of Georg and his family was utterly destroyed. Tonight Georg Klaar, now George Clare, tells his story. Based on his widely acclaimed autobiography, the film traces the fortunes of three generations of Viennese Jews through a troubled period of Austrian history. It begins in Vienna in the 1860s and ends in September 1942 in a tiny village in France from which his parents were to make their last journey. It is this small village which is at the heart of George Clare's search for his family past - a personal attempt to record the rich cultural heritage which he absorbed and to lay the ghost of a recurring nightmare.
Today, in post-revolutionary Cuba, under the benign patronage of Fidel Castro, classical ballet thrives. This unlikely success story is mainly due to the legendary figure of Alicia Alonso. After almost 20 years as an internationally acclaimed star of the American ballet, she returned to support the Revolution in 1959, determined to create from scratch a national ballet company. Now aged over 60, her long career frequently threatened by failing eyesight, Alicia Alonso is still Cuba's prima ballerina, still performing 'Giselle' and still the formidable leader of a huge company of dancers, all of them now trained and recruited within Cuba.
Tonight Arena takes you on a tour of contemporary British heads, from the exotic to the mundane, from hot wax to Brylcreem. Blue rinse, quiff, mohican, short back and sides, dreadlocks or just shaved off altogether. By your choice of hairstyle you tell the world about yourself. You can blend in with the crowd or stand out from it. For some it is a fundamental part of their religious beliefs, for others pure indulgence. What are the prospects for a bank clerk with a hennaed 'trojan'? How does a white man become a Rasta? Does the back of your neck still prickle at the thought of the barber's clippers? This Arena investigation will make your hair stand on end.
Pierre Boulez, leading composer of the post-war generation and later a powerful and innovative conductor, is now the head of an extraordinary experimental studio in Paris. This huge underground music laboratory was built especially for Boulez beneath the Pompidou Centre. Here, for the past-seven years, accompanied by computers and music assistants, he has been developing his most ambitious work to date - 'Répons'. It had a huge success at last year's Proms. In tonight's film he shares his ideas and methods of working, introduces extracts from 'Répons', and describes his enthusiasm for opening a window on a new world of sound.
George Melly presents films of the greatest names of swing jazz - but with a difference. Some were made for visual juke boxes which flourished in the early 40s, others are promotional shorts from the major Hollywood companies. The forerunners of today's rock promos, these gems are by turns witty, moving, surreal and always irresistibly entertaining. The line-up includes Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billy Holliday, Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, and the three kings of boogie-woogie: Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest literary figures of the century, William Burroughs has perfected a unique and terrifying vision of the world. He is, most notably, a savage satirist and a revolutionary stylist and his ideas and experiments with language have had effects far beyond the world of literature. Born into a wealthy family in St Louis, Missouri, he abandoned his background for another kind of life - the central theme of his work comes from his experiences as a heroin addict and a homosexual outlaw. Filmed over five years, tonight's programme is an intimate portrait of this elegant, witty and often shocking man.
Tonight Arena presents one of the most ambitious dance projects ever seen on television. The Catherine Wheel combines the talents of Twyla Tharp, one of America's most imaginative choreographers, and David Byrne, leader of the rock band Talking Heads, who composed and performed this original music score. The starting point of the dance is the image of a Catherine wheel and the unattainable ideal of physical and moral perfection which St Catherine herself aspired to. Energy, benign and malevolent, it is the central theme of the work, which builds to a spectacular climax of virtuoso dancing in the final Golden Section. When premiered on Broadway the 'New Yorker' referred to The Catherine Wheel as a "major event in our theatre" with dancing of "astonishing beauty and power".
In this timeless interview, Kurt Vonnegut - iconoclastic writer of science fiction and satire - discusses his family history, how he got his start as an author, his experiences in World War II, his obsession with the betrayal of humankind by science, and his vision of technology gone mad. Delving into the psyches of his characters, he even enters into a dialogue with his fictional alter ego, Kilgore Trout. Dramatizations and excerpts from 'Slaughterhouse Five', 'Breakfast of Champions', 'Cat's Cradle' and 'Deadeye' Dick bring the offbeat yet vivid world of Vonnegut's stories to life.
Tonight Arena takes an extraordinary journey through the video age. Video pirates, video trials, video weddings, video graves... Fifty years ago it was just the dream of a science fiction future - now It's All True.
Directed by Tristram Powell
Now 84, Jorge Luis Borges is the acknowledged master of the rich new literature of South America. Above all, Borges's stories are a dazzling exploration of his own mind and his own limitless curiosity. His magical tales are often rooted in puzzles and paradoxes. Imagine a man who can forget absolutely nothing, a knife that mysteriously controls the destinies of those who handle it, a point in space that contains everything that exists. Bringing together an exotic miscellany of incident and reference, Borges's work draws on the extraordinary landscape of Argentina and Uruguay - with their traditions of gauchos, horses, and old-time knife fighters - and on his profound and vivid love of books, especially those of other times and other places. Filmed in Uruguay, Buenos Aires and Paris, tonight's programme re-creates some of Borges's most memorable stories, among them 'Death and the Compass', 'The Meeting' and 'Funes the Memorious'.
Bette Davis is undoubtedly one of the most original stars Hollywood has ever produced, and in this exclusive interview, filmed on her 70th birthday, she is as formidable as ever. With great candour, she takes us through a career that spans a turbulent half-century. She has seen both sides of the precarious world of the movies-she tells of her triumphs, including two Oscars and ten nominations - but she also recalls vividly her years in the wilderness.
Anthony Powell's 12-volume epic, 'A Dance to the Music of Time', is widely regarded as the most formidable single work of British fiction since the war. It is also largely entertaining: its cast of 400 characters ranges from upper-class drawing-rooms to Bohemian London, and a violent death in a hippie commune. They have, in their turn, gathered a devoted set of fans among English-speaking readers. Tonight's portrait of Powell includes tributes from such admirers as Clive James, Kingsley Amis, Alison Lurie, Robert Conquest, and Hilary Spurling.
Philip Roth's masterly novel about writers and writing, conflicts of family, race and art, has been specially dramatised for Arena. Nathan Zuckerman learns some unexpected lessons about himself, and his aspirations to become a great writer, when he spends a night in the troubled household of his hero, the distinguished E. I. Lonoff. And who is the young woman with the shadowed eyes - and the mysterious past?
Following the success of Jazz Juke Box I, George Melly presents another selection of jazz shorts and 'soundies' - the delightful films made for visual juke boxes in the early 40s. He is joined by great jazzman Slim Gaillard, famous for such hits as 'Flat Foot Floogie' and 'Dunkin' Bagel'. Gaillard recalls swing's heyday and its legends - Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole.
The GPO Film Unit - 50 years old this year - went where no Hollywood film studio would dare to go in 1933. Down the mines, across the Alps, through the storms of the North Sea... they really were a dedicated and intrepid group of filmmakers. Held together by a dour and dynamic Scot, John Gnerson - the man who first coined the word "documentary" - they made some of the greatest factual films of the 1930s, which still provide a fascinating insight into the everyday life of the time. Tonight, Arena tells the story of this remarkable period of British cinema.
Last September, at the Royal Albert Hall, Don and Phil Everly performed together for the first time in ten years. The concert was the popular music event of the year. With a fine band, including lead guitarist Albert Lee and Pete Wingfield on keyboards, the Everlys faithfully re-created the sound of their huge repertoire of hits. 'Cathy's Clown', All I Have To Do is Dream', 'When Will I Be Loved', 'Wake Up, Little Susie' and the rest stirred the memories and emotions of a rapturous audience. The Everlys' harmonies are among the most special sounds in rock 'n' roll - and they sound as good as ever.
George Orwell is one of the greatest writers England has produced. Tonight, and for the next four nights, Arena presents a unique full-scale portrait of this remarkable man, filmed in the places where he lived and worked and told in his own words and the words of those who knew him. The first programme traces Orwell's upbringing in a sedate middle-class home near Henley, his horrific experiences at preparatory school, his years at Eton and as a military policeman in Burma - and closes with his sudden and dramatic emergence as a writer with 'Down and Out in London and Paris', a book drawn from his experiences among vagrants, tramps and outcasts.
Tonight's episode of the five-part Arena biography tells the story of Orwell's marriage to Eileen O'Shaughnessy, his growing political awareness, and retraces what was to be the most important journey of his life - the trip he made to Wigan and the industrial north in 1936, in an attempt to understand the embittered and divided working class of the 30s.
Orwell, like many of his generation, enlisted to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Filmed in Barcelona and on the Huesca front, where he fought, tonight's film tells the story of Orwell's war. It begins as a heroic crusade for a beleaguered socialist state, and ends with disillusion and betrayal, with Orwell fleeing across the Spanish frontier, a wounded and wanted man.
For a brief period after the Spanish Civil War, Orwell was a revolutionary socialist, violently opposed to the coming war with Germany. Tonight's film shows his sudden emergence as a patriot in 1940, his ill-starred career as a producer at the BBC, and later as a columnist for 'Tribune'. The film closes with the end of the war and the writing of Orwell's masterpiece Animal Farm.
The last in this series of Arena films about the life and work of George Orwell begins with the tragic death of his wife Eileen in March 1945. Overcome with grief at his bereavement and despair at the future of Britain under the post-war Labour government, Orwell retreated to the remote Hebridean island of Jura. It was here, crippled with tuberculosis and isolated from the rest of the world, that Orwell cared for his adopted infant son, Richard, and wrote his last novel Nineteen Eighty-Four - a nightmare vision of a totalitarian future in which Big Brother controls not only the lives but also the thoughts of his citizens, and love and individual freedom is no more than a distant memory.
The extraordinary story of two of the legendary figures of American 'gospel' - the music whose emotional impact and burning conviction lie at the heart of much of today's popular music. Thomas A. Dorsey, 'father' and virtual inventor of gospel music, haunted the sinful world of the blues singers as 'Georgia Tom', before turning his music over to God in the early 1920s. Willie Mae Ford Smith suffered similar setbacks, both as a woman evangelist in a predominantly male world and from those who considered her music too spirited to be truly religious.
Luis Buñuel, born in 1900 in feudal Spain, was one of the great masters of the cinema. From his collaboration with Salvador Dalí on 'Un Chien Andalou' in 1928, to his last film 'That Obscure Object of Desire' in 1977, his work was always passionate, subversive and entertaining. Arena goes in search of the spirit of this elusive and original man.
At 10.50 precisely on 17 February 19**, that grande-dame of Antipodean culture, Edna May Everage, drew her first breath in the modest suburb of Moonee Ponds. On Arena tonight, live by satellite from Sydney, Australia, cultural attache Sir Les Patterson salutes a megastar of the entertainment firmament. On this auspicious day - a day which is rumoured, incidentally, to coincide with the 50th birthday of reclusive impresario Barry Humphries - Sir Les introduces precious fragments from the BBC archive which relive the agony and the ecstasy of 'La Dame aux Gladiolas'.
Four leading contemporary artists take on an unusual and imaginative commission, to design and build a room of their own.
Playwright, actor, clown, teacher and philosopher, he is an international celebrity with two West End smash hits to his credit - 'Can Pay? Won't Pay!' and 'Accidental Death of an Anarchist'. He is also a passionate collector of theatre history and a great hero of the Italian Left. Arena filmed Dario Fo against the background of medieval Italy, working with students in Umbria, at home in Milan and against the colourful backdrop of the Venice Carnival, where he performed his triumphant one-man comic show, 'Mistero Buffo'.
Tonight Arena takes a journey down one of the best known streets in the world. Sunset Boulevard stretches 27 miles from Los Angeles' Chinatown all the way to the ocean, a ride made famous by Philip Marlowe in the Chandler books. Film star mansions give way to tatty motels; exclusive offices stand alongside nightclubs with aspiring comics and amateur nude contests. Then the famous 'strip' and Hollywood's legendary coffee shop, Schwabs, where, they say, a girl in a tight sweater turned into Lana Turner. Meet some of Sunset's most colourful and improbable residents - the failed showbiz impresario who made his millions selling cookies and the high-rise developer who let John Wayne take his cow up in the lift. The lucky ones have achieved a peculiarly Hollywood brand of success, but every day on Sunset you meet the other ones - still looking for a break, for a job, for a deal. All of them still trying to play their part in the Hollywood dream.
On 29 June, 1982, a man called John Blake appeared mysteriously bidding in the major auction houses of London and New York. He was in reality the 'Sunday Times' journalist Peter Watson. 'The Caravaggio Conspiracy' is a true story of a remarkable collaboration between dealers, auction houses and the law to transform Peter Watson, an ignorant outsider, into an international art dealer. Tonight, Arena, with the help of the participants, traces the story of how Watson, with a fake limp straight from the pages of a thriller, and a potted knowledge from books of art history, conned his way into a world of mafiosi and art dealers and recovered two masterpieces of stolen Renaissance art.
David Inshaw belongs to a great tradition of English Romantic Painting - the tradition of Stanley Spencer , Samuel Palmer and the Pre-Raphelites. His most famous painting, 'The Badminton Game', now hangs in the Tate Gallery. For years he was a member of the Brotherhood of Ruralists, a group of painters, among them Peter Blake, preoccupied with English pastoral themes. But Inshaw's pictures tell their own story - of people, places and objects meticulously and magically recalled. Abandoning conventional interviews and commentary, tonight's film offers a journey into David Inshaw's haunting, imaginative world.
Tonight, in the anniversary year of Edward Elgar's death, Arena plays host to Ken Russell's classic music documentary. Made in 1962 for the 100th edition of the arts magazine 'Monitor', it marked the arrival of the dramatised arts documentary and proved to be one of the most popular television films ever made. An unashamedly romantic evocation of the composer's life and inspiration in the Malvern Hills, the film nevertheless foreshadowed Russell's later, more contentious work, with his darkly ironic counterpoint of 'Land of Hope and Glory' with the battle scenes and graveyards of the First World War.
For the first time on British television, Arena presents a concert by this great legend of rock'n'roll. Jerry Lee Lewis doesn't sound like anybody else - the voice, the piano and the on-stage antics make an unforgettable combination. He plays and sings today exactly as he did when he made his first records, and as a special bonus the concert is preceded by rare footage of him performing 'Whole Lotta Shakin" in 1957. Since then he has kept his reputation for wildness, eccentricity and the ability to hold an audience spellbound.
Breyten Breytenbach writes about being an Afrikaner. His poetry was taught in schools and his paintings greatly admired, but in 1975 Breytenbach, living in self-imposed exile in Paris with his Vietnamese wife Yolande - their marriage was regarded as 'fornication' under South African law - decided to return to his native country under a false passport, with the intention of recruiting workers against the Government and its policy of apartheid. Breytenbach was betrayed, arrested and sentenced to nine years. This year, two versions of his horrific experience of South African jails are to be published - 'Mouroir', a surreal account of his life in prison, and 'True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist'. Tonight Arena presents the story of this extraordinary man including some of the poetry and paintings completed in prison and smuggled out of South Africa.
Tonight Arena profiles the French film director Louis Malle. Malle is a director who has never let himself be tied down to one style of film making. 'The Lovers', with Jeanne Moreau, shocked the conservative public in 1958, and his Indian documentaries were candid enough to concern the Indian government. Even in the permissive 70s, Malle found ways to provoke, depicting child prostitution in 'Pretty Baby' with Brooke Shields, and corruption in 'Lacombe Lucien', about a collaborator in wartime France. Wallace Shawn, the American playwright and actor, first worked with Louis Malle in Atlantic City, USA. They became friends, and Malle directed a film that Shawn had written called 'My Dinner with Andre'. Arena took Louis Malle and Wallace Shawn back to Atlantic City.
From the vantage point of his Paris flat, the Czech writer Milan Kundera still obsessively contemplates Prague, the city he was forced to leave nine years ago when, silenced by the pro-Soviet government, his continued life there finally became impossible. Prague has continued to be the setting for all of Kundera's writing. 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting' brought him to a wide international readership and was compared favourably with Gogol and Kafka. His new book 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' has been eagerly awaited, and on the occasion of its publication Arena talks to Kundera in Paris and seeks reactions to his work from George Theiner, Karol Kyncl, Ian McEwan and Edward Goldstucker.
American-born writer and director Joseph Losey died last month in London. He made his home in England in 1952 when he was hounded out of America after the Communist witch-hunt. Tonight Dirk Bogarde, star of 'The Servant', who first worked with him 30 years ago, remembers Losey and his distinguished career.
The true story of the most influential popular music culture since punk. Gary 'The Crown' Byrd raps us through the elements of Hip Hop - breakdancing, body-popping, graffiti art, rapping and scratching - and introduces us to its heroes. We meet Cool Hero, its legendary first DJ; the head-spinning, break dancing Dynamic Rockers; romeo rappers the Cold Crush Brothers and white funksters Malcolm McLaren and Mel Brooks. And we take the 'A' Train to Planet Rock - the devastated homeland of Hip Hop, better known as New York's South Bronx - to meet the 'Godfather' himself, Afrika Bambaataa, whose wild youth as a member of the notorious Black Spades gang led him to forsake violence for music and dance, and to found a new and powerful New York tribe called the Zulu Nation.
The Everly Brothers were among the most successful and revered of all the giants of early rock 'n' roll. A determining influence on the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel and the Beach Boys, they brought the ethereal harmonies of the Appalachian Mountains to the wild mix of rock 'n' roll. Arena traces their fabulous career, their split and triumphant reunion. Most of all, Don and Phil wanted to revisit their roots in the coal mining area of Kentucky where their father Ike, a miner, had been a local guitar star. He too had played with his coal mining brothers, in the 30s. In the moody atmosphere of Muhlenberg County, they have an emotional reunion with three generations of Everlys.
Arena presents the first film portrait of the greatest of all the jazz singers. Billie Holiday's tragic story, from her traumatic childhood in Baltimore to her premature death in a New York hospital at the age of 44, is told in the words of her closest friends and colleagues - but mostly through the songs themselves. Arena has assembled an unprecedented number of her filmed performances. Songs, including 'God Bless the Child', 'Don't Explain', and 'Fine and Mellow', are performed with the legendary names of jazz's golden age - among them Lester Young, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Duke Ellington.
The legendary Eubie Blake's career as a ragtime pianist and composer began in 1883. Sadly last year, five days after his 100th birthday, he died. This short tribute includes one of the earliest talkies, Eubie's classic 'I'm Just Wild About Harry', and a visit to singer Alberta Hunter.
To mark his 75th birthday, Arena presents this exclusive film portrait of the great British painter Francis Bacon. Despite his world-wide fame, Bacon remains one of the most contentious painters working today, and he still paints the human figure with the same conviction and intensity that startled the art world at his first exhibition nearly 40 years ago. Tonight, amid the spectacular disorder of his Chelsea studio, Bacon talks on film with great candour to his friend of many years, the distinguished writer and critic David Sylvester.
A portrait of one of the most individual architectural talents America has produced. Bruce Goff discovered his vocation as a child in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drawing cathedrals and palaces on scraps of paper, and the innocence of those early visionary sketches is evident in all his later work - from the cathedral in Tulsa he designed at the age of 22, to his extraordinary domestic monuments built for the American householder. A friend and disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, Goff continued to pioneer well into his 70s. Arena went with him to his native Midwest to see some of his astonishingly varied and inventive commissions.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti is the most popular and controversial musician ever to come out of Africa. Born in Nigeria 47 years ago, he has dominated the African musical scene since the early 70s with his unique fusion of traditional rhythm and jazz melodies known as Afro-Beat. Fela's music speaks of the conflict between the European colonial heritage and the traditional African past, and cries out forcefully against corruption, exploitation and cultural betrayal. This programme interweaves Fela's music with the story of his struggle against the Nigerian authorities to retain his position as the musical conscience of independent Africa.
Arena presents the British premiere of Ingmar Bergman's new film 'After the Rehearsal'. Written and directed by Bergman last year soon after completing 'Fanny and Alexander', it continues the autobiographical theme. As theatre director Henrik Vogler sits alone on an empty stage after rehearsal, Anna, a young actress, suddenly returns to the theatre to talk about her part... The director is both cynical and affectionate; he is sick and tired of the theatre but still in love with, and fascinated by, his actors. Bergman refers to it as a chamber-work for television, a meditation on life in the theatre and, even more, on what it's like to be old. Earlier this year 'After the Rehearsal' was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was greeted with great acclaim.
In the 25th anniversary year of the Revolution, Arena traces the Afro-Spanish roots of Cuba's rich musical history. If, for you, the rumba still means Come Dancing, then it's time you saw the real thing. Meet Enrique Jorrin, creator of the cha-cha-cha; listen to the septet at the Casa de la Trova, Santiago; the jazz of Irakere; the passionate songs of Pablo Milanes; and the evocative music of family groups still carrying on traditions from 100 years ago. Watch exuberant dancing to the music of popular Los Van Van and, in the courtyard of the Folkloric Company, the rumbas - often remarkably similar to breakdancing - whose forms grew out of the sacred rituals and dances of Cuba's unique Afro-Catholic religions.
Every November musicians from all over Latin America come to take part in the international music festival at Varadero in Cuba. For five days bands from all the 'other' Americas vie with each other in a virtuoso display of music - music which is, astonishingly, almost unknown in Britain. Last month Arena went to Varadero to capture the event, and tonight presents the finest in contemporary Cuban and Latin American music. With Irakere and Arturo Sandoval; Los Van Van, Cuba's most popular dance band; soul calypso by Dimension Costena from Nicaragua; and bands from Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Uruguay.
For many, Luciano Pavarotti is the world's greatest tenor - certainly his place is assured among the legends of Grand Opera. In New York on 16 August, he performed before 20,000 People at Madison Square Garden; it was an unprecedented step for an opera singer, a spectacular succcess. Along with his favourite arias from grand opera, Pavarotti delighted his audience with popular songs from his native Italy.
Howard Jacobson, the eldest son of Max Jacobson, the Manchester conjuror, made a late but successful start in the world of fiction. At the age of 41 he published 'Coming from Behind', a scabrous satire of polytechnic life; and now, with his sexual comedy 'Peeping Tom', he has established himself as an important new voice in English fiction. Tonight, Arena looks at this Leavisite polytechnic lecturer, shopkeeper and original Jewish humorist on the move from Manchester, Wolverhampton, Cornwall and Australia.
The artists Julian Schnabel, Markus Lupertz, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente and Georg Baselitz command some of the highest prices on today's booming art market. Their paintings, monumental in scale and mainly figurative in style, have begun to fill the walls of private collections world-wide. They have been hailed as the 'New Expressionists' - though some cynical observers accuse them of turning out their pictures to order. As they establish themselves in spacious New York premises, castles in Germany, and even retreats in India, Arena examines the real driving force behind today's art world successes.
Arena this week presents a profile of the man many would consider the greatest living French film director. It introduces a BBC2 season of five of the masterpieces he made with the poet and scriptwriter Jacques Prevert during a decade of collaboration, running from 1936. They gave us such films as 'Quai des brumes', 'Le jour se lève', and - best loved of all - 'Les enfants du paradis'. Voted the best French film of all time in 1979, this remarkable film still plays to packed houses. In this first interview on British television, Carné gives a vivid account of his memorable career.
Karen Blixen 's voyage to Africa in 1913 was a journey away from the 20th century. Kenya was then a semi-feudal society, a land of Masai and Kikuyu, teeming with game. In 1931 she returned to Denmark having lost her farm, her health, and her closest friends. Within a decade she had produced her three greatest books: 'Seven Gothic Tales', 'Out of Africa', and 'Last Tales'. Karen Blixen had become Isak Dinesen, the writer.
Tonight Arena and Newsnight join forces to mount a major studio debate between the embattled factions of the arts world. 'The Glory of the Garden' was the Arts Council's blueprint for a redistribution of its grants favouring regional centres over London. Now a headlong battle has developed between those administering funds and those who are the beneficiaries... or the losers. The National Theatre has threatened 100 redundancies, and the Cottesloe could go dark in April. The English National Opera sees its programme in jeopardy. The Council's Literature Department narrowly escaped the axe, and half of the drama panel have resigned. In this atmosphere of open warfare, how can the garden grow? Will judicial pruning turn into total devastation? Has the Arts Council, in the words of its critics, "betrayed the arts and lent itself to party politics", or have just and sensible policies become the target for partisan hysteria? Tonight the Council confronts its critics.
From Chaucer's pilgrims to inter-continental juggernauts, generations of travellers have taken this historical route from Dover to the old City of London. It has become part of London's folklore, living up to its reputation as a place for a good night out; there are still 14 pubs along its two-mile stretch. You can also get a quick suntan or wallow in a Jacuzzi at Sundance City, buy the latest casual wear at Le Pel men's boutique, or sip a "slow comfortable screw up against the wall" in the Dun Cow Champagne Bar. These establishments live happily side by side with Bert's Eel and Pie Shop, the Fishing Tackle Specialists, and the world-famous Thomas A Beckett gym. This film looks beyond some of the shopfronts you'd normally pass down the A2 and reveals a host of unexpected personalities - mostly two-legged, but above all Bermondsey born and bred.
"To lig." Verb - to gain something for nothing by wit and ingenuity. Young Gordon Shilling arrives in London in search of fame and fortune, only to find himself alone, penniless, and hungry. Plucked off the streets by the mysterious Eden Rothwell and initiated in the art of ligging, he begins a picaresque journey through the highlife and lowlife of the nation. Along the way such experts as the Lig of Gentlemen - Peter York, April Ashley, John Bull, Samuel Smiles and Machiavelli - show the hero how to help himself in self-help Britain.
Tony Harrison is the son of a baker, and his poetry relishes, and mourns for, the class he comes from. His subjects are sex, love, politics, class warfare, death - all the rituals and performances of our lives. His work is direct, witty, often angry, expressed in the language and idioms of his northern roots. His recent adaptation of the English Mystery plays with the National Theatre Company has been hailed as "the most moving, solemn and joyful theatrical event in London." His latest cycle of poems is on an intensely private theme: meditations on his own family life and relationships. Tonight, Arena investigates a unique voice in contemporary literature.
In 1908, the comic strip artist Winsor McCay brought to life, on film, his celebrated 'little Nemo' characters. The first words that appeared on the screen were "Watch me move!" Tonight Arena salutes the pioneers of animation, in a festival of early cinema cartoons: funny, inventive and often astonishingly beautiful.
Hugh Masekela's career as a musician has been dominated by his determination to take the music of black South Africans to the rest of the world. His music is a fusion of sophisticated jazz and the raw but melodic Mbkanga, which is to the townships of South Africa what reggae is to Jamaica. As he became more successful Masekela left South Africa and spent the next 25 years in self-imposed exile in America, vowing never to return until the apartheid regime had ceased. In fact last year he did return - not to South Africa, but to Gaberone, Botswana, just a few miles from the border. Here he has set up a mobile recording studio which has become a magnet for the explosive music of his homeland.
Robert Wilson is one of the most revered and controversial talents in contemporary theatre. He first came to prominence in the New York avant garde of the 60s and 70s with a series of huge stage works which astonished and often infuriated audiences, but never failed to impress with their invention and sheer visual power. After seeing Wilson's first major work, 'Deafman Glance', the leading New York drama critic Clive Barnes declared that he had created "a new non-verbal, post-Wagnerian epic theatre." Tonight, in the first of two Arena programmes, Wilson talks candidly about his formal upbringing in the American Midwest; his job as a teacher of brain-damaged children in Brooklyn - an experience that changed his life; and about the inspiration behind his extraordinary theatre pieces.
First transmitted in 1985, Blues Night presents rare footage of the harmonica blues player Sonny Boy Williamson, who gave B.B. King his big break in 1948. "He was on the radio doing live performances when I first came to Memphis. He put me on his show to do this one song – a lady saloon-keeper hired me that day and I’ve worked ever since," King explained to the Radio Times.
First transmitted in 1985, John Walters talks to B.B. King - aided by his guitar Lucille - about his extraordinary life, from a childhood picking cotton in Mississippi to worldwide stardom.
First transmitted in 1985, Harley Cokliss’ classic blues documentary includes performances by Muddy Waters, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, and shows how the tough urban music of Chicago developed out of the original rural blues.
First transmitted in 1985, the great Chicago broadcaster and journalist Studs Terkel and pianist Blind John Davis meet in a downtown bar to discuss and play the blues. This interview was shot for "Omnibus: Studs Terkel's Chicago" but not shown in the final programme.
First transmitted in 1985, this medley of the blues features Fred McDowell, Thomas 'Georgia Tom' Dorsey, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Huddie Ledbetter - better known as 'Lead Belly' - performs 'Pick a Bale of Cotton', and Billie Holiday accompanied by Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Roy Eldridge, performs her own composition 'Fine and Mellow'.
First transmitted in 1985, hard blues meets film noir as Big Bill Broonzy sings and plays in a Belgian nightclub back in the 1950s.
Second of two programmes. When director Robert Wilson was asked to devise a stage piece to reflect the spirit of the Olympics, he decided on a truly global concept - an epic spectacle on the theme of civil war that would be created simultaneously in six countries. Each segment of work would be staged in its originating country before going on to form part of a complete 12-hour performance in Los Angeles. The artistic, logistical and financial problems of the undertaking were immense - Wilson was to be found jetting between cities, directing through interpreters, dealing with financial crises and trying to keep his original conception intact. Arena followed Wilson throughout this immense enterprise and presents a rare insight into the mind and working methods of one of the most influential personalities in contemporary theatre.
The definitive story of the "undisputed father of rock music," produced and hosted by former Beatle Paul McCartney.
Tonight Arena presents a unique interview with one of the great figures of 20th-century literature, Jean Genet. His first novel, 'Our Lady of the Flowers', written in prison, moved Jean-Paul Sartre to declare him a saint and martyr. Genet's plays, including 'The Maids' and 'The Balcony', revolutionised post-war theatre, and his novels, explicit and passionate celebrations of homosexual love, were widely banned. Now 75, Genet remains a self-declared outcast, unrepentant about his past as a thief and prostitute, still questioning society's expectations. In an impassioned outburst, he denounces even the interview itself as "a piece of bad theatre" and turns the tables on his interrogators, asking them some uncomfortable Questions of his own.
What do Charles Dickens, Count Leo Tolstoy, Barry Manilow, and James Anderton, Chief Constable of Manchester, have in common? A love of the accordion. Tonight Arena investigates the appeal of a much-maligned instrument from its roots in Imperial China, and appraises its bellowings from Cajun to the classics, from Stockhausen to Jimmy Shand. Other sounds from around the world include the heart-throbs of the Indian cinema, Tex-Mex superstar Flaco Jiminez, Soweto's Mahotella Queens, and the Accordion World Cup in Folkestone.
Francesco Rosi is one of the foremost figures in post-war Italian cinema. His films have an epic sweep covering Mafia crime, political corruption and economic mismanagement in Italy since the liberation of the country from Fascism by the Americans in 1944. Filmed in Naples and his home in Rome, Rosi talks about his development as a film-maker with illustrations from 'Salvatore Giuliano', 'Lucky Luciano', 'Hands Over the City', 'Illustrious Corpses', and 'Three Brothers'.
Yukio Mishima was one of the outstanding writers of his generation. Nominated three times for the Nobel Prize, he was the author of 40 novels and 18 plays. But his legend rests less on his literary output than on his bizarre suicide 15 years ago by ritual hara-kiri. Mishima's life was filled with contradictions. An intellectual, he was also a right-wing militarist who maintained his own private army. A nationalist who wished to restore the Emperor to power, he was obsessed with Western culture and offended his own people by adopting the image of a Western-style celebrity. In Tokyo, Arena reconstructs the story of this complex and contradictory figure against the background of Japan's wartime humiliation and astonishing post-war recovery.
The list of artists who have performed at Harlem's Apollo Theater reads like a Who's Who of black American entertainment. No black performer, from Sammy Davis Jr to Charlie Parker , could be considered a star without conquering the Apollo's tough, sophisticated audience. Tonight and next week Arena celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo. But it is more than the story of a single venue. It is the story of Harlem itself and the struggles and triumphs of black America. Tonight's programme begins with the Apollo's infancy, when Bill (Bojangles) Robinson tapped effortlessly to the music of Fats Waller, and royalty like Count Basie and Duke Ellington held court.
Harlem's Apollo Theater has been the ultimate testing ground for every black American performer from Duke Ellington to Michael Jackson. Tonight Arena continues its celebration of the Apollo's 50th anniversary. With uncharacteristic modesty, Little Richard describes his fear of the notoriously tough Apollo audience, while Mary Wilson of the Supremes and Gladys Knight recall life backstage. Amid the upheavals of Harlem in the 60s, Solomon Burke and 'Mr Apollo' himself, James Brown, explain how they took themselves out of the church and on to the stage and renamed it soul. And finally, Nile Rodgers, producer of David Bowie and Madonna and veteran of the Apollo house band, presents the aspirations of the Apollo today.
Casa Verdi is a rambling mansion in the city of Milan, inhabited by an extradordinary and captivating group of people. Once it belonged to the composer Guiseppe Verdi; now it has become a home to retired musicians. Once-famous divas, composers, and singers from the opera chorus are bonded together by old memories and rivalries, their spirit and joy in their music quite undiminished by age. This film, by Swiss director Daniel Schmid, shared last year's documentary Grand Prix at Florence with Arena's 'Sunset People'.
The New Babylon tells the dramatic story of the revolutionary tragedy of the Paris Commune. Like many masterpieces, its first public showing, in 1929, provoked outrage and derision. Shostakovich's brilliant and innovative score baffled the audience, and the conductor was accused of being drunk. The film and its music were banned immediately, and the score itself disappeared for decades until it was rediscovered after the composer's death. For this showing, the score has been reconstructed from Shostakovich's original handwritten copy by Omri Hadari, who conducts the London Lyric Orchestra.
That most erotic and mysterious of dances, the tango, came to life in the suburbs and backstreets of Buenos Aires. This Arena Special traces its colourful and bizarre life story, through the work of its greatest poets, dancers and musicians. At the beginning of the century the tango was danced only in the harbour brothels, then, in sophisticated and fashionable nightclubs, and adopted by major poets and writers, it entered its golden age in the 30s and 40s. For the Argentines it's more than just a dance - the poet Discépolo calls it "a feeling of sadness which can even be danced to." Away from tourists' eyes, in their own cafes and dance halls, today's unknown 'stars' of tango tell their stories, among them the charismatic Juanita 'La Negra'. The strange and magical history of tango is told through the words of poets, rare archive film of its greatest stars of the past, and specially choreographed scenes by a modern master, Juan Carlos Copes.
From its origins in ninth-century China to its modern incarnation as a Christmas pantomime, Cinderella has endured as one of the best-loved fairytales. But what has made this fable of domestic abuse so popular for so long? Marina Warner, author of several studies on legendary heroines, reinterprets the myth through some of its forgotten versions, and shows how today's simpering weakling has at other times been seen as an innocent victim of incestuous longings, or even as a gutsy fighter who breaks her evil stepmother's neck. Writer Angela Carter, psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, and photographer Jo Spence offer their views; and Cinderella appears in the current stage production, in TV ads for soapflakes, tampons and table wines, and in a host of classic screen performances. Tonight Arena looks beyond Cinderella the feminine archetype to discover what really happened after the ball.
Behind the quiet, gentlemanly exterior of Norman Lewis lies the acute perception of one of Britain's foremost travel writers and investigative journalists. His fascinating accounts of the cultures of the world cover the Brazilian jungle, the tribes of Indo-China, the villages of Spain and his own eccentric upbringing in Enfield, where his parents ran a Spiritualist church. One of his finest books is 'Naples '44', describing his experiences as an intelligence officer with the forces that liberated Southern Italy. In tonight's film Lewis returns to this extraordinary region where the ancient Sibyl foretold the fates of emperors and kings, whose local saint can quell the lavas of Vesuvius, and where today 600 Mafiosi are on trial. Through Lewis's own idiosyncratic observations, Arena explores the life and work of a very dead-pan Englishman abroad.
The home of the White House, the Pentagon and the President is also the home of the most exciting soul scene of the 1980s. The raw power of the go-go beat has emerged within a stone's-throw of America's palaces of power. Washington DC is 70 per cent black and go-go is more than just a musical trend - it is the lifestyle of Washington's black youth. In tonight's Arena, eminent go-go saxophonist Carl 'Low Budget' Jones, of the band Redds and the Boys, takes a journey around Washington city, introducing its musicians and their place within the history of American soul music. Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Trouble Funk, Experience Unlimited and The Class Band are the featured acts as Arena goes to the heart of Chocolate City.
Novelist, poet, essayist and the first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise, Marguerite Yourcenar lives and writes on her island refuge off the coast of Maine. Her work ranges from a series of celebrated historical novels, including a classic study of the Emperor Hadrian, to translations of blues and gospel songs. Characteristically, Yourcenar is indifferent to public honour. The intellectual elite of the Academy, she says, "decided to take a woman. It happened that woman was me." In Arena this week, she talks about her life and work to writer and critic Peter Conrad.
The American film actress Louise Brooks, who died last summer, was one of the most celebrated beauties in the history of the cinema. Her performance as unrepentant pleasure-seeker Lulu in G.W. Pabst's 'Pandora's Box' made her a legend. Louise Brooks's own life had more than a touch of Lulu's reckless abandon about it. In tonight's Arena, she talks candidly about her greatest days in Paris and Berlin and of the harsh retribution that was exacted by Hollywood. With rare clips from her varied screen performances.
In 1950 the Grand Prix of the prestigious Venice Film Festival went quite unexpectedly to a Japanese film. It was called 'Rashomon', and the director was Akira Kurosawa. In the years since then he has become celebrated as a unique stylist and storyteller of humanity and compassion, producing a series of film classics like 'Seven Samurai', 'Living', 'Kagemusha', and his latest, 'Ran'. In a rare interview Kurosawa, a reclusive and controversial figure, talks about his early films, about the masterpieces of the 50s and 60s, and about the struggles of his later years to continue his work in the face of mounting indifference and hostility within Japan.
Critical acclaim for a group of recent art school graduates has put Scottish art, and Glasgow in particular, firmly on the international map. Two people at the forefront of this unexpected renaissance are Stephen Campbell and Adrian Wiszniewski. Within three years of leaving college, their pictures already hang in the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and are sought after by museums and collectors in Europe and North America. In this week's Arena, the former classmates meet again to take stock of their meteoric rise and to compare notes on the art scene in Britain and New York.
Don McCullin's powerful pictures of the horrors of war and deprivation have made him one of the world's most celebrated photographers. Now, after more than 20 years working exclusively with the stills camera, he has been commissioned by Arena to make his first film. In tonight's programme he turns his eye on life in Britain today, with portraits of Bradford, Harlow and East London. Through the industrial city, the dream of the new town and the capital past and present, McCullin reveals a Britain which is exotic, diverse and often disturbing.
Despite the dangers and deprivations of war, the people of Bluefields, Nicaragua, still find time to do the Lambeth Walk and dance Maypole. Bluefields, on Nicaragua's east coast, is named after a notorious 17th-century pirate and its stormy past has provided it with a culture which is an anomalous amalgam of Spanish, British, American, Amerindian and African. Arena takes you down 'The Secret River' to this curious corner of the Caribbean.
A portrait of the man who made reggae known and appreciated all over the western world, and who refused to abandon a message of personal and political liberation. Tonight's programme includes a wealth of his finest performances, from early sessions by the original Wailers to his last rehearsals in Kingston. Interviews with Marley himself and with those who knew him best, including his mother Cedella Booker, his wife Rita Marley, his original partners Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, Judy Mowat and Marcia Griffiths from his backing group the 1 Threes, his art director Neville Garrick, and Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records.
Born in Trinidad in 1901, C.L.R. James came to England in the 1930s and was cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. In this programme the author of the now classic book 'Beyond the Boundary' selects his definitive cricket team. From W.G. Grace to Gary Sobers, C.L.R.'s choice spans seven decades and, using rare archive film, reveals some of the greatest moments in cricketing history.
In an old church in Havana, the Urfe brothers play Danzones, the first popular Cuban music to emerge from the blend of African and European traditions at the turn of the century. The dance it inspired was considered shocking by colonial Cuban society.
According to reggae greats Bob Marley and Burning Spear, football and Rastafari are one and the same thing. In the last week of the World Cup, Rasta and the Ball takes you to the Marcus Garvey Youth Club, the beaches, and Kingston's back-street pitches where reggae music and football are played with equal dedication and enthusiasm in the same spirit of Rastafari. Bob Marley demonstrates his skills on the field and in the recording studio.
Cuban jazz is rarely heard over here. Tonight, Arena redresses the balance with a performance by virtuoso trumpeter Arturo Sandoval. Much admired by Dizzy Gillespie, he returns the compliment with 'Blues Homage'; he then takes to the piano for a dynamic duet with bass player Jorge Reyes; and, finally, is joined by brilliant new-wave singer Donato Poveda.
Bishop of his own church, Kapo is also Jamaica's most famous artist. His paintings and sculpture explore the mysterious world of dreams, possession and healing in a rich cultural mix drawing equally upon the spirit world of Africa and the Christianity of Europe.
Speaking from Henry Moore’s own studio in Perry Green, John Read reaffirms his belief in the artist’s status as one of the greatest sculptors since the Renaissance. He traces Moore’s life and his own connections with him through extracts from the documentaries he has made and reminiscences of their many personal encounters.
Dalí is the great showman of Surrealism, the creator of the 'Mae West Lips Sofa' and the 'Lobster Telephone'. As a painter his style is unique, yet perhaps his greatest achievement is his own personality. Dalí is a self-pronounced genius. Today he lives as a recluse in the palace museum which he has built as a monument to his life, and holds court in the room which he never leaves. Arena traces his career through film, much of it from Dalí's own private archive, and combines the testimony of his closest associates, including Captain Peter Moore and Amanda Lear, and his Surrealist contemporaries Max Ernst, Luis Buñuel and Man Ray, with Dalí's own extravagant account of his life and adventures.
Federico García Lorca, perhaps the best-known and loved Spanish poet and dramatist of this century, was brutally executed at the age of 38 during the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Tonight's Arena, in collaboration with the acclaimed Irish writer and Lorca biographer Ian Gibson, evokes his life and unravels the exact circumstances of his death. Close friend of Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, Lorca was a charismatic figure - musician, painter, actor, as well as a writer. The roots of his work lie deep in the rich culture, music and landscape of southern Spain. Through the recollections of friends and fellow poets, with singers and theatrical performances, in Spain, Cuba and the United States, this film evokes the passionate and potent spirit of Lorca's work and tragically short life.
When the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, they forced the entire population into the countryside where they were starved, beaten and worked to death on grandiose, impractical 'revolutionary' schemes. Among them was a young man called Someth May, a doctor's son. Ten members of his family died before he managed to escape to Thailand. There he contacted the distinguished journalist and poet, James Fenton, who arranged his release from a refugee camp and brought him to England. For two years, May struggled to write his story with Fenton's help, and over the last 18 months Arena filmed the two writers as they overcame the barriers of language, memory and intense emotion to create a shocking and vivid memoir of his horrific experiences.
In this week's Arena, Gerald Scarfe takes a long, hard look at himself. In his paintings and drawings he mercilessly pillories the powerful and the famous, and yet in public he presents an image of docile sociability. In this irreverent investigation of his own personality Scarfe attempts to reconcile his two sides. He traces his progress from an asthmatic childhood, through his early days in 'Punch' and 'Private Eye', to the 'Sunday Times' - his days of reportage in Vietnam and electioneering travels with American presidents. He talks to Richard Ingrams, Peter Cook, Harold Evans and Roger Waters, and explores how his work has developed through sculpture, animation, films such as 'The Wall', rock and roll with Pink Floyd, theatre, and opera work.
Fifty years ago, Basil Wright and Harry Watts' classic documentary 'Night Mail' celebrated the role of the railways as the nation's distributor of goods, mail, food, and other essentials. In 1986, Arena's 'Night Moves' celebrates the role of the trucking industry - the age of steam has become the day of the articulated lorry. Count every commodity on a supermarket shelf, virtually every object you can buy - a lorry put it there. With Timothy Spall as 'The Fool on the Road', and specially written music by Ian Dury, Arena goes trucking. 'Night Moves' creates a kaleidoscope of travel, incident, action and celebrities that will astonish everyone who thinks lorries just block the road.
Arena presents Bob Dylan, concentrating on his classic songs and backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in his first concert on British television in over a decade.
Tonight Arena presents the moving story of the first lady of country music. At the age of 44 she's had 35 number one records, three Grammy awards, 50 albums, five husbands, four children, two grandchildren, continuing health problems, and 15 operations. Yet she continues her punishing schedule driven by the dream that took her from the Alabama cotton fields to Nashville and now to Hollywood. Filmed in Los Angeles, Nashville, and her childhood home in the deep South, she talks with openness about her career and her marriages, especially to country superstar George Jones.
Night and Day is a 24-hour journey through the streets of London spent in the company of two different and unusual writers. The day is introduced by 'Spectator' columnist Jeffrey Bernard, who has turned the humdrum routine of daylight hours into a time of escapade, adventure and other lowlife pursuits in the face of every obstacle, including his own collapse at eight each evening. As his day ends, Celia Fremlin's night begins. Fremlin, a 71-year-old thriller writer, stalks London's streets from 11pm to 5am in pursuit of what she perceives as a kingdom magically transformed by darkness. Together Bernard and Fremlin present a London that is delightfully personal, mysteriously romantic and usually unexpected.
Alan Yentob interviews TV dramatist Dennis Potter about his work through the years, touching on subjects such as why and how he started writing, his sense of being different as a child, the insularity of his past in Forest of Dean, starting at the BBC in 1959, and a failed attempt at going into politics.
Martin Chambi, an Indian born into a peasant family in the remote Peruvian countryside, became a leading figure in the revolutionary artistic and social movements that swept South America in the 1930s. His magnificent photographs of the great Inca ruins were the visual epitome of the quest to rediscover the native culture of the Andes. At the same time his portraits recorded the whole of Peruvian society, the heirs of the conquerors as well as the heirs of the Incas. Shot on location deep in the Andes by Jorge Vignati, cameraman on Herzog's 'Fitzcarraldo', the film explores Andean life through Chambi's majestic photographs and looks at the relevance of his work 50 years on.
After Robert Crumb, comics could never be the same again. He came to fame in the mid 60s with characters such as Fritz the Cat and the archetypal guru Mr Natural - wicked satires on the excesses of the Love Generation. In a medium associated with superheroes, Crumb deals only with anti-heroes, and most entertainingly his own self-portrait: a confused, paranoid weakling with an unfortunate taste for big, powerful women. Lost in the modern world, Crumb has found refuge in rural California with his wife and fellow comic artist, Aline Kominsky. Tonight, in a rare appearance before the camera, he talks about his work and his troubles with women, life and himself.
David Lynch, director of some of the strangest films in today's cinema, including 'Eraserhead' and 'Elephant Man', guides us through the film works of a peerless group of artists - the Surrealists. Working in Paris from the mid-1920s, such legendary figures as Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, and Luis Buñuel were the first to explore techniques so startling that they have passed into the common language of mainstream cinema, video and advertising. Extracts from their classics combine with the lesser-known films by Rene Clair, Fernand Leger, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Richter and Max Ernst to produce a box of unearthly delights. And, to bring us up to date, Arena includes a sneak preview of David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet', the most talked-about film of recent years.
Abdullah Ibrahim (formerly Dollar Brand) - pianist, composer, arranger - was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1934. When Duke Ellington heard him in 1965 he was so impressed that he arranged for Ibrahim to move to America, where he quickly became a leading figure in the jazz avant-garde. He has since lived and worked in exile in New York, developing a blend of jazz and the traditional styles of South Africa that have recently become fashionable in the West. Tonight's Arena moves between New York and the relics of the Cape Town he grew up in, explaining his beautiful, evocative music and the stories and feelings that inspired it.
In 1986 Andrei Tarkovsky's remarkable career in the cinema received the accolade of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It sealed his reputation in the west as Russia's greatest living artist. In Moscow, however, his work has been at best ignored, at worst vilified as elitist and wilfully obscure. Official disfavour finally forced Tarkovsky to leave Russia to seek financing. It was only a few months before his recent death that his poetic and haunting films were given official recognition in Moscow. Tonight's Arena reviews Tarkovsky's life and work.
Jo Spence's photography defies definition - her work appears in community spaces as well as grand galleries. It deals with social problems, sexuality, myth, and power. Tonight's Arena looks at her life and work since 1982, when she was diagnosed as having breast cancer. She rejected the treatment offered by the NHS and began a search for alternative cancer treatment. She began to photograph her own body and, as an extension to co-counselling, began to use the camera to explore the memories of her parents - her mother died of cancer. The work culminated in an extraordinary series of dramatic re-creations of her mother. Jo's camera has become an integral part of her healing process. She calls this practice "phototherapy".
What do the following have in common? Maria von Trapp, whose story became 'The Sound of Music'; Bob Guccione, the editor of 'Penthouse'; Martin Scorsese, the director of 'The Color of Money' and 'Mean Streets'; and the popular singers Mary O'Hara and Tony Monopoly? They all trained to be Catholic priests, nuns or monks. All of them feel that the vocation to the cloth and the vocation to art and entertainment are not dissimilar. Tonight's Arena tells their stories, and examines the rich artistic traditions of Catholicism.
Lino Brocka is the most influential film director in the Philippines, and a leading figure in the civil rights movement. Throughout the period of martial law, he opposed the Marcos regime. In 1985 he was jailed on a trumped-up charge of sedition. Now Cory Aquino is president, but poverty and intimidation are firmly entrenched, and the communist guerrillas, the New People's Army, continue to gain in number. Brocka led a clandestine expedition into the mountains to film interviews with the NPA, and Arena went with him, at a time when real-life events were becoming as dramatic as a Brocka film.
What is a chat show - a forum for stimulating conversation and the exchange of ideas, or just an economical way of filling the airwaves? Gus Macdonald becomes host for an evening and invites his guests Russell Harty, David Frost and Kenneth Williams to discourse on the art of the chat show. Simon Dee talks about the legendary moment when he was given his own chat show and Jackie Collins sets off on the long promotional haul, knocking off one chat show after another. And Quentin Crisp and Malcolm Muggeridge consider why we should want to watch strangers talking on television.
Twenty-one years after his death, Evelyn Waugh looms larger than ever over the English literary scene. In the course of three programmes, Arena uses the testimony of his friends and foes to explore the man and his work. The first programme covers the period of his early life, and his arrival in his 20s on the literary horizon with the publication of 'Decline and Fall' and 'Vile Bodies'.
The second of three programmes looks at Evelyn Waugh's most productive period as a novelist, journalist, travel writer and man of action. His exotic journeys from the coronation of Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa to the deepest jungles of Brazil are recalled by fellow correspondent William Deedes. His commanding officers in the war, Lord Lovat and Sir Fitzroy Maclean, assess the disastrous military career which ironically produced his romantic masterpiece, 'Brideshead Revisited'. This is the period in which Waugh's finest work was published. John Mortimer, Kingsley Amis, and Graham Greene consider his literary achievement.
Last of three programmes. When Waugh died on Easter Sunday 21 years ago, his friend Graham Greene felt "as if one's commanding officer were dead." During his last 20 years he retreated from the outside world, increasingly obsessed with mortality - at the same time cultivating the cantankerous personality that became his abiding image. With contributions from his priest, neighbours and family, Arena looks behind the public mask of Evelyn Waugh.
Joseph Beuys was one of the most prominent and controversial German artists of the past 30 years. Sculptor, performance artist, teacher and maverick politician - when he died last year, Beuys left behind him a unique and provocative inheritance. Paradoxically, his irreverent art now fills the museums of the world and is bought and sold for fortunes. Tonight's programme follows Beuys's remarkable career from World War II, when, as a Stuka pilot he crashed in the Crimea, to his increasingly political role in post-war Germany as co-founder of the Green Party. Did he achieve his goal and help to heal the wounds of German history through art, or was he finally a charlatan?
A profile of Diego Rivera, considered to be the most famous painter in the history of Latin America - and also the most notorious. He was a Rabelaisian figure of far-flung proportions who claimed to have been a confidant of Lenin, the true father of Rommel, and to have tasted human flesh on a number of occasions. He was a maverick, a compendium of contradictions and irrationalities. A self-proclaimed revolutionary who sought in mural paintings a new public art form to broadcast social change to the people of Mexico, he was also the man who accepted commissions from the yankee-dollar capitalists, Rockefeller and Ford.
Arena presents its first authentic courtroom drama, featuring, in the prosecution corner, Bob 'Penthouse' Guccione versus Britain's Ken Russell - a case in which justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be believed. Guccione hired Russell to direct a film version of Daniel Defoe's picaresque classic 'Moll Flanders' in the same vein as his infamous 'Caligula'. Before too long ego clashed with ego over the contents of the script - and Guccione sued Russell for breach of contract. Arena brings you all the tension and cross-court fire of one of the most outrageous trials of the century.
'Jewel in the Crown', 'The Far Pavilions', 'A Passage to India' - for 200 years British writers have achieved great success with their accounts of life on the Indian subcontinent. Less well-known are the writings of those Indians who travelled to Britain and recorded their observations throughout the same period. Hardly any of this work has ever been translated, yet it represents a fascinating perspective on how the Indians have seen us. With specially commissioned translations Arena presents this extraordinary testament for the first time.
Arena presents the first television showing for Jonathan 'Something Wild' Demme's superlative concert-movie featuring Talking Heads. David Byrne's innovatory visual flair and virtuosity as a performer surmount the cliches of both the tinsel vacuity of pop videos and the tired posturing of rock shows. Demme does away with the visual jargon of the rocumentary - no shots to adoring fans - and by dispensing with shaggy perms, straining leather trousers and squealing red guitars, 'Stop Making Sense' drags the pop concert into the 80s.
Art Spiegelman is one of America's leading comic-strip artists. Earlier this year he created a stir with 'Maus', a novel in strip form. 'Maus' tells of a young Jewish couple who are arrested and transported to Auschwitz - where Spiegelman's parents endured and survived the war. The Jews are depicted as mice, and the SS guards as cats. The story is told by an elderly mouse to his young son who asks him about his life. The unlikely, perhaps provocative, form of the comic-strip has produced an extremely moving book which has had huge success on both sides of the Atlantic. Tonight's film follows Spiegelman's journey with his wife and child to Auschwitz for the first time.
The legend of Woody Guthrie - the rambling guitar player who discovered America from the roof of a freight train - was an inspiration to two decades of Americans, from the Weavers to Bob Dylan, from Jack Kerouac to Bruce Springsteen. If anyone seemed to fulfil the prophecy of a 'Shakespeare in overalls' it was this diminutive 'Okie', driven west by the great duststorms of the 30s to become, like John Steinbeck, the spokesman for the exploited migrant workers of California. This classic film is full of the songs of Woody Guthrie and contains rare footage of him performing. Guthrie's story is told in his own words and includes extended interviews with friends and family.
Tonight Arena presents, on the occasion of their 50th anniversaries, a tribute to those great British institutions, 'The Beano' and 'The Dandy'. In their pages, the Softie has fought an unending losing battle against the likes of Dannis the Menace, and the cow pie and the slap-up feed remain the just rewards for good behaviour. Arena visits Dundee in Scotland, where the current editors give their rendition of 'The Lost Highway' to the strumming of the Beano guitar.
Broadway is one of the most famous streets in the world. Legendary for bright lights, musical comedy, and the dreams of stardom, the myths and cliches of the theatre have influenced every mile of this great thoroughfare. From immigrants in sweatshops to yuppy speculators in chic apartments, Broadway symbolises a state of mind, a way of looking at life; it's the road to success. Following an old Indian trail, it runs 146 miles from the financial jungles of Wall Street, past the theatres and sleaze of Times Square and into rural upstate New York. Arena explores the legends of the Great White Way.
In three decades of reporting from Latin America, Africa and the Far East, Ryszard Kapuściński has witnessed 27 revolutions. His portraits of Haile Selassie and the Shah of Iran, The Emperor and Shah of Shahs, have brought him worldwide recognition. As a prominent Solidarity member, he has been unable to write for the Polish media since the imposition of martial law. He has chosen to remain in Warsaw and is now working on the last volume of his trilogy on 20th-century despotism - 'Amin'.
Arena presents Jonathan Miller's acclaimed production for the Royal Court Theatre of Ryszard Kapuściński's play. Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, was one of the great enigmatic figures of the century. Five actors bring to life memories of the corruption and double-dealing at the emperor's palace just before his final overthrow.
The queen of salsa, Celia Cruz has been the most adored and dynamic singer in Latin America for more than four decades. Since she left Cuba at the time of the 1959 revolution with her band Sonora Matancera, she lived in New York and rose to international fame with the legendary Latin bands of Tito Puente and Johnny Pacheco, the creators of salsa. This profile includes testimony from friends, fans, fellow professionals and a stunning performance at New York's world-famous Apollo Theatre.
Today is Shrove Tuesday, in French, Mardi Gras , and tonight is the night before Lent. While the British celebrate with pancakes, the Latin world explodes in a riot of music and spectacle. Tonight, live for the first time, Arena presents the world's three biggest carnivals.
The novelist and poet Jack Kerouac died in 1969, a chronic alcoholic, at the age of 47. He was already something of a legend, not simply for his style of writing but for the style of life that he chronicled. He travelled back and forth across America, and his most famous novel, 'On the Road', became the bible for what he called 'the Beat Generation'. Tonight's Arena presents Richard Lerner's celebrated cinema profile: What Happened to Kerouac?
The flamenco of southern Spain is more than music, and much more than an exhilarating dance for the tourists. It's the soul of a culture, and its roots go back to the 15th century when gypsy travellers made their way via Asia and North Africa to Spain. Today the real flamenco is kept alive by the gypsy families of Andalucia. The families are no longer travellers - they are integrated, socially and economically, with the population. But they keep alive their traditions with pride, and in this film Arena travels to meet them and to see and hear the real flamenco. Tonight - the journey from Seville to Utrera.
The flamenco of southern Spain is more than music. It's the soul of a culture, and its roots go back to the 15th century, when gypsies travelled to Spain via Asia and North Africa. Today the real flamenco is kept alive by the gypsy families of Andalucia. Through marriages, baptisms and fiestas, the new generation of Andalucian gypsies learns flamenco from its elders. In the second of two films, Arena travels further through Andalucia from Jerez to Cadiz, where the journey ends with a gathering of gypsy families for a grand flamenco fiesta.
This month the National Portrait Gallery opens its doors to the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. As the epitome of New York style he is less celebrated for his portraits than for the notorious photographs that chronicled the chic gay world of Manhattan. In this exclusive film profile of the man and the people whose fast-track existence he chronicled, Arena talks to the formidable first lady of body-building, Lisa Lyons; his friend, the singer Patti Smith; novelists Kathy Acker and Edmund White; and others who inhabit his world
In the late 17th century the fastest, most elegant racing machine known to man was developed by the English aristocracy. The English gentry crossed their hardy mares with three delicate Arab stallions and it is from these horses that all today's thoroughbreds descend. "Good breeding" is as much a watchword for the horses as for their owners, and has culminated in such legendary animals as Nijinsky, Mill Reef and Oh So Sharp. The price tags on the world's best bloodstock drip noughts like great works of art.
In this diverse and inventive autobiography, John Byrne - painter and author of 'Tutti Frutti' - travels from his youth, and through his art school years, to the period of his stage and TV plays, and on to his death sometime in the future. With him is Robbie Coltrane as himself, and as a shamus invented by Byrne, who discovers there are as many aspects to the author as there are actors playing him.
Dirty Harry, and the other characters in the Eastwood, repertory have dominated the box office for over 25 years. He has made over 40 films and directed 14 of them, invariably starring in them as well. Arena goes to Nevada to talk to Clint Eastwood about the new film, 'Bird', and about his career as a director. He feels no resentment of the critics who are now reassessing his reputation. "I survived them," he smiles.
Born in Sri Lanka in 1943, educated in Dulwich, and now living in Canada - Michael Ondaatje has criss-crossed the world in a search for what he calls the "unofficial story". Ondaatje takes mythical characters like the outlaw Billy the Kid and the mysterious Buddy Bolden, father of New Orleans Jazz, and reconstructs their stories using "prose, white space and photographs" with a style that has won him critical acclaim from all over the world.
From Dundalk to Dungannon, Ballycastle to Belfast, Field Day - Ireland's foremost touring theatre company - journeys past checkpoints and critics with Brian Friel's controversial new play 'Making History'. Arena follows the trail of actor Stephen Rea, and fellow Field Day directors Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin, on a personal mission to investigate the distortion of Ireland's history by the work of poets, priests and politicians.
When Nat King Cole died in 1965, the world lost its greatest ballad singer. Last year, 22 years after his death, 'When I Fall in Love' reached number 4 in the British charts. This portrait traces the singer's life from his birthplace in Alabama through his early career as a brilliant young jazz pianist in Chicago to world famous vocalist.
A chance to see again some classic moments from the past ten years. Dame Edna admits to keen enthusiasm for women in art; William Burroughs demonstrates his stainless steel cobra; Mel Brooks falls over a film crew (while Jean Genet interrogates one); Roy Plomley is stranded on his Desert Island; and Buñuel and Bob Marley discourse on God and redemption. Plus: contributions from Orson Welles, Dennis Potter, Tammy Wynette, Dalí, the Everly Brothers, Ken Russell and a host of others who have appeared over the decade.
Award-winning director Jana Bokova presents a typically idiosyncratic portrait of Europe's most fashionable city. An equally eccentric and fascinating collection of characters offer a personal view of Barcelona, where a new cosmopolitan awareness sits alongside the proud Catalan sense of place and history.
Randy Travis is the hottest new singer on the country music scene today. In June last year he played his first British concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, before an ecstatic audience. Arena filmed this performance and tonight presents the best in "back to basics" country music.
With more visitors than the whole of Greece and more holiday beds than Portugal, Blackpool is Europe's most successful holiday resort. Growing to prominence in the Industrial Revolution it was a town "built for fun". Arena takes a look at this town, famous for its Tower, illuminations, formidable landladies and party political conferences. Exploring the British at work and play we visit the nightclubs, clairvoyants, politicians and guesthouses.
Breasts/bosoms/bust/boobs/bristols/knockers... we live in a breast-obsessed society, and "tits" are by no means the preserve of the tabloids; the symbolism of the breast is expressed in film, fashion and filth. From body beautiful to breast bondage these twin peaks have become a fountainhead of contradictions. The film looks at the ways in which the bosom is idealised and the means by which it is trivialised and denigrated.
Two films by award-winning director Georg Troller, made for West German television's arts programme 'Personenbeschriebung'. Sir Laurens van der Post is the subject of the first film. Known in the popular press as a friend and mentor of Prince Charles, Sir Laurens has devoted his life to drawing the world's attention to the plight of Africa's threatened tribes. The second film is a portrait of Texan criminal Albert Sample, whose autobiography Racehoss tells the harrowing story of his 16-year sentence for armed robbery in a notorious Texan prison, and subsequent rehabilitation.
Beyond the familiar world of Wall Street and Madison Avenue, there is another New York, whose roots lie in West and Central Africa. Successive waves of newcomers of African descent have brought to the world's most glamorous city their own gods, myths and rituals. Robert Farris Thompson, Professor of Art History at Yale University, has been tracking down the survival of African traditions in New York.
The absurdity of life has been Eugene lonesco's theme and preoccupation since he wrote the first of his 33 plays and, alongside Beckett and Genet, created a revolution in the theatre. Ironically, that first play, 'The Bald Prima Donna', has become the Parisian 'Mousetrap', running non-stop for over 30 years and 10,000 performances. Tonight's Arena assesses the life and work of one of the century's outstanding dramatists, who, at 77, remains an unrepentant champion of the Theatre of the Absurd.
Actor and director John Cassavetes, who died earlier this month, was one of the few truly independent movie-makers working out of Hollywood. In this tribute to an influential and innovative artist, friends, associates and fellow directors remember the man and his work.
Ten years ago Vernon Oxford turned his back on the bright lights of Nashville and a life as a popular country singer, and gave himself to the Lord. Today, he is a gospel preacher in Franklin, Tennessee, but his congregation extends beyond his own community in the southern states of America. He takes his mission to his spiritual cousins in Northern Ireland, who share the same fundamentalist Protestant beliefs. Tonight's film follows Oxford from Nashville to Belfast as he pursues his healing mission through the houses of God and of the Devil.
Jukeboxes once entertained bars, diners and roadstops throughout America, but are now highly collectable artifacts, fulfilling the dreams, memories and fantasies of their proud owners. The Americans are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the jukebox this year, but some say an Englishman by the name of Charles Adams-Randall pipped the Americans to the post when he patented a coin-operated phonograph in 1888. Since then the jukebox has found a special way into the Englishman's heart. Arena explores the world of the jukebox in England and finds that, if an Englishman's home is his castle, then surely no castle could be complete without one of these fine articles.
Arena continues its centenary celebration of the jukebox with a special edition of one of the original pop music programmes. 'Juke Box Jury' is 30 years old and was essential weekend viewing for every pop music fan throughout the 60s. David Jacobs is back in the chair spinning this week's new releases in the famous Rock-ola. On the special jury for the music world this evening are Pete Murray and Dusty Springfield, who were regular panellists on the original series, and newcomers Phil Collins and Sarah Jane Morris.
Born in Georgia in 1901, Berthold Lubetkin is one of the most outstanding and influential architects in Britain. His life has spanned the Russian Revolution and two World Wars. Finally, in 1982 he was awarded the highest honour the RIBA can grant - the Royal Gold Medal - in belated recognition of his achievements. Best known for the abstract elegance of the Penguin Pool at London Zoo, he remains an isolated figure constantly fighting bureaucracy and indifference; he has remained an unapologetic champion of the ideals of modernism while fiercely attacking many of its most celebrated exponents. In tonight's Arena Richard Rogers, Peter Palumbo, Lord Zuckerman and others assess the unique influence that Lubetkin has had on generations of architects.
Ever since its noisy birth out of the primitive fuzzboxes of the 1960s, heavy metal music has been maligned and misunderstood by public and critics alike. But, to its millions of fans worldwide, heavy metal is the only form of popular music with any integrity, the true keeper of the eternal flame of rock'n'roll. This is an exploration of the music in all its aspects, from its origins in the blues to the Black Country and beyond. Profiled are Jimmy Page, Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Guns 'n' Roses, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Jimi Hendrix, Kiss, David Lee Roth and Napalm Death - and the heavy metal event of the year at Castle Donington.
For some 25 years Graham Greene has found himself the victim of a bizarre masquerade. A man calling himself Graham Greene has opened hotels, courted high society in the south of France and was entertained by tea planters in India convincd he was the real Graham Greene. But is 'the other' Greene a decoy invented by the secretive Greene to confuse and deceive his chosen biographer Norman Sherry?
"Look at the clocks - it doesn't matter if they're wrong. Somewhere in the world the time is right." A typical line from Slim Gaillard. He became a jazz legend, collaborating with Charlie Parker; he was a Second World War bomber pilot; Marvin Gaye's father-in-law; and is fluent in Greek, Arabic, Spanish and his own 'Vout-o-Reenee' language; he appeared in 25 films including 'Hellzapoppin'' and 'Roots'; and drove a hearse for the notorious Purple Gang. Since he was stranded alone in Crete, aged 12, on a voyage from his native Cuba, Slim's life has been a spectacular, and sometimes traumatic, adventure. He tells his amazing story over four episodes with Dizzy Gillespie, Van Morrison, his and Marvin Gaye's family, Frankie Laine (whom he discovered), and the peanut that went to the moon.
In 1938 jazz legend and international star Slim Gaillard went to Hollywood to appear in 'Hellzapoppin'' - and then war broke out. Gaillard became one of America's first black bomber pilots; this week he recalls that profound and traumatic experience. With the help of Van Morrison he re-enacts a famous encounter with his beat disciple, novelist Jack Kerouac; he settles an old score with Little Richard; appears on America's craziest chat show; and meets the peanut that went to the moon.
This week Slim Gaillard cooks dinner for his old friend Dizzy Gillespie. They discuss the English language and their contributions to it - "bebop" and "Vout-o-reenee". They also recall working with Charlie Parker, and conjure up the ghosts of the other great names of 52nd Street in its jazz heyday. And from Hollywood - memories of the days when the likes of Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich were swapping items from Gaillard's Vout-o-reenee dictionary.
This week Slim Gaillard's story comes up to date. Today he lives a life of gentlemanly leisure in London pursuing an interest in golf, snooker and the occasional appearance at international jazz festivals. From the fireside in his club he surveys his film career, looking back on roles in 'Roots', 'Absolute Beginners' and 'Planet of the Apes'. He introduces us to his family - in particular his daughter, who married Marvin Gaye. He goes down to the station early in the morning to see the little puffa-billys all in a row, and reveals all about the girl in the test card.
Some people see the pig as representing dirt, sloth and obesity; others view it with affection. In this film we see them all: farmyard pigs, performing pigs, pigs as pets, piggy banks, pigs on film - in all its many rotund forms.
A film version of Heathcote Williams's epic poem, an impassioned hymn of praise to one of nature's most magnificent creatures, and a lament at man's folly of hunting it to near extinction. The poem is read by its author, intercut with extraordinary film of elephants, and accompanied by a specially composed soundtrack from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
The animals in wildlife films have always been vying for attention with that eccentric breed - the animal presenter. This medley of classic clips of wildlife films from the last 50 years celebrates the naive enthusiasm of these rare creatures and charts the changing attitudes to animals on television.
In the 1920s a middle-aged spinster went to buy a yard of ribbon and came out with a baby gorilla. He was the first gorilla to survive captivity. His uncanny intelligence and versatility became legendary, inspiring King Kong stories. But he came to a tragic end when he was shipped to the Barnum and Bailey circus in New York where he pined for his owner and then 'died of a broken heart'.
What does Sam get up to when he's left on his own all day? This verité portrait looks at an ordinary day in the mysterious life of a very ordinary dog.
Novelist Julian Barnes, philosopher Nicholas Humphrey, and French historian Dr Michel Rousseau help to uncover one of the most bizarre chapters in criminal history: the judicial prosecution and capital punishment of animals throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and beyond.
Vivisection, vegetarianism, farming, sport, zoos, circuses and pets will be some of the topics discussed in a live debate chaired by Donald MacCormick at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Writer Germaine Greer and philosophers Tom Regan and Mary Warnock are among the speakers who debate the motion: "The animal kingdom needs a bill of rights."
An Arena special looking at the career, development and success of the band over the past 25 years, including clips from the Stones' own archives and from the hitherto unseen 'Great Rock'n'Roll Circus' of 1969, made in answer to the Beatles' 'Magical Mystery Tour'. It traces in detail the high and low points of the group over the years, and their present continuing success.
"I'm not saying 2+2 equals 3 and I'm not saying it equals 5 but...." So says Gregory Chaitin, one of the world's three leading mathematicians, addressing the camera from the deep recesses of the IBM building in Yorktown Heights, New York State. He cheerfully proposes that he has proved nothing is fixed in a shifting universe. However, for others numbers promise pattern and certainty - Rabbi Dr Tali Lowenthal believes everything has numerological significance up to and including the Name of God too holy to be written; to record producer Andy Richards all music comes down to the number 4; to Janet Street-Porter, numbers give a lift to the nomenclature of her TV output; and to Michael Gardner 666 is truly the Mark of the Beast. Most of us take numbers for granted - Arena takes a second look.
Oblomov is a slob. Even Gorbachev is said to have denounced him from the podium: "We must stamp out the Oblomovs from our society." The lazy aristocrat of Goncharov's 19th-century masterpiece has become a Russian folk-hero. After 100 years asleep, Oblomov is re-awoken in modern-day Russia - this time as a lazy party bureaucrat. Perestroika, quite frankly, bores him. He was more at home in Brezhnev's "Period of Stagnation". Oblomov's foul-tempered chauffeur, Zachar, narrates this bizarre tragi-comedy - for the story of Oblomov's vain attempts to raise himself from his bed is the story of Russia. Filmed on location in the Soviet Union.
This is the story of "The Killer", the ultimate wild man of rock, from his phenomenal success at the age of 20 with 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On' to the present. After more than 30 years, Lewis remains unapologetic and unique. A product of the Bible Belt, Lewis's life has been a strange, tormented conflict between his excesses and his religious fears. His cousin, Jimmy Lee Swaggart, devoted many a sermon to the recovery of Jerry Lee 's soul. Lewis has seen the deaths of two wives, two children and a brother, shot his bass player, and been arrested for causing a disturbance outside Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis. Arena tells his story with help from Sam Phillips - the man who first recorded Lewis and Presley - Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jimmy Lee Swaggart, Lewis's wife Myra, Paul Anka, and Chuck Berry.
The great Italian film director, who died in 1977, was the founder of 'neo-realism'. Following the international success of his films dealing with the Second World War - 'Rome, Open City' and 'Paisa' - he turned in the 50s to psychological drama. His affair and subsequent marriage to Ingrid Bergman created a major scandal. Eventually he abandoned the cinema for a series of documentaries on historical figures as part of a great mission to educate the world. Bearing witness to his genius will be his daughter Isabella, son Gil, directors the Taviani Brothers, Carlo Lizzani and Lindsay Anderson. There is also rare footage of Rossellini.
Traditional Jewish humour flourished in adversity. Religious persecution and life in the ghetto nurtured its own kind of bitter comedy which, in 20th-century America, has developed into a recognisable and acclaimed style of humour. Arena examines this rich heritage of comic genius and includes contributions from Milton Berle, Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, and Billy Crystal.
Salif Keita - the golden voice of Mali - is one of the first African world superstars. He can trace his lineage directly back more than 700 years to its founder, the warrior king Sundiata Keita. Salif Keita's story is an exceptional one - not only for breaking away from these traditions, but for overcoming the stigma of being born albino. Arena returns with Salif to his village birthplace in Djoliba, through the insidiously beautiful surrounding plains and to the mystical cliffs of Bandiagara - all sources of his underlying deep spirituality and his haunting music.
Fred Zinnemann, best known for the classic western 'High Noon', has had a career in movies spanning 65 years. In an exclusive interview with Arena, Zinnemann talks about his life from his early training in Paris, via Berlin, to his arrival in Hollywood in 1929. One of the great Hollywood mavericks, working both in and out of the studio system, he generated a body of work impressive in range and quality, as well as bringing to the screen for the first time such names as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Grace Kelly, Meryl Streep, and John Hurt. With films like 'From Here to Eternity', 'Oklahoma!', 'A Man for All Seasons', 'Day of the Jackal' and 'Julia', Zinnemann became known as the director's director. He talks disarmingly about his failures as well as his successes.
Actor and director Spike Lee joins actress Debbie Allen on a journey in search of the perfect vocal performance. They travel through Brooklyn as different groups duel, jam, and rehearse together without the benefit of an instrument other than their own voices, culminating in an all-star a cappella concert. The film, the directorial debut of cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, features contemporary vocal groups such as the Persuasions and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Now in her 80s, Peggy Ramsay is the most powerful and unconventional play agent in Britain. She started her agency in the mid-50s in a converted brothel in the West End and has been responsible for the careers of over 70 writers including David Mercer, Robert Bolt, John Arden, David Rudkin, Edward Bond, Willy Russell and Joe Orton. This film shows her working with playwrights David Hare, Caryl Churchill, Stephen Poliakoff and Christopher Hampton, follows her on an outing to the Barbican, and as she takes a trip to Scarborough to visit Alan Ayckbourn.
The term "English rose" conjures up a variety of images which fall somewhere between the delicate pink roses of high summer and the fair complexion of a young girl. Either way, the term is synonymous with beauty and innocence, and through the centuries has been absorbed into our heritage. Arena goes in search of the perfect English rose in a journey through fact and fairy tale, history, religion and the back garden. Are we looking for a girl or a perfect exhibition bloom?
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African-American and Latin Harlem drag ball scene. Made over seven years, this film offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion houses, from fierce contests for trophies, to house mothers offering sustenance in a world where house members face homophobia and transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. 'Paris is Burning; celebrates the joy of movement, the force of eloquence, and the draw of community.
On 4 July 1967, Private Raymond Griffiths was killed in Vietnam. He was 19 years old - the average age of US combat troops in the war. He was one of more than 30,000 American service personnel killed or wounded in eight years of vicious fighting, which also saw the deaths of a million and a half Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. This powerful documentary tells the stories of the GI's in their own words, words they wrote home in letters from Vietnam. They were young and, like all soldiers, they wanted to return home alive.
Cuba's legendary capital, once a playground for the rich, has an extraordinary faded beauty with its grand colonial palaces decaying into crumbling tenements. Since the popular revolution 30 years ago, Cuba has been viewed by the west as the acceptable face of communism, with Dr Fidel Castro seen as a folk hero and a benevolent dictator. But Cuban writers and artists in exile tell a different story - one of unspoken repression and intolerance. This Arena special goes behind the once great city's public face, persuading its inhabitants to speak intimately about their lives and revealing a Havana previously unseen.
Niccolo Machiavelli's infamous 'The Prince' is a short book about power - how to get it and how to hang on to it. But if 'he' were changed to 'she' throughout, would Machiavelli's masterpiece provide an insight into the remarkable success of a considerable number of women today, not least this century's longest surviving Prime Minister? Arena tests this phenomenon against the world's greatest power manual and wonders what has happened to feminism at the end of the 80s.
Krzysztof Kieślowski is the foremost director to have emerged in Poland since Andrzej Wadja. His two most recent features, 'A Short Film About Killing' and 'A Short Film About Love', shocked western audiences and critics with their pessimism and brutality. Shot during the final months of communist rule, they are actually two in an extraordinary cycle of films made for Polish television. Each uses one of the Ten Commandments to explore the morality of Polish society - their subjects range from suicide to stamp-collecting, from incest to home computers. Arena talks to Kieślowski about these parables of contemporary life and his role as a modern-day Moses.
Paris's love affair with the black world stretches from the Cubists' discovery of African sculpture at the beginning of the century to the present day appreciation of rap and African popular music. This programme celebrates black culture and its lasting contribution to the artistic life of a great city.
Tonight's programme looks at the Soviet cinema since perestroika, and examines the work of some of its most important film directors who are working again after years of enforced silence. Through film clips and interviews, Arena discusses the work and problems of directors Rustam Khamdamov, Kira Muratova, and Sergei Paradzhanov, and one of the first westerners to work on a Russian production, French film star Jeanne Moreau. Will they be able to sell their concept to a population brought up on undemanding mass cinema?
When Lenin told the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain that its survival depended on having a daily paper, he could not have forseen that after 60 years of heroic struggle the 'Daily Worker', renamed in 1966 the 'Morning Star', would come perilously close to extinction because today's leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, had cancelled half its subscription. Beatrix Campbell, who worked on the paper for ten years during the turbulent 60s and 70s, talks to the people who sustained it during its glorious triumphs and constant crises, and in its pages finds a unique reflection of the history and culture of Britain.
Considered by many to be our greatest living stand-up comedian, the incomparable Francis Alick Howerd holds a special place in the hearts of the British public. Born during a snowstorm, the shy young Howerd managed to construct a unique comedy persona from his stammering, stumbling manner. A spectacular debut on radio's post-war hit 'Variety Bandbox' was followed by celebrated forays into film, theatre and even opera, although perhaps he is still best remembered as the devious slave Lurcio from television's 'Up Pompeii'. Of late, he has become popular with an entirely new generation of young adults, whom he calls his 'Frankie Pankies'. Tonight Arena examines the style of this inimitable performer with the help of friends and colleagues including Eric Sykes, Johnny Speight, June Whitfield and Ned Sherrin.
Profile celebrating the centenary of the famous author Agatha Christie’s birth. Looking at her life, her character and the key moments in her childhood that influenced her writing.
A new musical, 'Township Fever', is about to open on Broadway. Written by Mbongeni Ngema, the co-author of 'Woza Albert', it is vibrant and funny, but also quite shocking and controversial - because it goes right into the heart of the violence in South Africa. This Screenplay/Arena film explores how the musical was created and features striking extracts from it.
Today's hypermarket is an Aladdin's cave compared to the grocery store of 30 years ago. Food Night looks at the ever-increasing gulf between what appears on the supermarket shelf and the original ingredients.
A salute to four great thinkers. If Rossini had not preferred food to music there would have been no Tornados Rossini. If Nellie Melba had not become so fat through eating too many of the Peach Melbas created for her by Escoffier, he would not have had to remedy the situation by inventing Melba Toast. If he hadn't lost his all on that last turn of the cards, would the Earl of Sandwich have found inspiration for a snack? Today, would a champion of the people like Garibaldi have to share the honours with a biscuit called the 'Mandela'? Bernard Bresslaw, aided by David Troughton and Christopher Ryan, brings these food heroes to life.
Food has had a part to play in religion, politics, science and war, and throughout history has underlined the social divide between prince and peasant. Today food remains as divisive as ever.
Some lessons in manners from the silver screen - 'Five Easy Pieces', 'Tampopo', 'Oliver Twist' and more.
This film explores the application of kosher dietary laws which have helped to preserve the separate identity of the Jewish people.
Louisiana State Penitentiary recently released a list of the last meals ordered by prisoners about to be executed. One man, whose crime was shooting a grocery store attendant, requested Jalapeño peppers, two boxes of Frosties, and a pint of milk. Food Night examines the custom of using food as a final consolation and last rite for those condemned to death.
With the help of potato experts from all over the world, Food Night pays homage to this nutritious, delicious, maligned and sometimes despised vegetable - the paradoxical potato.
A chance to sample some favourites from the kitchens of such legends as Fanny Cradock , Zena Skinner and Delia Smith.
Mealworms served in a cherry tomato, grasshoppers rolled in bacon - these are just a few of the nourishing dishes served up in this film which explores repulsion and revulsion in food taste.
Left to your own devices, what do you eat, when do you eat it and how much of it do you eat?
As Christmas approaches, time to contemplate self-denial.
As the evening's climax, Arena assembles a forum of distinguished politicians, economists, nutritionists, moralists and senders and receivers of aid to debate the international politics of food.
A spectacular musical celebration of life, capturing evolution in all its glorious diversity, and the rhythms of nature in all its beauty, delight, and horror. From the raging furnace of volcanoes to frozen glaciers, deserts and humid rainforests, 'Lifepulse' is a dramatic visual journey, starting in primeval chaos and ending with the rise of the primates and of man, who now threatens the environment that nurtured him. A specially composed soundtrack by the Startled Insects is enhanced by the use of natural sounds.
Nelson Mandela, since his release, has become one of the most famous people in the world. Everyone has heard of the leader, but Mandela the man remains an enigma. For the first time he talks about his life and times from a personal standpoint. Arena invited Arthur Miller, veteran of half a century of meditation on moral and social issues, to Soweto to talk to Mandela. In the intimate setting of his home, they discuss Mandela's life and their hopes and fears for the future of South Africa and the world.
Derek Jarman is a uniquely British outsider: a painter, film-maker and a self-appointed enfant terrible with a paradoxical affection for tradition. He makes films as a painter or poet, rather than as a conventional film-maker; his subject matter includes Shakespeare's 'Tempest', a critique of Great Britain in Jubilee year, and 'Sebastiane', an openly gay interpretation of the saint's martyrdom. The programme includes clips from all his work, including his latest film, 'The Garden'.
Kiefer is Germany's most controversial and reclusive artist. He is also its most successful. The millions his work commands in the auction houses and his popularity with collectors belies the sombreness of the subject matter - Germany's past. Through Wagnerian legend, historical conjecture, and ancient mythology, Kiefer offers a personal view of Germany today that is both an exorcism and a warning. Never before filmed, Kiefer has collaborated with Arena in an unusual portrait in which he sets out to "disinter some corpses from Germany's past."
Documentary about the influential pop composer and record producer Joe Meek, who died in dramatic circumstances in 1967 after a bizarre childhood and a career, often controversial, which spanned the period from the mid-50s to the rise of the Beatles in the 60s. At the end of his life he was suffering from paranoid delusions that people were watching him through walls. Alan Lewens' film charts an Ortonesque tale of post-war Britain.
While here in Britain we settle for pancakes, elsewhere Mardi Gras, literally Fat Tuesday, is celebrated in an altogether more spectacular fashion. Arena brings you highlights of the pre-Lenten revelry in New Orleans, Rio and Trinidad.
Rocky is the name of American artist Robert Rauschenberg 's pet turtle. It is also the name of an epic and visionary project which in the last eight years has taken Rauschenberg around the world a dozen times: Roci - the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange. The resulting work is shown in a huge exhibition, ending in a retrospective in Washington in spring of this year.
Radio Caroline, founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly, gave many DJs their first break, including Tony Blackburn. Arena traces the origins of this broadcasting phenomenon of the 60s which is threatened with extinction by the government's new bill.
This profile of Keith Waterhouse follows him through his hectic diary. As a columnist for the 'Daily Mail' he reports from the Conservative conference in Bournemouth and the Labour conference in Blackpool, where he slips away to become a tram driver. As the playwright of 'Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell' he tutors the real Jeffrey Bernard in the delicate art of making eggs fly into beer glasses. As a novelist he does research in Haywards Heath. And while one play ends, another one - 'Bookends' - opens in Brighton. He also finds time for his favourite hobby, lunch.
It has been said that the English hoard words like misers and the Irish spend them like sailors. Tonight's Arena presents three great Irish masters of the English language: Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, and Brendan Behan. Anthony Cronin, poet, friend and fellow-drinker, recalls their genius and their wild exploits in Dublin
For more than two decades, Van Morrison has been fusing different musical influences, creating a style of his own. In this programme he duets with Bob Dylan and plays harmonica with blues legend John Lee Hooker. He leads the Danish Radio Big Band, sings with Irish folk group the Chieftains, and relives the heyday of 60s r'n'b with the Georgie Fame Band.
This one-man show based on the life of Oscar Wilde was the jewel in the crown for Irish actor Michael MacLiammoir 's career. The programme was first shown on St Patrick's Day 1964.
When Kenneth Anger first published his classic expose of Hollywood's best-kept secrets and scandals, it was immediately banned. The underground film-maker struck a raw nerve in "tinsel town". Tonight he goes for a "walk on the wild side" with Marianne Faithfull, the man who embalmed Marilyn Monroe, and American comic Mike McShane, who plays the god of Hollywood. Irreverent but affectionate, Anger reveals the origins of the casting couch, why James Dean was "the human ashtray", and the truth behind Fatty Arbuckle's public disgrace.
Top US crime writer Elmore Leonard 's street-wise characters range from violent hoodlums in and around Detroit to low-life hustlers on Florida's Gold Coast. Arena travels with him as he visits some of the colourful and contrasting people and places that have been the inspiration for his bestselling books, meeting homicide cops, a Hollywood producer, a circuit court judge and the mermaids of Weeki Wachee.
In the last of the current series of Arena, musical performance artist Laurie Anderson presents an examination of mankind's obsession with its own image. For thousands of years artists and scientists have attempted to unravel the enigmas of the human face. The disembodied head is a symbol of humanity, conveyor of information and portrayer of emotion. Now modern computer technology may be on the verge of unlocking some of the mysteries of the human face.
A show as big as the Lone Star State. This is an epic voyage through the wildest state in the union - from the honkytonks and dancehalls to the hill country and burning deserts; from big cities to towns so tiny they're not even on the map. In a departure from the style of Arena's previous TV nights, this programme takes the form of one continuous film with three intermissions - the Potter's Wheel of the 1990s, Texas style. The guide for the evening is Texas's only Jewish retired country singer turned detective: Kinky Friedman. In the spirit of his mystery novels, he goes on a quest deep into the heart of Texas to find out what makes it so darn different from everywhere else.
Fifty years ago Orson Welles's 'Citizen Kane', his first and most astonishing movie - which Welles directed, produced and played the starring role in, all at the age of 25 - received its British premiere. Welles's collaborators, production team, and actors describe its making; Welles himself is featured in BBC interviews from 1960 and 1982; and the real life press baron William Randolph Hearst, upon whom Kane is based, is recalled in rare footage. American film critic Pauline Kael analyses Kane's enduring appeal, and film historian Robert Carringer looks at the scenes that never made it to the screen.
Warren Clarke narrates a look at London's world-famous red Routemaster buses which, although designed in the 1950s for a lifespan of just 17 years, was in use into the next century.
The first of a special three-part presentation in which American film director Billy Wilder discusses his career with German filmmaker Volker Schlondorff. From Marlene Dietrich to Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart to Gary Cooper, Wilder has directed the film industry's greatest legends. Normally a private man, tonight he reminisces about his early years in Hollywood with fellow emigres Fritz Lang and his mentor, Ernst Lubitsch (the programme's title is derived from a sign in Wilder's office which asks: "Lubitsch, how did you do it?"), and describes working with Dietrich on his emotional return to post-war Berlin
Second of three in-depth conversations with the film director and writer Billy Wilder. He recalls his memories of the great Hollywood stars: "Mae West walked out of the door all white gold and feathers. She looked like a locomotive." He talks about working with silent film star Gloria Swanson on 'Sunset Boulevard', the tensions of working with Humphrey Bogart, and the consummate artistry of Gary Cooper.
Last of a special three-part presentation in which American director Billy Wilder discusses his career. He remembers working with Marilyn Monroe on 'Some Like It Hot': "With Monroe life was a surprise - sometimes she knew eight pages of dialogue by heart, sometimes she had a total block." He discusses the craft of screenwriting, the problems of working with Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, and the creative pleasure of improvising with his lifelong collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond.
When pop artist Peter Blake confessed in a magazine article that his fantasy was to be the mysterious masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki, who never speaks and never removes his mask, little did he know what the consequences would be. Poet and television producer Paul Yates, also fascinated by the persona of Nagasaki, read the article and proceeded to research the possibility of Blake painting Nagasaki's portrait as a centrepiece for a film which would also, he hoped, include an exclusive interview with Nagasaki himself. Does he exist outside the ring and, if so, who is he? Masters of the Canvas follows Yates's quest for the sitting, the interview and the man behind the myth.
A portrait of the controversial American film director, Oliver Stone, whose work often arouses the fiercest passions in both supporters and critics. In a revealing interview, Stone looks back on his life and work, reminiscing about his difficult childhood, the effect of his parents' divorce and his decision to travel to Vietnam, first as a teacher and then as a soldier. Featuring clips from his movies and film of him at work on scenes in 'JFK' - his latest film, about the assassination of President Kennedy.
On 14 February 1989, Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Tonight, on the third anniversary of the fatwa, a gathering of international writers and artists re-asserts the surpassing value of freedom of expression.
In 1983, David Hampton was arrested for pretending to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier and conning his way into the homes of some of New York's most powerful and influential families. Seven years later this case became the inspiration for the critically acclaimed Broadway play 'Six Degrees of Separation'. Now, Hampton is using Richard Golub, one of New York's best-known lawyers, to sue the playwright and the play's producers for millions in a precedent-setting case to see if anyone retains the rights to their own life.
Dean Read was the biggest rock star the communist world had ever seen. Virtually unknown in his native America, the "Red Sinatra" was the first pop musician Mikhail Gorbachev ever heard. He sang 'My Yiddishe Momma' to Yasser Arafat in Palestine, performed for Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and was awarded the Lenin Prize in recognition of the millions of records he had sold. In June 1986, he was found dead in a lake in East Berlin, the mysterious circumstances sparking rumours of a KGB plot, a CIA assassination, jealous husbands, or fascist revenge against his communist career. Reggie Nadelson, journalist and author, searches for the truth.
Ivan Rabuzin, the 71-year-old Croatian artist, says his paintings stand as accusations. "They show an image of earthly heaven and they are based on the real world in which I feel happy, in which I paint. But if that real world is being destroyed, then how can I make any links to the ideal, the earthly heaven?" While Rabuzin paints, other artists from the performing and visual arts have joined the fighting in more dramatic ways.
"I'll either be famous or infamous," declared the controversial German painter who died in 1969. His subjects range from tranquil landscapes to frenzied sex murders, from brutalised war criminals to religious allegories. In his lifetime he found little favour on either side of his divided country. He was hauled before the courts on charges of obscenity, and his paintings were burned by the Nazis as being degenerate, and yet he has more recently been hailed as the "last great German artist of our times". Arena examines the work of an artist who, in the new Germany, is seen as both an influential and unifying figure.
Refused entry to America from China in 1958 because of the embargo on "communist goods", the giant panda Chi-Chi came to London Zoo - a constant object of media attention and public adoration. Eight years later she was sent on a diplomatic mission to Moscow to mate with the Russian panda An-An, though this attempt to start a thaw of the Cold War failed on day one when she hit An-An. Among those recalling this bizarre tale of sex, spies and the media are Desmond Morris , Sir Denis Forman and Edward Heath, who remembers his own brush with pandas when he was prime minister.
'Tales of the City' first appeared in the 70s as a daily column in the 'San Francisco Chronicle'. Armistead Maupin's stories about life in San Francisco as seen through the eyes of a zany cast of characters had such a massive following that he adapted them into a series of six bestselling novels. Tonight's film examines Maupin's varied and controversial career, including his lifelong involvement in gay rights. It also discovers some of the people who provided the inspiration for his characters and visits the city's walkways and backwaters that are the setting for his novels.
A self-portrait of photographer and film maker Robert Frank. Often called the "eyes of the Beats", Frank's work spans 45 years - from his influential book of photographs 'The Americans' in the 1950s, to a controversial Rolling Stones documentary in 1972, and a recent photographic assignment in Beirut. For this new film, Frank took personal friends, actors and a film crew to Harlem to create a dramatised exploration of his idea that we all carry a gallery of people in our heads. He believes that a portrait of them is a portrait of the person who chooses to remember them.
Javier Mariscal is an artist who cannot be categorised - a designer who thinks a Camel cigarette packet has as much value as a Picasso. Phillipe Starck , the doyen of the design world, calls him "the Andy Warhol of Spain". Mariscal himself says, "I make cultural sandwiches for the brain." Always a controversial figure, he has come a long way from his early days peddling underground comics in the bars and streets of Barcelona. Since winning the design commission for the Olympic Games, he has attracted heavy criticism for his commercial exploitation of Cobi, the Olympic mascot. Tonight's film takes a look at the man and his diverse work - comics, animation, sculpture, furniture, interiors, paintings. Whatever the medium, Mariscal's message is invariably enigmatic, eclectic, and above all fun.
Three films which take a journey through the rich musical heritage of Argentina. The story begins just south of Buenos Aires in the Pampas. This is the land of the gaucho - the solitary hero on his horse, the symbol of Argentinian identity. Today the gaucho might seem to be more a figure of legend than reality, yet just a few miles from the Argentinian capital men and horses keep this tradition alive. With guitar and songs the gauchos continue to tell stories of their lives, their horses and their land.
Three films which take a journey through the rich musical heritage of Argentina. In the vast regions from the plains of the Pampas to the provinces of the north, three distinct styles of music and dance evolved: the zamba, the chacarera and the chamame. Their precise origins are lost, but they developed in the 19th century from pre-colonial dances and the instruments and music brought by the European settlers and their African slaves. These traditional styles are still the popular music of the whole of northern Argentina where some of the musicians are professional and some are workers who play at festivals and at the weekend, sometimes just for their own families.
Final of three films about the rich musical heritage of Argentina. The Calchaquies valleys in the Andes and the Humahuaca canyon form the most underdeveloped and remote region in Argentina, with traditions going back beyond the Inca conquest. The far north with its small mountain villages like Molinos and Cachi is more closely linked to Bolivia and Peru than to the rest of the country. The people of the mountains say their music can be described simply as the "man with the drum". Every year they celebrate a carnival devoted to the honour of Pacha Mama, the Goddess of the Earth.
Few activities in modern life can rival sport for creating excitement, passion and commitment. Arena takes a look at how the tensions and glories of sporting life are turned into prose by the sportswriter.
An Arena special focusing on Linda McCartney's photographic career, which she followed for thirty years. In the late 60s, Linda McCartney became court photographer to the royalty of rock, taking pictures of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and the Beatles. In her first TV profile, she spoke about her life in photography, her life with husband Paul and coping with the press.
Arena's 1993 season opens with this three-part exploration of the life and work of the enigmatic writer. Greene's obsessions with the seedy world of love, sex, betrayal, disloyalty and failure influenced millions of readers over 60 years. Tonight's film examines the failures and successes of Greene's early career; investigates his conversion to Catholicism; and explores his intense but unhappy marriage. It includes the first interview with his widow Vivien.
Continuing the exploration of the life and work of the enigmatic writer who influenced millions of readers over 60 years. Disloyalty, secrecy and spying fascinated Greene both in his work and in his private life. Tonight's film charts the hidden years of his life when his marriage broke down and he became involved in a series of intense and turbulent affairs. It begins in 1940 when Kim Philby recruited him as a spy.
Last of the biographical films, with extracts read by Sir Alec Guinness. Passionately promoting the link between Catholicism and communism, defending Kim Philby, supporting guerrillas in central America or fighting the Mafia in Nice - these were some of the more controversial activities Greene was involved in during his last 30 years. With contributions from Jeffrey Bernard, Koo Stark, John le Carré, Anthony Burgess, Vivien Greene, and interviews with his confessor Father Leopoldo Duran and his companion Yvonne Cloetta.
In the 1980s American artist J S G Boggs stunned the art world by holding an exhibition of banknotes, drawn by himself. In one go, he broke moral, artistic and legal taboos - counterfeiting money, poking fun at the art world, and raising the question, "Is this art?" The film follows this controversial artist on a journey funded by his hand-painted banknotes through railway stations, supermarkets, restaurants, wine bars and art galleries, as he attempts to evade arrest and discover the real value of money - and art.
The story of the unlikely and unpublicised relationship between a 60s American rock band and some of Britain's little-known orchestral composers. Once the icons of the San Francisco hippie scene, the Grateful Dead are still a leading touring band. But behind their continuing success, the group hide a secret cause: through their Rex Foundation, they have been anonymously - and usually to the astonishment of the recipients - funding British composers ignored or neglected in their homeland. This film contrasts the Dead's extravagant shows with the private lives and music of the composers who benefit.
Elder statesman of jazz and a co-founder of the style that became bebop in the 40s, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie will be remembered by many as the trumpet player with ballooning cheeks and a misshapen horn. His career began in the 30s in Philadelphia, taking him on to New York where he met and jammed with two other young jazz greats, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. From these improvisations grew the radical new style that revolutionised jazz. He continued to experiment, and in the latter part of his career he took his music to the developing world, incorporating the sounds he found there into his own work. Arena pays tribute to the trumpeter, composer and bandleader who died earlier this month.
One of the world's leading figures in the battle against Aids is not a doctor, scientist or politician, but a writer - Larry Kramer - who says: "Aids has given me my life's work." A novelist, playwright and screenwriter, Kramer first came to prominence in the 1960s with his screenplay of the film 'Women in Love'. His 1970s novel 'Faggots' caused widespread controversy as he attacked his contemporaries in the gay community for their regime of casual sex and easy promiscuity, earning him the title "the angriest gay man in the world". In the 1980s, when the Aids epidemic began to decimate the community, he was one of the first people to take a political, active stance in bringing it to the attention of the world. In recent years - and with the discovery of his own HIV-positive status - Kramer has withdrawn from activism to concentrate on writing, and his new play, the autobiographical 'The Destiny of Me', has opened off-Broadway to rave reviews.
Palestinian writer, academic and exile Edward W Said takes a journey into the worlds of history, literature, ideas and imagination to explain how he wrote his most recent book, 'Culture and Imperialism'. Opening in New York, "the city of exiles", Said's passionate and challenging TV essay ranges from Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' to the Gulf War. In it, he shows how attitudes forged over the last 200 years continue to enforce the relationship between the west and the developing world. Challenging the barriers imposed by race, religion and nationalism, he argues that the experience of empire connects us all - whoever we are, wherever we are from - that our histories overlap, that all our cultures are hybrid and impure.
For three decades the Soviet Union's obsession with space stirred the soul of the nation like a secular religion - from the first space star Yuri Gagarin to the sad saga of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev who circled the planet for almost a year, a helpless spectator of the momentous events back home on earth. Exploring the spiritual force of this grand obsession, Arena talks to Krikalev and the first cosmonauts, and ventures into the world of relics, icons and the memorabilia of the Soviet space venture.
An interview with the poet who last December won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and whose current novel-length poem has caused him to be dubbed the "Homer of the Caribbean". He talks to Stuart Hall on the Caribbean island of St Lucia where he was born about how his family, the people of St Lucia. and the physical beauty of the island have inspired a brilliant career as poet and playwright spanning more than 40 years.
One of China's most successful film directors, Zhang Yimou, talks about his life, his work, and his views on China. The stunning photography and quintessential "Chineseness" of his films - from 'Red Sorghum', 'Judou', and 'Raise the Red Lantern' to the forthcoming 'The Story of Qiu Ju' - have won him enormous acclaim in the west, and yet have been met with harsh censorship in China.
To mark his 60th birthday - and the publication of his new book 'Operation Shylock' - Philip Roth breaks his long silence and talks to Arena about his life, books, and some of the links between the two. Since his outrageous comic novel 'Portnoy's Complaint' appeared in the late 1960s, Roth's chronicles and comedies of Jewish America have established him as one of the most important writers of his generation. But success has brought hostile criticism and, until now, he has refused every request for a television interview, preferring to present himself in his books in the guise of fictional alter egos.
To the innocent reader, the characters in a work of fiction are the author's inventions. To those in the know, it is often more complicated. Arena investigates the effect novels can have on those people who do see a resemblance between themselves and a fictional character and asks whether or not it is "entirely coincidental".
Chronicling New York low and high life, Weegee's photographs have often shocked the world. His wife, Wilma Wilcox, talks about the man behind the myth.
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp entered a white porcelain object in a New York exhibition. it was a urinal. Arena unearths the origins of this extraordinary story with an account from Duchamp's lover of the time, ceramicist Beatrice Wood.
When Jewish writer Carole Angier watched the original 'Heimat', she was so moved she wrote to its creator; Reitz responded that she had understood his work better than anyone. She later saw the making of his next epic, the 26-hour 'The Second Heimat'. Tonight's programme is a record of Angier's extraordinary experiences witnessing two years of writing and four years of filming.
Gerron Rackham tells how Buddy Holly's songs 'Peggy Sue' and 'Peggy Sue Got Married' came to be written. She went to the same high school as Holly and married drummer Jerry Allison. Other people recall the era, including Donna Fox who inspired Ritchie Valens' song, Donna.
Brenda Fassie is South Africa's answer to Madonna. A black singer for black people, she is streetwise, outrageous and aiming to be an international star. With her new album 'I'm Not a Bad Girl', this Arena special shows Brenda Fassie in performance and meets the musicians and media-manipulators working with her in an ever-changing South Africa.
The second documentary in this Arena series telling the true stories behind classic rock songs is devoted to Elvis Presley's first million-selling release, 'Heartbreak Hotel'. This film tracks down the song's writers, schoolteacher Mae Axton and Country musician Tommy Durden, and discovers that 'Heartbreak Hotel' was inspired by a real-life suicide in Miami in 1955. The lyrics of the song actually incorporate the suicide note found by police at the scene. 'Heartbreak Hotel' launched Elvis into international stardom but the song came back to haunt him at the end of his life, which - alleges controversial biographer Albert Goldman - also ended in suicide. This documentary looks at both his meteoric success and his later decline, through the words and music of the song that made it all happen.
Continuing the Arena series with the true story behind Lou Reed's classic rock song that celebrated transvestism. All the characters named in the song were real people who frequented Andy Warhol's studio in the late 60s. 'Walk on the Wild Side' is a description of the bizarre and sometimes sordid world inhabited by Warhol's "superstars". Of those named in the song, only "Holly" Woodlawn and "Little Joe" Dallesandro have survived to tell the tale, and both are interviewed in the film. An examination of a significant chapter in New York's underground culture, it also includes unseen archive footage of Max's Kansas City, the notorious club made popular by Warhol in the late 60s.
Last programme in the Arena series tracing the origins of classic rock songs. This musical journey travels the famous highway that has inspired successive generations of musicians, including Bob Dylan and his 1965 song. One of the longest roads in the USA, Highway 61 runs from the Canadian border, passing by Dylan's home town of Hibbing, Minnesota, en route to New Orleans in the south. The film takes a guided tour of Hibbing in the company of John Bucklen, Dylan's high school friend, who provides some new insights into Dylan's earliest musical experiments. As well as recordings of conversation and music that the two teenagers made in 1958, there are clips of the musicians who have been associated with Highway 61, from Bessie Smith to Elvis Presley and Little Richard.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. In this first part, Ian McKellen ruminates on the distinct eras of radio broadcasting, characterised as Shakespeare's seven ages of man, with the aid of Professor Asa Briggs.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. This second part asks, "what does the voice reveal?"
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. Alistair Cooke, whose weekly epistle has been broadcast on radio since 1946, explains why it is the best medium for him.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. In this part, the story of early radio's method of broadcasting live football, referring to a numbered grid - published in the Radio Times - on which listeners followed the action.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. For many of us, family Sunday meals conjure up memories of 'Family Favourites', 'Round the Home' and 'The Billy Cotton Band Show'.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. This part looks at pirate radio, and how, on just one estate in east London, there are five pirate stations battling to stay on air.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. This part asks the question: "Does TV steal radio's best comedy ideas?" Included in the debate are Frank Muir, Denis Norden, Armando Iannucci and the voice of Spike Milligan.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. In this part Harold Listings, a frustrated radio technician, takes revenge.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. In this part, how NASA scientists are using giant radio antennae to pick up communications from ET.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. In this part, Dr Carl Dolmetsch finds out why the pips changed pitch.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. In this part, the tragic story of the lone yachtsman and his radio.
A night of themed programmes showing how TV and radio have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of these programmes you needed to have your radio (tuned to BBC Radio 4) and TV in the same room, so that they could "talk to" each other. Live on TV for the first time, Fisher, German Bight, and Dogger.
An exploration of the phenomenal popularity of L Frank Baum's famous children's story 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz', written in 1900. About 20 film versions of the story have been made (including a 1925 one with Oliver Hardy), and the programme features clips from a selection of these, including the first TV showing of Baum's own 1908 film, plus missing footage from the Judy Garland movie. Distinguished devotees to Baum's magical land include writers Gore Vidal, Ray Bradbury, and Salman Rushdie, and filmmaker Nora Ephron.
In the 1980s Vladimir Pozner, once dubbed "Ivan the Telegenic", became the second-most celebrated communist in the west. Carrying Gorbachev's message to western television screens, he intrigued and troubled millions of viewers. But who is he, this unrepentant propagandist and ex-Soviet correspondent, who is now a talk-show host in America? Arena follows him over a dramatic year and explores the contradictions in his extraordinary life.
The new stars of ragga and gangster rap - Shabba Ranks, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Buju Banton - have become as notorious as they are successful. They command huge audiences and record sales, but they have been accused of hating women, inciting violence against gays, and encouraging the use of guns. Award-winning film maker Isaac Julien is gay and black, and he confronts them. With contributions from Michael Manley and Cornel West.
For centuries, bare-knuckle boxing has been going on behind closed doors. Nigel Finch's unusual film investigates this illegal activity by following one hopeful as he prepares for a fight against the "Cyclone", the Northern Ireland bare-knuckle boxing champion (unlicensed).
During the 1970s and 1980s Derek Jarman kept a Super-8 film diary, chronicling the cultural high life and low life of London. The footage ranges from William Burroughs reading aloud at the nightclub Heaven, to candid behind-the-scenes footage of his most controversial feature films including 'Jubilee' and 'Sebastiane'. The original music is written by his long term collaborator Brian Eno. 'Glitterbug', his last film, was shown as a tribute to Jarman who died on 19 February 1994.
In 1960 an American film called 'Primary' changed the notion of what a documentary could be, using techniques never before seen on TV. It was made by Robert Drew, whose role in the movement that has become known as cinéma vérité has gone largely unrecognised. Tonight's programme tells his story.
Seventy million Kalashnikov (or AK-47) guns are scattered across the world. It was the Russians' Cold War weapon, and is still the first choice of terrorists, guerrillas and mercenaries. Through the story of Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, Arena asks whether the AK-47 is a cultural icon or just a killing machine.
On 1 April 1984, former Motown star Marvin Gaye provoked his father once too often and was shot dead in his bedroom. It was the tragic finale to an extraordinary series of events in the life of one of the major talents of pop music in the 70s. From being down and out in London in 1980 he had been restored to tentative health, far away from drug dealers, in the Belgian port of Ostend. Video footage of this calm period forms the basis of this bleak documentary - bleak, because all along we know that his final hit 'Sexual Healing' will draw him back to America and death.
The idea that power exists in the remains of heroes and the things they leave behind is the focus of an Arena trilogy, introduced by this programme. Religious devotion is not the only source of modern-day relics. Pop stars and politicians achieve cult status, with fans paying huge sums for their memorabilia. Tonight's programme attempts to establish the notion of what a relic is.
"Move Albert Einstein," declares Japanese professor Kenji Sugimoto at the start of a bizarre journey in search of the great one's missing brain. Sugimoto would not look out of place in a Pink Panther film as he grunts and mutters his way across America on his curious mission. Einstein's brain was apparently removed for medical study after his death, but the owner failed to carry out the research and was subsequently sacked. The brain went with him. Sugimoto, whose deep regret is that he never met the scientist, has long dreamed of the next best thing - making contact with his grey cells. The result is a farcical series of encounters with a curious cast of experts, policemen and relatives.
A film drama set against civil war in Peru. When Ortiz, a professional grave robber, stumbles across the huge golden disc of the ancient sun god Atahualpa lost for years, he sets off for Lima where he hopes to sell it for a high price. Chained to the shield, he looks like a giant firebeetle as he crosses the dramatic mountains in Peru pursued by characters with a special interest in the shield. Spurred on by greed, Ortiz's fate becomes inextricably linked to that of the sun god.
In 1978 Charlie Chaplin's coffin was stolen from his grave in Vevey, Switzerland, and a large ransom was demanded of his widow Oona. This fictional film inspired by those events follows the east European characters responsible.
The author of the stories behind 'Blade Runner' and 'Total Recall' grew up in California at a time when an agricultural idyll was fast being replaced by motorways, shopping stores and junk culture. Philip K Dick drew inspiration for his 42 science-fiction novels and countless short stories from the neighbourhood growing up around him and the advertisements on television. This documentary goes on an imaginative tour from the Colorado grave where Dick is buried to the suburbs of California where he lived and worked. Features interviews with his ex-wives, friends and biographers.
Nelson Mandela and his fellow ex-prisoners recall their incarceration on South Africa's Robben Island. For three decades, the island housed not only political prisoners but convicts, lepers and the mentally ill. Yet amidst the hopelessness, Nelson Mandela and his comrades devised strategies and subterfuges with which they transformed life on the island, while the vision of a new South Africa began to take shape.
Using herself as the model, American artist Cindy Sherman has produced hundreds of photographs exploring the use of female stereotypes. Most recently she has addressed the theme of sexuality and Aids. Renowned for her secrecy - this is the first documentary on her work - Sherman talks about her influences and reveals her working methods through her video diaries.
Brazil's major slave-trading port for nearly three centuries, Bahia has a black population of over 80 per cent, which maintains the legacy of African tradition at every level of daily life. Jana Bokova's vivid film portrait captures the spirit of the Bahian people, their music, their culture, and most of all their religion - Candomblé - a fusion of Catholic and African religious beliefs. The film culminates in the annual celebration of carnival.
Sandra Bernhard's outrageous one-woman show deals with many normally taboo subjects, and controversy runs through her personal life: she was once Madonna's lover and is a lesbian pin-up, but she also posed for 'Playboy'. In this country, however, she is perhaps best known as the bisexual Nancy in the Channel 4 comedy 'Roseanne'. Bringing together archive clips, footage of her sell-out New York show and interviews, this sometimes explicit film explores how Bernhard has become a cult icon of female sexual power.
This Arena special profiles sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who has suddenly become fashionable at the age of 84, and has been chosen to represent America at the Venice Biennale, the world's most prestigious art exhibition.
The life and time of comedy genius Peter Sellers, told with the help of his extraordinary collections of home movies and featuring interviews with family, friends and colleagues.
The second of a three-part film portrait of one of the world's great comic actors. The life and time of comedy genius Peter Sellers, told with the help of his extraordinary collections of home movies and featuring interviews with family, friends and colleagues.
The last of a three-part film portrait of one of the world's great comic actors. The final part begins in 1964, with Sellers at the peak of his success. 'Dr Strangelove' and 'The Pink Panther' are filling cinemas throughout the world and his marriage to Britt Ekland is making the headlines. Then it all goes wrong - he nearly dies of a heart attack and his film fortunes nosedive with a series of flops. Sellers's career is rescued ten years later by 'The Return of the Pink Panther', but his private life is still chaotic, with two more marriages and the constant fear of another heart attack.
In August 1975, the face of British rock music was fundamentally changed: the Sex Pistols were formed. A host of colourful characters, including the Damned's Captain Sensible, Richard Hell, Jerry Nolan from the New York Dolls, and the legendary Bromley Contingent, remember the halcyon days of the movement that influenced a generation.
A remarkable guided tour through the culinary world of Elvis Presley, in his later years famed as much for his appetite as for his music. The King's passion for food is recounted by close friends, relatives and personal cooks who share the recipes that kept their idol happy. From the squirrel and racoon dishes of his youth to the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches that contributed to his demise.
What is a nation? The issue of national identity has never been so pressing as small chunks of the globe are fiercely defended as the homeland for certain groups of people. But why, when world culture is increasingly amorphous, should this be? Archbishop Desmond Tutu gives the keynote to the inquiry in a report from South Africa, where the disenfranchised black population brought urgency to the struggle for citizenship. Historian Eric Hobsbawm reports from Austria, writer Maxine Hong Kingston travels to Vietnam, and Professor Eqbal Ahmad returns to India and Pakistan.
At 70 years of age, singer Tony Bennett has been dubbed the King of Cool by the MTV-watching generation. Arena reveals the man behind the silky voice, as Tony Bennett - civil rights activist, jazz enthusiast, painter and New Yorker - takes a tour around his native city and the world of American music with reporter Reggie Nadelson. Featuring politician Mario Cuomo, painter David Hockney, songwriter Eivis Costello and jazz musician Wynton Marsalis.
The legendary Sid Caesar was one of America's favourite TV stars in the 50s. His writing team, which include Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon, was probably the first ever to be assembled in one room. The team recently reunited with Caesar before an audience in Los Angeles, and Hollywood star Gene Wilder, who is currently playing Caesar in 'Laughter on the 23rd Floor' in London's West End, introduces the hilarious meeting.
On 22 October 1995, for the first time, all the world's leaders gathered together in the United Nations in New York to have their photograph taken for the beginning of the UN's 50th anniversary celebration. Photographer Paul Skipworth's 15 minutes of supreme power is the subject of this film.
A portrait of the Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, who has directed such films as 'L'Avventura', 'La Notte', and 'Zabriskie Point'. His work is known for its studies of alienation, and its experiments with cinematic techniques. In his eighties, Antonioni has recently had a museum open in his honour in Ferrara, Italy - his birthplace.
Sports writer Hugh Mcllvanney presents the first of a trilogy about three great football managers: Matt Busby, Jock Stein, and Bill Shankly. Tonight's film takes a look at the early careers of these men, who were born within a few miles of each other in the coal mining district south of Glasgow, and who subsequently became folk heroes known and admired beyond the world of football.
Sports writer Hugh Mcllvanney presents the second in a trilogy of programmes about three great football managers: Matt Busby, Jock Stein, and Bill Shankly. Tonight's film focuses on 1945-60, the period when the three former miners were all to become managers.
Concluding the three-part series presented by sports writer Hugh Mcllvanney about three great football managers: Matt Busby, Jock Stein, and Bill Shankly. This film charts the incredible success that these three men brought to their clubs during the sixties and seventies, and examines their later years.
Tonight's programme considers musa sapientum - the fruit of the wise. The Velvet Underground's John Cale tells the story behind Andy Warhol's famous LP cover, Auberon Waugh and John Walters recall their first encounters with the fruit after the war, and footballer Brendan Batson considers how they became a symbol of racism hurled from the terraces.
According to Pierre Salinger, John F Kennedy's former press secretary, before the president signed the embargo banning the importation of cigars into America from Cuba in 1962 he ordered 1,200 of them from Havana. Tonight's programme follows the story of the cigar - from the tobacco fields west of the Cuban capital of Havana into the factories where poetry and daily newspapers are read aloud to workers; to Hollywood cigar bars and the gentlemen's haunts of St James's, London. With contributions from actors James Belushi, George Wendt and Peter Weller, plus Lord Grade and politician Kenneth Clarke.
This first programme of the trilogy follows Coward's rise from suburban South London boy to the world's highest-paid author at the age of 30. He earned notoriety with his play 'The Vortex', but by the late 1920s his huge success had driven him to a nervous breakdown.
The second of three programmes celebrating the life and career of Noel Coward focuses on the journey through the Far East which inspired his most famous song, 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen'. Coward's s own home movies - being shown on television for the first time -capture him on trains in Japan, rickshaws in Peking, and elephants in Ceylon. During the war years, an inspired partnership with director David Lean produced the acclaimed film 'In Which We Serve', with Coward playing a role based on Louis Mountbatten. This was followed by 'Brief Encounter', the classic film co-written by Coward and based on his play 'Still Life'.
A look at the last 30 years of Noel Coward's life. His post-war eclipse as a dramatist gave way to a new career as a highly successful cabaret performer in London and Las Vegas, and in numerous film cameos. In the 1950s he became the first celebrity tax exile, living in Switzerland and Jamaica. Finally knighted at the age of 70, he died three years later and was buried on a mountain-top in Jamaica.
Arena explores the rise of the legendary crooner Frank Sinatra from his early family background to overwhelming showbusiness success. Interviews with friends, family and associates reveal a star-studded career in music and film alongside a fascinating private life of four marriages, liaison with the Kennedy family, Las Vegas business interests and an alleged association with the mafia.
First in a two-part documentary examining the turbulent life and career of Beatles manager Brian Epstein. Gay when homosexuality was illegal, a gambler, shopkeeper and failed actor, he was also pop king with a midas touch who, in the 60s, was as well known as the band he managed.
Part two of the documentary on Beatles manager Brian Epstein. By the mid 60s, Epstein was lured into the world of gambling, sex and drugs and in 1967 he was found dead in his London mansion at the age of 32.
Newsreel footage from 1962, when Fidel Castro's arrangement with then-Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to install nuclear-weapon sites triggered off the Cuban missile crisis.
Cuba's baseball prowess has been long estabished. Fidel Castro himself was once scouted by a US team, and in 1992 Cuba surpassed even the Americans to win the first Olympic baseball gold medal. With many top Cuban players offered lucrative US contracts, this film shows how the patriotic fervour whipped up by the Cuban national sport has acted as a barometer for the country's political relations with the USA.
Cuba's place in world politics, from mid-sixties to mid-eighties.
The effects of the demise of the dominant political ethos in the east.
Since his death in 1967, the face of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara has stared down from posters and banners around the world, the most reproduced image since the Mona Lisa. This programme, written by Reggie Nadelson, explores the industry he unwittingly spawned.
Cuba's relations with the United States in recent times.
In Salman Rushdie 's new novel 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet', singer Vina Aspara is caught up in an earthquake on Valentine's Day 1989, and never seen again. On that day Rushdie's own life was in upheaval as Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced the fatwa upon him. Rushdie talks to Francine Stock about the novel. There is also an interview with U2 singer Bono, who has based a song around lyrics from the book, and performs it with guitarist the Edge.
The Iron Curtain ran north to south through Europe and divided the world for 50 years. American writer and broadcaster Reggie Nadelson joins former Soviet Union spin doctor Vladimir Pozner in an attempt to retrace the chilling and strange route of history's most astonishing border.
The legendary 18th-century lover has been immortalised in books, films and on television, but are these fictionalised accounts historically accurate? Novelist Josephine Hart investigates the truth behind the many myths surrounding this enigmatic figure, and finds that, during his lifetime, he was famed for much more than sexual exploits. She provides evidence that Casanova was a charming man with a razor wit and fluent in three languages. Not only that, but he was also an astrologer, Freemason, businessman, writer, winner and loser of fortunes, and, last but not least, prison escapee.
In 1957, Jayne Mansfield was riding high as the most photographed woman in the world. Yet, ten years later, she was reduced to stripping in seedy nightclubs to finance a serious alcohol problem and support her five children from three broken marriages. The first of three programmes on blonde bombshells from the arts strand hears from friends and relatives as it reassesses the star's roller-coaster life and career.
This second blonde-bombshell profile focuses on Britain's home-grown prototype, Diana Dors. The Rada-trained actress emerged as a sex symbol in the fifties through a run of low-budget British comedies. Hollywood success, however, proved elusive and, as her looks faded, Dors was reduced to cabaret appearances in northern clubs, although a series of cameo roles on stage and celluloid hinted at the talent that might have been.
Perhaps best remembered as the shapely blonde who waded into the Trevi Fountain in 'La Dolce Vita', fifties sex symbol Anita Ekberg became a Hollywood icon and a cult figure in European cinema. This portrait, which concludes Arena's documentary trilogy about blonde screen sirens, tracks down the reclusive Swede in Italy and traces the path of a career that began to take off when she won a Miss Sweden beauty contest. Ekberg talks candidly about growing old, surviving personal disappointment, and the pressure that comes with being recognised as one of the world's most beautiful women.
Actor Dennis Hopper plays the eccentric host to this guide to the world of commercial creativity. The programme analyses advertising's true place in modern-day, media-obsessed popular culture, highlighted by clips from some extreme and powerful examples of the genre featuring such talents as Leslie Nielsen, Dudley Moore, and John Cleese. Offbeat contributions come from film directors Tony Scott , Spike Lee, and Alan Parker, actor Anthony Quinn, musicians Dave Stewart and David Bowie, and top advertising executives, who discuss the rise of commercials as an art form and their considerable influence on feature films.
More and more young Muslim women today are wearing the veil, saying that it frees rather than oppresses them. This one-off Arena explores how a simple piece of cloth has endured in the eastern and western imagination.
This poetic documentary uses archive newspaper reports, the contemporary photographs of Charles Van Shaick, and reconstructions to portray the mysterious and tragic events that befell the small and unsuspecting American town of Black River Falls in the 1890s. The story was originally told in Michael Lesy's book, which was itself based on newspaper reports and archive photographs from the time. Ian Holm narrates the stories using the words of the local newspaper editor.
The first of a two-parter profiling the Hollywood actor and director Clint Eastwood. Eastwood recalls his tough childhood and looks back at his early career, from 'Rawhide' to 'Dirty Harry' and the spaghetti westerns. With contributions from Don Siegel, Sergio Leone, Eli Wallach, and Martin Scorsese, plus an exclusive interview with his mother Ruth.
Concluding the two-part profile of the life and work of Hollywood actor and director Clint Eastwood. The story continues with Eastwood's directorial debut, as he completed 'Play Misty for Me' in five weeks before going on to huge success in 'Dirty Harry'.
A programme exploring the work of crime writer James Ellroy, whose credits include 'LA Confidential', 'The Black Dahlia', and 'My Dark Places', the latter a harrowing memoir of his own mother's murder. Ellroy later moved on from crime writing to pen his own secret history of the United States. Timed to coincide with the UK publication of the second volume of his 'Underworld USA' trilogy - 'The Cold Six Thousand' - in 2001, the film takes a tour of Ellroy's often disturbing world.
There is seemingly no endeavour for which there is not an award, from Preacher of the Year to Street Sweeper of the Year. Arena asks what lies at the heart of our fascination with awards and prizes, and society's desire to pick winners and losers. Featuring contributions from, among others, Glenda Jackson MP and Nick Park.
Eighty-six-year-old novelist Budd Schulberg talks to old friend Hugh Mcllvanney about his life and his long and varied career - including his screenplay for the multiple Oscar-winning film 'On the Waterfront'.
Dramatises the story behind the leading artists who personified the Beat Generation, which saw its roots in the meeting of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs in the forties. Examining their bohemian life in the fifties through a set of vignettes - featuring Dennis Hopper as Burroughs, Johnny Depp as Kerouac and John Turturro as Ginsberg - it also charts the subsequent San Francisco and West Coast renaissance, the hippie, political and spiritual movements of the sixties and seventies, and their influence in today's popular culture.
During the past 30 years the photographic work of Brazilian-born Sebastião Salgado has helped to bring conditions of famine and poverty to international attention.
Joseph Stalin is seen outside his native land as one of history's most deplorable tyrants, but throughout the former Soviet states a cult of Stalin still exists. This film documents Stalin's development from would-be provincial priest to ruthless autocrat, and shows how he exploited the repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, using visual propaganda, to reinvent himself as a quasi-religious idol.
A one-off film in which author Beryl Bainbridge chronicles the extraordinary relationship during the 18th century between Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale, the wife of rich London brewer Henry Thrale, which forms the basis for her latest novel, 'According to Queeney'. Johnson lived with the Thrales for most of the last 20 years of his life, during which time Hester nursed him through his bouts of melancholia and gout - until she ran off with her daughter Queeney's Italian singing teacher. Jim Carter and Suzannah Harker read extracts from letters Johnson and Mrs Thrale wrote to each other. Beth Goddard and Bainbridge herself read from 'According to Queeney'.
Writer, performer and director, the late Eric Sykes was the renaissance man of British comedy. This episode of Arena opens the doors of the room that was his creative home for forty years. Post-war Britain saw Sykes catapulted to fame in the hugely successful 'Variety Bandbox' and 'Educating Archie'. He quickly became the country's highest paid comedy writer. The film takes him through a day at his beloved office, an Aladdin's Cave of triumphs and treasures. There he muses on his life and career, and the other greats he knew and worked with.
Charlie Drake is perhaps best known as the "little man" taking on the world in such films as 'The Cracksman' and television series like 'The Worker'. Drake himself had much to overcome: marital, financial and career troubles dogged him, but, after reinventing himself as a "straight" actor, he won acclaim for roles in Harold Pinter's 'The Caretaker' and a BBC production of 'Bleak House'. At his home in south London, Drake recalls his highs and lows.
The sketch, first shown in 1967, that took the Golden Rose at Montreux. Drake plays the conductor and all of the musicians in an orchestra.
Since a 1951 breakthrough appearance on the long-running radio series 'Educating Archie', Bygraves has proved a hit with the British public, whether he performs as an actor, a comedian or a ballad singer. He still entertains today, dividing his time between Britain and a second home in Australia. Tonight's Arena finds out what makes the entertainer tick.
In 1986, Dirk Bogarde burnt most of his personal papers at his home in southern France. However, 12 cans of home movies, shot mostly by Bogarde's long-term partner Anthony Forwood, survived the flames. This two-part Arena special draws on this footage to present for the first time a comprehensive portrait of the reclusive actor, who died in 1999. The first film chronicles Bogarde's idyllic Sussex childhood and charts his meteoric rise to "idol of the Odeons" status in the fifties. Bogarde's sister, brother and grandmother, and Anthony Forwood's son Gareth offer their recollections.
The second of Arena's two-part film about Bogarde plots his progress to the forefront of European cinema in films such as Joseph Losey's 'The Servant' and Luchino Visconti's 'Death in Venice', before retiring from acting to become a writer. Tributes come from co-stars James Fox, Michael York and Charlotte Rampling.
As the 2001 winner, the Baltic state of Estonia, prepares to host this year's Eurovision Song Contest, this documentary explores the dramas, dreams, and dilemmas of what many see as a festival of kitsch, but which to the Estonians could be the key to membership of the European Union and NATO.
First in a two-part profile of Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa, looking at his childhood, early career and emergence as a major director during the American occupation. Kurosawa's samurai roots and traumatic early experiences influenced many of his films, including 'Rashomon', which brought him international fame after it won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival.
Concluding the profile of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. International acclaim followed masterpieces like the influential 'Seven Samurai', but success at home was elusive. Unable to find funding for his epic films in Japan, Kurosawa attempted suicide in 1971. To make his late films 'Kagemusha', 'Ran' and 'Dreams' he accepted help from foreign admirers like George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg.
Arena revisits its 1995 BAFTA-nominated Sellers trilogy, this time using only film shot by the late comic, who died in July 1980. Sellers is seen at home, on set, on holiday and in carefully stage-managed scenarios in this revealing treasure-trove. Includes previously unseen footage featuring Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon, and of Prince Charles at Sellers's home, all three royals appearing very much at ease. Also featured are family and friends including his wives Anne Levy, Britt Ekland and Lynne Frederick, Orson Welles, Sophia Loren, fellow Goon Spike Milligan, Pink Panther co-star Herbert Lorn and director Blake Edwards.
This edition chronicles Pinter's East End childhood, his work as an actor, the critical appraisal of his work, and his passion for cricket. The film looks at the various rooms in which Pinter formulated his ideas and wrote his early works, and features footage shot at the Almeida Theatre of a recent production of Pinter's first play 'The Room', featuring Lindsay Duncan, Keith Allen, Lia Williams, and Henry Woolf, and which was directed by Pinter himself.
This programme focuses on the relationship between the public and private aspects of Pinter's life and work. The film includes footage from two Pinter stage productions - 'One For The Road' with Pinter himself in the lead role, and 'Celebration', which was directed by Pinter.
Harold Pinter takes the lead role in the Gate Theatre, Dublin's production of his play, produced by Michael Colgan and directed by Robin Lefevre. In an unnamed police state, Nicolas, who works as a torturer, interrogates three members of the same family.
A 70th birthday tribute to Harold Pinter in three parts. The first section acknowledges Pinter's involvement in highlighting political injustices and puts his writing in its political context. The second instalment sees the playwright in conversation with Nigel Williams, while the third is a new reading of 'The Dumb Waiter'.
Double bill of documentaries that go behind the scenes of two of Radio 4's most popular comedy shows. Dead Ringers, which successfully made the transition to TV, features spot-on impressions of everyone from George Bush to Anne Robinson. But have the team lost track of who they really are?
Double bill of documentaries that go behind the scenes of two of Radio 4's most popular comedy shows. Not many can talk for a minute without hesitation, repetition or deviation - but, for 35 years, 'Just a Minute' panellists have done just that. Paul Merton, Clement Freud, Linda Smith and Ross Noble continue the story, with referee Nicholas Parsons forever trying to keep the unruly quartet under control.
The story of Mikova, the remote Slovakian village where the family of icon Andy Warhol came from.
Luchino Visconti lives large over the Italian cinema landscape. To be remembered and recognized as a genius in a nation that has produced so many genius filmmakers, a director really has to be at the top of their game all the time. Visconti, the creator of such films as 'Death in Venice', 'Ludwig', 'La Terra Trema', 'The Leopard', 'The Damned', and 'Rocco and His Brothers', rarely put a step wrong, putting some of the most memorable images of Italian cinema to film. But in his private life he led the kind of adventures that, even today, would have seen him branded a heretic in the puritanical USA. An open homosexual, an avowed Communist, and a silver-spoon-fed aristocrat, his films echoed his life in ways that were rarely complimentary, but always stunning.
Gillian Kearney plays the author in an Arena docudrama. With Anna Chancellor.
As he becomes an octogenarian, a two-part Arena celebration of the life and distinguished career of one of Britain's best-loved public figures. Lord Attenborough's film CV as actor stretches from 'Brighton Rock' to 'Jurassic Park', while as director he has been responsible for 'Oh! What a Lovely War', 'Shadowlands' and 'Gandhi'. He has also been integral to the work of many charities, while his support for minority groups has led to the building of a Centre for Disability and the Arts. Part one examines his early career, and follows Attenborough as he visits his childhood home, travels to Brighton and Hove, and reminisces with brothers John and Sir David.
The conclusion to this two-part profile looks at Attenborough's career as Britain's most distinguished film director, whose biopic 'Gandhi' won eight Oscars in 1982, including Best Director. It also explores his other lives as chancellor of Sussex University and vice-president of Chelsea FC, and examines the political commitment behind films such as 'Cry Freedom' and '10 Rillington Place'.
The huge and enduring popularity of John Lennon's song 'Imagine' is examined in this documentary. Yoko Ono, who is now acknowledged as the co-author of the song, is filmed as she continues her mission to spread Lennon's message using "any means I can". Analysis of the song's power - the lyrics are shown to be appreciated by people with different beliefs - also includes contributions from academics, and psychiatrist Raj Persaud even goes so far as to claim the song fills the void left by the decline in organised religion. There's also space given to detractors, including journalist Robert Elms, who openly detests the track.
In the 50th year since his tragic death, author and broadcaster Nigel Williams examines the work and legend of one of the most famous poets of the 20th century - Dylan Thomas. Born in 1914 in Swansea, he was an unruly child, yet determined to become a poet. Though cited by Bob Dylan, John Lennon and other cultural icons as a profound influence, it was his death that truly made him a legend. But did Thomas really die after drinking 18 straight whiskies? Starting with his death, Arena works back through his life to find the man behind the myth.
Buffalo Bill was instrumental in transforming the Wild West into the caricatured setting portrayed in countless films and novels. Using archive footage, this part-dramatised documentary tells story of a man who was variously prairie scout, buffalo hunter and creator of the Wild West Show.
The acting career of Alec Guinness spanned more than five decades. Although readily identifiable in character, the real man avoided the trappings of fame, preferring a secluded life in the country with his wife Merula. This film profile, the first comprehensive one of its kind, has access to his private journals and letters, and research material from Piers Paul Read, Guinness's biographer.
For 40 years, Luciano Pavarotti has been hailed as one of the greatest tenors of all time, an artist fit to rank alongside the great Caruso. As his career reaches its climax, this documentary, showing as part of the BBC's Summer of Opera, chronicles his background and upbringing, and follows him as he performs to sell-out audiences on three continents, culminating with his valedictory performances of Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
A stunningly-photographed, thought-provoking road trip into the heart of the poor white American South. Singer Jim White takes his 1970 Chevy Impala through a gritty terrain of churches, prisons, truckstops, biker bars and coalmines. Along the way are roadside encounters with present-day musical mavericks the Handsome Family, David Johansen, David Eugene Edwards of 16 Horsepower and old-time banjo player Lee Sexton, and grisly stories from the cult Southern novelist Harry Crews.
The fractured state of Europe after World War II was perfectly captured in Carol Reed's thriller The Third Man. Set in Vienna and with Orson Welles starring unforgettably as the mysterious Harry Lime, it showcased some of Graham Greene's finest screenwriting. With unlimited access to the original movie, Arena explores the filmmaking artistry, moral world and furious infighting behind the film.
A celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Secret Policeman's Ball in aid of Amnesty International. Many of Britain's finest comedians, including John Cleese, Sir Bob Geldof, Alan Bennett, Jennifer Saunders, Stephen Fry, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Ruby Wax, Lenny Henry, Sting, Phil Collins and Rowan Atkinson are reunited in a reflection of the changes in British comedy over the last quarter of a century. The film examines the event, with interviews and recollections of the original stars alongside classic comedy moments.
Marking the 10th anniversary of his death, Arena presents this feature-length profile. It charts his childhood, time at Oxford, bid for parliament and rise as a constant controversial TV dramatist who was loved and loathed in equal measure. As well as clips from 'The Singing Detective', 'Pennies from Heaven' and 'Blue Remembered Hills', Potter's three children and sister talk on screen for the first time about life with him.
How the playwright used popular songs as a powerful dramatic device and to express the depth of his characters in 'Pennies from Heaven' and 'The Singing Detective'.
A portrait of the late playwright, featuring extracts from his work - read by Keith Barron - and interviews with Potter himself.
From Elvis to Norah Jones, Hank Williams's songs have been recorded more often than those of any other country music writer. Dirt-poor and rail-thin, he blazed out of Alabama in the late 1940s with the fervour of a man whose days were numbered. By 25 he was country's first superstar - but four years later he was gone; an icon yet an enigma even to those who thought they knew him best. With family and friends, Arena examines the real Hank Williams.
Cited as being the most beautiful star in the Hollywood firmament during the 1930s and 40s, Hedy Lamarr's talents as an accomplished physicist who also engaged in perfecting radar systems made her no average screen goddess. Her research wasn't made public until a few years before her death in 2000, and here her son Anthony goes in search of the truth behind his mother's memory.
Haunting and ferocious, Francis Bacon's paintings made an indelible impression on art history. His life - as outrageous as his work - is recalled by Arena in the only documentary exclusively permitted by Bacon's estate since his death in 1992. With original music by Brian Eno. Contains footage of bull-fighting.
A story told in flashbacks, Martin Scorsese's documentary intertwines the immediacy of Bob Dylan's controversial 1966 tour of the British Isles with his remarkable personal and musical journey. Drawing from hundreds of hours of unseen footage and rare recordings, in-depth interviews and revealing photographs, the film strikes a remarkable balance - telling the story of one man's journey and at the same time placing that story within the greater canvas of human events. This opening part traces his journey from a rock'n'roll-loving kid in the Midwest to his arrival as a major force in the world of folk music.
Bob Dylan's songs are often inspired by the lives of real people. This film focuses on three - songwriter Woody Guthrie, boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter and comedian Lenny Bruce.
Martin Scorsese delicately balances Dylan's internal world with signpost images from the external as he follows the newsworthy phenomenon of a 23-year-old star laden with expectations - from the old left to become a political activist, and from the media to articulate the concerns of America's youth. But Dylan was already on the move, finding a new musical vocabulary with which to capture the complexity of a seismic cultural shift, injecting a heightened sense of poetry into his writing and committing the crime of adding electricity to his music. By 1966 Dylan's personal world had become a never-ending journey of touring and press conferences - with no direction home.
Surprisingly, Bob Dylan first came to the attention of the British public through his role in a 1963 BBC TV play, 'The Madhouse on Castle Street'. The tape was later wiped and has since become the holy grail of missing Dylan works. Joining the hunt, Arena uncovers rare Dylan tracks and the fascinating story of his first time in London.
An incredible 22.8 million viewers were agog as Diana, Princess of Wales spoke candidly of her marriage into the royal family. Ten years on, the secrecy and tensions behind this seminal interview, and the impact it had on the public and the House of Windsor, are revealed.
Documentary celebrating one of London's great characters, the bus conductor. The film tells the stories of five extraordinary conductors from five decades of London's history, rich with period music and archive.
'Hancock's Half-Hour' and 'Steptoe and Son' - two persuasive reasons for making Ray Galton and Alan Simpson pre-eminent among Britain's postwar comedy writers. In their first full-length profile, the duo, who met as teenagers in 1948 when they were both convalescing from tuberculosis in Milford sanatorium, talk about their distinguished body of work to author and broadcaster Nigel Williams.
Documentary looking at some of the most memorable Arena programmes of the past 30 years. With contributions from Anthony Wall, Alan Yentob, Lesley Megahey and Nigel Williams.
A one-off documentary following six months in the life of Libertines and Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty - the musician who currently throws the British tabloid press into a frenzy like no other due to his drug addiction and relationship with supermodel Kate Moss. With access that included footage with his son and interviews with close friends, the film also features intimate conversations with Doherty himself.
Documentary looking at the phenomenon of sanctity. The Catholic Church is the only Christian persuasion with an official saint-making process, overseen by the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Hinduism and Buddhism have something akin in the idea of the holy man and the guru and the Islamic Sufi tradition not only recognises Christian saints but actively celebrates them.
Stephen Fry narrates a documentary which goes behind the scenes at The Archers and follows the production team as they put together the 15,000th episode of the world's longest-running radio soap. They plot, write and record the thrilling climax to the story that hit the headlines in November 2006 - the love triangle between David Archer, his wife Ruth, and herdsman Sam. With extracts from episodes dating back over its history and interviews with actors, editors, writers and fans, the film delves into the nooks and crannies of The Archers and examines the enduring appeal of this hugely popular agricultural soap.
The Tube is the world's oldest underground railway system, with its own unwritten rules of behaviour and protocol. This Arena begins 150 years ago in a Victorian London of slums and gaslight, and takes the viewer on a thrilling and mysterious adventure through Tube history. Using the voices of passengers and Tube staff, the programme is nothing less than a celebration of a parallel universe - underground.
The year 1977 was a crucial one in the life of reggae superstar Bob Marley. After an attempt on his life in his home that he was lucky to survive, he was forced to move from Jamaica to London. But despite his exile, it was the album that Marley made in London, 'Exodus', his first outside Jamaica, that was to prove the springboard that propelled his music and his message of Rastafari across the planet, and which Time magazine would vote as the album of the century.
Documentary in which Swedish TV producer Marie Nyrerod, broadcaster Melvyn Bragg and French film director Olivier Assayas talk about their meetings with Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman. The film illustrates their impressions with numerous clips from his classic films, including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and Persona.
Documentary in which reclusive film director Ingmar Bergman talks about his career from his home on the desolate and mysterious Baltic island of Faro. He talks about the childhood that shaped him, of how the art of film was often a comfort to him, of love and death and of his worst demons.
Britain's postwar cinema was not well looked upon by many critics. The melodramas, crime films and horror shockers were almost all derided by contemporary critics. Unearthing a wealth of vibrant extracts from forgotten and over-looked movies, this documentary celebrates the British cinema of the 1940s and 50s when films of the era tended to deal with the difficulties and occasional traumas of women and men as they come to terms with the postwar world.
Documentary examining the turbulent life and career of Brian Epstein, who died in 1967 in mysterious circumstances. [Note: This is a 90-minute condensed version of the original two-part, 2.5-hour documentary which Arena first aired on BBC2 in 1998.]
This is the earliest surviving episode in the BBC archives of 'The Archers', episode 302, originally broadcast on the Light Programme on Budget Day, 11th March 1952. Arena repeats the episode in its entirety along with archive film of the period.
In the Limelight, a converted Methodist church, the spirit of rock is alive, along with Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Phil Lynott - in reality John, Keith and Wayne. The posters on the club walls display more than a decade of tribute-band entertainment by the likes of Pink Fraud and Stairway to Zeppelin. Arena reveals the characters offering locals the opportunity to hear their favourite music performed live.
Documentary about musicians who perform in tribute acts. In the Limelight, a converted Methodist church in Crewe, the spirit of rock is alive, along with Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Phil Lynott - in reality John, Keith and Wayne. The posters on the club walls display more than a decade of tribute-band entertainment by Pink Fraud, Stairway to Zeppelin and many more. Arena reveals the characters offering a post-industrial town the opportunity to hear their favourite music performed live.
Documentary about the American folk revival, the milieu from which the nascent Bob Dylan emerged in the early 1960s and whose crucible was the Newport folk festival. In 1963 it provided the perfect platform for Dylan, under the patronage of Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, to be acknowledged as the principal voice of folk music at the age of just 22. Other stars of the time such as Baez, Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, Muddy Waters and Mahalia Jackson are also featured.
Murray Lerner's documentary features Bob Dylan's performances at the Newport folk festival between 1963 and 1965 - the time when Dylan changed the music of the world and changed himself from the fresh-faced cherub singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' to the rock'n'roll shaman who blew pop music apart when he went electric.
Armed with his tickling sticks, stand-up routines and songs, Ken Dodd - now 80 - continues to delight his devoted audiences all over the country with his Happiness show. Arena's exploration of Britain's most enduring variety entertainer reveals his personal analysis of humour, and illustrates why Ken Dodd is acknowledged as one of the finest exponents of his comic craft.
Profile of the Nobel Prize-winning Trinidadian-born British writer VS Naipaul. Filmed in India, Trinidad and his Wiltshire home, Naipaul remains as incisive, forthright and controversial as ever at the age of 75.
Documentary which gets to the heart of that much-maligned and stereotyped character, the London cabbie, using archive footage, music and film, as well as the drivers themselves.
Acclaimed writer Philip Hoare confronts our fascination with one of the most mysterious animals in the ocean, the whale. Travelling in the footsteps of Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick', the great American novel, he visits the whaling ports of New England. New Bedford was once the richest city in the USA, and the island of Nantucket is where the whaling industry began. Hoare searches for the truth behind the story of 'Moby-Dick' and draws an eerie parallel between Captain Ahab's crazed pursuit of the great white whale and today's war on terror. He enters a world haunted by a bloody and violent past, and, in the three mile-deep waters of the Atlantic, has his own encounter with the legendary sperm whale.
Documentary telling the story of the construction of the much-loved blue whale at the Natural History Museum. As the world marched towards war in 1938, a determined group of men at the museum undertook the unprecedented task of building a life-sized model of the largest creature that has ever lived.
Acclaimed author and whale-watcher Philip Hoare takes us into the world of baleen whales, the largest animals ever to have lived. With plates of bristly baleen instead of teeth with which they filter their food, blue whales, fin whales and humpback whales swim the Atlantic. Hoare shows us how to identify whales from their tails or flukes, and explores the strange shared history between humans and whales.
Acclaimed author and whale-watcher Philip Hoare takes us into the world of toothed whales, from the plight of the captive killer whale to the fate of the stranded London whale. In the deep waters off the mysterious islands of the Azores, he encounters common dolphin swimming spectacularly in the clear ocean, and the world's greatest predator, the sperm whale, which once provided man with oil and light.
Acclaimed author and whale-watcher Philip Hoare takes us into the world of Arctic whales. From the whaling port of Whitby, we follow the historical trail of the whale hunters to the frozen seas of the North Pole and the worlds strangest whales - the bowhead, nearly hunted to extinction and now known to be the longest-lived mammal; the white beluga whale, so-called canary of the sea; and the tusked narwhal, whose existence gave rise to the legend of the unicorn.
In a career stretching 50 years, legendary music producer Phil Spector has avoided a substantial interview - until now. Spector transformed rock'n'roll, becoming the first music producer to be a star in his own right. In 2007, he was put on trial after being accused of murdering LA nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson. The trial ended in a hung jury and was reopened in October 2008, once again threatening to eclipse Spector's musical legacy. Taken from an exclusive interview filmed in March 2007, the film dissects Spector's songs from the perspective of his inner world, focusing a spotlight on a unique creative process that is, for the first time, explained by its author.
A host of leading theatrical greats, including Peter Brook, Vanessa Redgrave and John Hurt, pay tribute to the outstanding British actor Paul Scofield. The film features extracts from some of his most famous roles, including Sir Thomas More in the Oscar-winning 'A Man For All Seasons', Salieri in 'Amadeus', and an unforgettable King Lear.
The singer looks back on his long and illustrious career in this Arena film, in conversation with his friend and fellow jazz enthusiast Clint Eastwood. Bennett's musical lineage is revealed in archive jazz performances, musicals and excerpts from his 2005 performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival, while contributors include Martin Scorsese, Mel Brooks and Harry Belafonte. Plus Nick Tosches, inspired biographer of Dean Martin, has a hand in the script.
Documentary exploring the meaning and history of cool through the American music of the 1940s and 50s that became known as cool jazz. Those who wrote and played it cultivated an attitude, a style and a language that came to epitomise the meaning of a word that is now so liberally used. The film tells the story of a movement that started in the bars and clubs of New York and Los Angeles and swept across the world, introducing the key players and setting them in the context of the post-war world.
For the first time on television, Arena tells the whole story of the life and work of TS Eliot, including the happiness he found in the last years of life in his second marriage. His widow Valerie Eliot has opened her personal archive, hitherto unseen, including the private scrapbooks and albums in which Eliot assiduously recorded their life together. Arena brings an unprecedented insight into the mysterious life of one of the 20th century's greatest poets, and re-examines his extraordinary work and its startling immediacy in the world today. Thomas Stearns Eliot materialises as banker, critic, playwright, children's writer, churchwarden, publisher, husband and poet.
Brian Eno first starred as the feather-crested electronic keyboard genius of Roxy Music forty years ago. Since then he has been hailed as a pioneer, with his revolutionary experiments in ambient music and audio visual art and as featured producer on benchmark albums by David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2 and Coldplay. Eno has given Arena unprecedented access to observe him working in his studio and talking with friends and colleagues. The master of reinvention engages with fellow influential minds, including Richard Dawkins, Malcolm Gladwell, David Whittaker and Steve Lillywhite, in a series of conversations on science, art, systems analysis, producing and cybernetics
The Great American Songbook is the heart and soul of America, and Johnny Mercer is at the heart of the Great American Songbook. Produced by Clint Eastwood and directed by Bruce Ricker, this documentary tells the story of one of America's greatest songwriters and examines the enduring legacy of his songs.
Three young men who emerged in the 1950s - Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck - not only captured the public's imagination, but in their own unique way determined the evolution of jazz as we know it today. Of this triumvirate, only Dave Brubeck remains. As he approaches his 90th birthday in December 2010, he is set to play New York's legendary Blue Note jazz club. This Clint Eastwood co-produced documentary tells Brubeck's personal story, tracing his career from his first musical experiences to the overwhelming success of the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the iconic status he and his varied forms of musical expression have achieved.
In June 2009, a group Britain's leading actors gathered for one night only to perform a celebration of the work of Harold Pinter at the National Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson. The team who made the acclaimed Harold Pinter documentaries for BBC's Arena was there to record this unique performance.
Rolf Harris dreams of painting the hilarious tryst between Titania, Queen of the Fairies and the donkey-headed buffoon, Bottom, from Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. So Arena invited supermodels Lily Cole and Lizzy Jagger, and actresses Emer Kenny and Dervla Kirwan, to pose for him as Titania. As he paints them he recalls his 57 years as a singer, musician, artist and regular fixture in the lives of millions.
Mini-documentary telling the story behind Arena's iconic opening title sequence.
In 2015, Arena celebrated its 40th anniversary, making it the longest-running arts documentary strand in the world. To mark the occasion it presents 'Night and Day', a new film made entirely from Arena's own unique archive, a treasure trove that provides a history of the last hundred years. Featuring the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jack Nicholson and a host of other stars, Night and Day evokes the one experience common to everything on the planet - the 24-hour cycle from dawn to dusk to dawn again. A full 24-hour loop was streamed on BBC iPlayer, from which this 90-minuted condensed version was edited.
Profile of record producer Sir George Martin. He began with Nellie the Elephant, 633 Squadron and Peter Sellers, then came The Beatles and then the golden age of rock. Martin recorded the soundtrack of the second half of the 20th century. This rich and intimate portrait follows Sir George at 85 with his wife Judy, son Giles, Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Cilla Black, Michael Palin, Rolf Harris and Bernard Cribbins among the many contributors.
Martin Scorsese's portrait of the late George Harrison. Scorsese traces Harrison's life from his beginnings in Liverpool to becoming a world-famous musician, philanthropist and filmmaker, weaving together interviews with George and his closest friends, photographs and archive footage including live performances - much of it previously unseen. The result is a rare glimpse into the mind of one of the most talented artists of his generation. Part one looks at George's early years in The Beatles - from their first gigs in Hamburg and the beginning of Beatlemania, through to his psychedelic phase and involvement in religion and Indian music. The programme includes contributions from Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, Sir George Martin and Phil Spector.
The second and concluding part of Martin Scorsese's portrait of George Harrison. Part two looks at Harrison's post-Beatles days - as a member of the Travelling Wilburys and a solo artist, as well as looking at his non-musical ventures, including his work as a movie producer and his family life with wife Olivia and son Dhani. Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Olivia and Dhani Harrison, among many others, talk openly about George's many gifts and contradictions and reveal the lives they shared together.
From the magical films of the silent era to the celebrated work of director David Lean and high definition television, this documentary revisits films and interviews from the archive to answer the question of why Dickens's novels have inspired so many hundreds of adaptations on screen.
2011 was the 82nd year in the extraordinary life of arguably the greatest saxophone player in the world - Sonny Rollins. Four decades ago, as a young filmmaker and aspiring musician, Dick Fontaine followed Rollins up onto the Williamsburg Bridge in Manhattan during one of his legendary escapes from the perils of "the jazz life". Today, still resisting stereotype and compromise, and revered by a new generation of young musicians, Rollins continues his single-minded search for meaning in his music and his life.
Featuring a specially-shot introduction with Jamie Cullum, Arena presents a lost treasure - Sonny Rollins performing at Ronnie Scott's in 1974. After nearly 40 years unseen, this unique film shows a spellbinding performance from arguably the greatest saxophone player in the world. Having played alongside Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, Rollins is one of the few surviving jazz greats. This gig captures him after his 1972 comeback when his bands started to sound funkier and to use electric guitar and bass. The band for this1974 set features Japanese guitarist Yoshiaki Masuo and soprano saxophone player Rufus Harley, who doubles on the bagpipes.
The Dreams of William Golding reveals the extraordinary life of one of the greatest English writers of the 20th century. With unprecedented access to the unpublished diaries in which Golding recorded his dreams, the film penetrates deep into his private obsessions and insecurities.
Jonathan Miller is usually described as a "polymath" or "Renaissance man", two labels he personally dislikes. But no-one quite like him has made such an impact on British culture through the medium of television, radio, theatre and opera. He has straddled the great divide between the arts and the sciences, while being a brilliant humorist, a qualified doctor and even a practising artist. With the man himself and a host of distinguished collaborators, including Oliver Sacks, Eric Idle, Kevin Spacey (who owes his first break to Miller) and Penelope Wilton, this Arena profile explores Miller's rich life and examines through amazing television archive - mostly from the BBC - how he makes these connections between the worlds of the imagination and scientific fact.
Back in 2006, on a stormy December night, Amy Winehouse flew to the remote, south-western corner of Ireland to perform for 'Other Voices', an acclaimed Irish TV music series filmed in Dingle every winter. Amy took to the stage of Saint James's church, capacity 85, and wowed the small, packed crowd with a searing, acoustic set of songs from 'Back to Black'. After leaving the stage, a relaxed and happy Amy spoke about her music and influences - Mahalia Jackson, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles and the Shangri-Las to name a few. Arena joined forces with 'Other Voices' and went to Dingle to catch up with some of the people that Amy met on that day, including taxi driver Paddy Kennedy, her bass player Dale Davis and Rev Mairt Hanley of the Other Voices church.
Arena presents the greatest Beatles story never told - the making of 'Magical Mystery Tour', full of fabulous Beatles archive material never shown before anywhere in the world. Songs you will never forget, the film you have never seen and a story that has never been heard. In 1967, in the wake of the extraordinary impact of 'Sgt. Pepper', The Beatles made a film. It was seen by a third of the nation, at 8.35pm on BBC1 on Boxing Day - however, 'Magical Mystery Tour' was greeted with outrage and derision by middle England and the establishment media. What propelled The Beatles to make this surreal, startling and - at the time - utterly misunderstood film? Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour!
Fully restored to the highest technical standard with a remixed soundtrack, Magical Mystery Tour comes out of the shadows and onto the screen. By the end of 1967, The Beatles had achieved a creativity unprecedented in popular music. Their triumphant summer release, 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', was both avant garde and an instant hit. It went straight to No.1 in June and remained there for the rest of the year. They immersed themselves in the fiercely radical art of the new counter culture and decided to make a film on their own terms, not as pop stars but as artists. Roll up, roll Up for the Mystery Tour!
Documentary about the early female movie stars: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe - immortal goddesses made by Hollywood to reign over the silver screen. Hollywood's star system was born with an archetypal bad girl - the vampish Theda Bara - and the good girl - the blazingly sincere Lillian Gish. From the 1920s, vivacious Clara Bow and seductive siren Louise Brooks are most remembered, but none made the impact of Marlene Dietrich, an icon of mystery, or Greta Garbo, with her perfect features and gloomy introspection. From the power of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis to the seductiveness of Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner, Hollywood studios produced their own brand of beautiful, sassy and confident women. But it wasn't to last - the era drew to a close with the supreme fame of Elizabeth Taylor and the tragic death of Marilyn Monroe.
The arresting sight of Sister Wendy Beckett - all teeth and glasses - burst on to our screens in the 1990’s. An instant star, she glided around the world in her habit telling us the story of painting. But she revealed nothing of her own, extraordinary story. Was she in fact a real nun? How did she know so much about art? And how could this consecrated virgin and hermit justify appearing on television and keep her rule of silence?
To mark the centenary of his birth, Arena examines the glamorous life and exceptionally long career of pioneering photographer Norman Parkinson, an eccentric English gentleman who also produced his own brand of sausages. Featuring an abundance of beautiful images and with previously unseen footage, the film explores Parkinson's work with contributions from his models and collaborators, including Iman, Jerry Hall, Carmen Dell'Orefice, creative director of Vogue Grace Coddington and his grandson Jake Parkinson-Smith.
The National Theatre turned 50 in October 2013, and gave the BBC unprecedented access for two Arena documentaries for BBC Four. The films ask why it took until 1963 to create a National Theatre, and Dame Joan Plowright talks frankly to director Adam Low about the appointment of her husband Laurence Olivier, the greatest actor of his generation, as the National's first artistic director. The films uncover the life of the Theatre's early golden period at the Old Vic, the National's first home, under the towering presence of Olivier; the commissioning and construction of the controversial and now iconic Denys Lasdun building on the South Bank; and the turbulent succession of Peter Hall at the end of Olivier's reign.
The National Theatre turned 50 in October 2013, and gave the BBC unprecedented access to make two Arena documentaries for BBC Four. In the second film Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner talk about running the new National Theatre - the biggest job in the British theatre - from its opening by the Queen in 1976 through the strikes which nearly forced it to close in the 1970s, clashes with the government, the controversy of the play 'Romans in Britain', to the fulfilment of Olivier's original dream with the huge success of shows like 'Amadeus', 'Guys and Dolls', 'War Horse' and 'One Man Two Guvnors'.
Reuniting the founding creative team, this documentary tells the vexed and frequently hilarious story of the genesis of the satirical puppet show 'Spitting Image', with exclusive contributions from caricaturists Peter Fluck and Roger Law and TV producer John Lloyd. Tracing its journey to our televisions screens through 12 years of huge audience figures and weekly controversy to its eventual demise, the film asks what 'Spitting Image' got right, where it went wrong, and whether its absence since 1996 has left a hole in the schedules that has yet to be filled by modern broadcasting.
Made specially for schools, this version of Arena examines the history and purpose of the National Theatre as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. A compilation of short films explores not only how the National Theatre came about, but also looks at its relevance today. Short films on Othello and Hamlet, using both rehearsal and performance footage, consider how the National Theatre takes a contemporary approach to Shakespeare's work. The importance of attracting new audiences is explored in a short film about Frankenstein. There is also a film about the staging of This House, a political, historically accurate play that turns a mirror on contemporary politics. James Graham explains how he researched and wrote the play.
The 50 Year Argument is Martin Scorsese's latest film, co-directed with his longtime documentary collaborator David Tedeschi. It charts literary, political and cultural history as per the 'New York Review of Books', America's leading journal of ideas since 1963. The film weaves rare archive material, interviews and writing by icons such as James Baldwin and Gore Vidal into original vérité footage, filmed in the Review's Greenwich Village offices with longtime editor Robert Silvers.
The first major profile of the great British film director Nicolas Roeg, examining his very personal vision of cinema as in such films as 'Don't Look Now', 'Performance', 'Walkabout', and 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'. Roeg reflects on his career - which began as a leading cinematographer - and on the themes that have obsessed him, such as our perception of time and the difficulty of human relationships. With contributions from key collaborators, including Julie Christie, Jenny Agutter and Theresa Russell, and directors he has inspired such as Danny Boyle, Mike Figgis, Bernard Rose, and Ben Wheatley.
In 2015, Arena celebrates its 40th anniversary, which makes it the longest-running arts documentary strand in the world. To mark the occasion, it presents Night and Day, a new film made entirely from Arena's own unique archive. For four decades, Arena has addressed the arts and culture of the world, high and low - from TS Eliot to Amy Winehouse. The Arena archive is a treasure trove that provides a history of the last hundred years. Featuring the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jack Nicholson and a host of other stars, Night and Day evokes the one experience common to everything on the planet - the 24-hour cycle from dawn to dusk to dawn again. Bringing the past into the present - 24 hours in 90 minutes in 40 years of Arena.
Legendary country music singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn is loved by fans from across the world. She has sold over 45 million albums worldwide and won more awards than any other female country music star. With affectionate and irreverent contributions from her extended family of self-confessed rednecks, now in her early eighties and still going strong, Loretta looks back at her long and extraordinary life, from being born a coal miner's daughter in Kentucky to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2013. Featuring Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Jack White, Sissy Spacek and, of course, Loretta herself.
From the silent days of cinema, Shakespeare's plays have often been adapted to the big screen. Film-makers relished his vivid characters and dramatic plots as well as the magic and poetry of his work. For the first time in a single documentary, Arena explores the rich, global history of Shakespeare in the cinema, with a treasure trove of film extracts and archival interviews with their creators.
Based on Jon Savage's book '1966: The Year the Decade Exploded', Arena marks the year pop music and popular culture ripped up the rule book in articulate, instinctive and radical new ways. In popular culture and the mass media, 1966 was a year of restless experimentation and the search for new forms of expression - particularly in pop music. Written by Savage and director Paul Tickell, Arena's film takes viewers back to that moment in a vivid celebration of the music, films and TV that shaped the 1960s.
Documentary telling the tragicomic rollercoaster story of a unique venue. On October 15th 1966, the Roundhouse in north London hosted its first gig - the launch of radical newspaper 'International Times'. The audience included Paul McCartney and Marianne Faithfull, along with 3,000 others trying desperately to get in. The result was a glorious shambles. Since then, virtually every big name in rock and alternative theatre has played there. Today it's as vibrant as ever, continuing to attract big names and full houses and running an array of outreach and youth programmes enabling young people to express themselves in the arts.
Arena spends the summer with super cool self-confessed rock chick, Chrissie Hynde - shopping for clothes in Paris, hanging out with Sandra Bernhard in New York, life in London and a special trip back to her home town of Akron, Ohio. A thoughtful and intimate portrait of a "lone, hungry, irritable wolf," featuring a glorious live performance at one of London's newest venues.
Series telling the stories of the pioneers of American roots music. The first episode takes us back to 1920s America, where the growth of radio had shattered record sales. Record companies travelled rural America and recorded the music of ordinary people for the first time. The poor and oppressed were given a voice as their recordings spread from state to state. Robert Redford narrates this meticulously researched story of a cultural revolution that changed the world.
Series telling the stories of the pioneers of American roots music. This episode takes a look at the stories of those early music pioneers whose names have largely been forgotten. In the small South Carolina town of Cheraw, Elder Burch held lively church gatherings which inspired young musicians - including jazz giant Dizzy Gillespie. The programme takes a look at the gritty songs and musicians that came from the coal mines of Logan County, West Virginia - The Williamson Brothers, Dick Justice and Frank Hutchinson. The hellish conditions of the coal mines inspired them to find a way out, through their music. Finally we head to the home of the blues - the Mississippi Delta, where Charley Patton captured the sounds and struggles of life in the cotton fields.
Series telling the stories of the pioneers of American roots music. The third episode takes a look at the influence of Hawaiian music and, more specifically, the steel guitar, which became a central sound to a range of musical styles. The programme continues with an exploration of Cajun music, the blended music of Louisiana that reflects the winding landscape of the bayous. Finally we hear the story of Mississippi John Hurt - discovered in the 1920s but soon forgotten, he represents the odyssey of American Epic in microcosm.
Series telling the stories of the pioneers of American roots music. The machine that introduced the sounds of America to its people has been lovingly reassembled and now, in the heart of Hollywood, in a perfect recreation of the atmosphere and conditions of America's first ever recording studios, today's music superstars roll the epic on. Elton John, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Alabama Shakes, Jack White, Nas, Ana Gabriel, Beck, Los Lobos and Steve Martin are among the artists who test their skills against the demands of the recording machine that literally made American music. There are no edits, no overdubs and no retakes, and the disc only allows for three minutes of recording time.
Film exploring the relationship of artist Stanley Spencer's two daughters, Unity and Shirin, as they try to understand and reclaim their father and investigate their family's archaeology. The film examines what it is like to be the children of a genius in a family whose private life has been described as "the most bizarre domestic soap opera in the history of British art." At the heart of the film are Stanley's daughters - Unity, 87, and Shirin, who's 91. Their separation, post-Stanley's divorce from fellow artist Hilda, was traumatic. So, too, the fiasco of their father's second marriage to self-confessed lesbian Patricia Preece. This separation took root in the daughters' lives, and only in old age have they come together. The film follows this late-life rapprochement, as Unity boxes up her father's drawings and letters and leaves her London home of 40 years to be with Shirin in Wales.
In 1979, Bob Dylan released 'Slow Train Coming', an album of strictly devotional songs. He declared he had found God in Christianity. For the following two years, accompanied by the finest musicians and gospel singers, he toured with a repertoire solely of songs expressing his new-found faith. A film was made of one of those performances, but it was never released. After 37 years, it is broadcast for the first time - but with a twist. The performance is enhanced by a series of sermons between the songs, all specially written for the film and preached by Oscar-nominated actor Michael Shannon.
Together, they are 342 years old. They are in their seventh decade of cutting-edge, epoch-defining performances on stage and on screen. Funny, smart, sharp, competitive, tearful, hilarious, savage, clever, caustic, cool, gorgeous, poignant, irreverent, iconic, old... and unbelievably young. Special friends, special women and special dames - and this special film is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hang out with them all, at the same table, at the same time, and enjoy sparkling and unguarded conversation spliced with a raft of astonishing archive. Atkins, Dench, Smith, Plowright. The dream dame team. Don't miss it.
A satirical look at the contradictory pressures faced by women today. It examines how television and social media can help us explore identity, at the same time encouraging women to conform to strict beauty ideals. Multimedia artist Rachel Maclean has created a world that is both seductive and dangerous, a place where surveillance, violence and submission are a normalised part of daily life.
A year in the life of abstract artist Sean Scully, one of the world's wealthiest painters. Little known at home but a superstar abroad, Sean flies around the world to open 15 major museum exhibitions - a journey that also reveals his extraordinary life story. Now, at the age of 73, Scully opens up about his unique experiences spanning 55 years in an often hostile art world. He explains how he built a reputation from nothing - he grew up penniless on the streets of Dublin and London and was often homeless as a child, running with street gangs as a teenager - to turn his striped paintings into the huge success they are today.
The film project that artist Peter Beard initiated together with Jackie Kennedy’s sister, Lee Radziwill, about her relatives, the Beales of Grey Gardens. Lost for decades, this extraordinary footage focuses on Beard and his family of friends, who formed a vibrant and profoundly influential creative community in Montauk, Long Island in the 1970s. Featuring Peter Beard, Lee Radziwill, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and Andy Warhol.
Cindy Sherman is one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. She is also notoriously elusive. So, it is a coup for Arena to get this in-depth and revealing audio interview with her. An exuberant weave of art and archive gives us a rare insight into one of the most influential artists alive today.
Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama’s work pushed boundaries that often alienated her from her peers and those in power in the art world. Kusama was an underdog with everything stacked against her: the trauma of growing up in Japan during World War II, life in a dysfunctional family that discouraged her creative ambitions, sexism and racism in the art establishment, and mental illness. Kusama overcame countless odds to bring her radical vision to the world stage and created a legacy of artwork that spans the disciplines of painting, sculpture, performance art, film and literature. Born in 1929, Kusama still creates new work every day. Her 'Infinity Mirror Room' installations, the first of which was created in 1965, continue to attract visitors in record numbers.
When legendary writer and adventurer Bruce Chatwin was dying of Aids, his friend and collaborator Werner Herzog made a final visit to say farewell. As a parting gift, Chatwin gave Herzog the rucksack that had accompanied him around the world. Thirty years later, carrying the rucksack, Herzog sets out on his own journey, inspired by Chatwin’s passion for the nomadic life. Along the way, Herzog uncovers stories of lost tribes, wanderers and dreamers.
Documentary that exposes a darker, less well-known side of film director Ingmar Bergman. Focusing on 1957, a landmark year in which Bergman directed two films and four plays, Jane Magnusson explores not only the director’s filmography but also his, at times, complex and turbulent personal life. Using a wealth of previously unseen archive material, contemporary interviews and a fantastic selection of clips from Ingmar Bergman’s vast body of work, this is a fascinating and unflinching study of one of the giants of world cinema
This feature-length documentary for Arena by acclaimed director Vanessa Engle tells the remarkable story of a charlatan art dealer who swindled over $50 million from the art establishment before going on the run. Michel Cohen, a popular and charming New York art dealer was originally from France. A high school drop-out from a poor background, Cohen was a self-invented man who went on to become a rich and successful art dealer, with homes in Malibu and New York, until he began trading recklessly in the stock market and ran up considerable debts. In an attempt to recoup his losses, he swindled private collectors, auction houses and other art dealers out of more than $50 million. Sixteen years later, filmmaker Vanessa Engle has managed to track him down and persuade him to tell his extraordinary story - a highly entertaining crime caper that is also a rich exploration of greed, motive and morality.
A haunting film about Britain and the nuclear age, from the first bomb tests to our potentially futile preparations for attack during the Cold War. Framed by Britain's mission to build the bomb, A British Guide to the End of the World uses extraordinary unseen archive and exclusive testimonies from people directly involved in our nuclear story, from conscripted soldiers attending the early nuclear tests in the South Pacific to servicemen, volunteers and civil servants involved in the planning of how we might have managed in the event of a nuclear catastrophe.
Contemporary artist Gillian Wearing celebrates the legacy of Victorian novelist George Eliot. Just as Eliot's novel 'Middlemarch' explored the lives of ordinary men and women, this experimental film is made up of a diverse cast of people from different backgrounds.
Born into a farming family in rural Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney became the finest poet of his generation and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 - but his career also coincided with one of the bloodiest political upheavals of the 20th century, the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Six years after Heaney's death in 2013, his wife Marie and his children talk about their family life and read some of the poems he wrote for them, and for the first time his four brothers remember their childhood and the shared experiences that inspired many of his finest poems.
Made across six months in the run-up to publication of 'The Mirror and the Light', the final book in Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning Tudor trilogy on the life of Thomas Cromwell, this film enjoys exclusive and extensive access to one of the world’s greatest living writers, delving into Mantel's past and present as she describes a vivid imagination active from an early age and recounts with candour a tale of growing up with a dark family secret.
In 1974, Ike White recorded an album while serving life for murder. The album became his ticket to freedom. But, just as he was on the cusp of stardom, Ike disappeared.
Narrated entirely in the words of James Baldwin, through both personal appearances and the text of his final unfinished book project, this film touches on the lives and assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers. The film brings powerful clarity to how the images and reality of black lives in America today are fabricated and enforced.
The definitive story of international art sensation Keith Haring, told using previously unheard interviews. Haring blazed a trail through the art scene of 80s New York and revolutionised pop culture.
In 1997, over one million people gathered in Lagos for the funeral of Fela Kuti, Africa’s biggest artist, who gave the world Afrobeat, yet was also a thorn in the side of Nigeria’s military regimes - a revolutionary who fought injustice with his music and a libertine who married 27 wives in one ceremony. When he died from a disease that carried huge stigma in Africa, there was fear his legacy would die with him. Exclusive testimony reveals the multifaceted man behind the maverick performer.
For decades among the foremost names in documentary, Nick Broomfield has often implicated himself in the film-making process with honesty and candour. Yet never has he made a movie more distinctly personal than this complex and moving film about his relationship with his humanist-pacifist father, Maurice Broomfield, a factory worker turned photographer of vivid, often lustrous images of industrial post-WWII England. These images inspired Nick's own film-making career but also spoke to a difference in outlook between Maurice and Nick, whose less romantic, more left-wing political identity stemmed from his Jewish mother's side. My Father and Me is both memoir and tribute, and in its intimate story of one family, takes an expansive, philosophical look at the 20th century itself.
Docudrama portrait of Delia Derbyshire, the electronic sound pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme tune, exploring the idea that this extraordinary composer herself lived outside of time and space. Delia's story is told through two archives: the first, a collection of lost works, 267 reels of quarter-inch magnetic tape recordings of Delia's work found in her attic after her death, the other, her school books, paintings and keepsakes, discovered in her childhood bedroom.
British-Nigerian poet and activist Femi Nylander travels to West Africa to discover the modern-day impact on its people of atrocities that took place over a century ago.
An exploration – from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Grace Jones – of how black artists use the sci-fi genre to examine black history and imagine new, alternative futures.
Painted with My Hair is inspired by the paintings, poetry and letters of Donny Johnson, an exceptionally intelligent and talented US lifer, who has been locked away inside his country’s notoriously punitive prison system since the age of 18. At 58, Donny was released from solitary and had his first parole board hearing in April 2018. But for 24 years of his prison life, he was ‘buried alive’ in an 11-by-seven-foot concrete cell inside the Super Max Security Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison, where creativity and the making of art were crucial to Donny’s survival.
An eye-popping insight into the extraordinary, late-flourishing career of maverick artist, teacher and performer Brian Catling RA, whose unique vision and imagination are celebrated through a shifting narrative of newly restored archive material, exclusive interviews and specially shot footage.
An exploration of the life and work of video art pioneers Steina and Woody Vasulka. The film examines the artistic processes of the pair and their profound effect on the 1960s New York art scene and beyond, through their experiments in the electronic medium of video. Following their story over a 40-year-long journey, the film explores how the video art movement caught the spirit of the times. Their unique cross-disciplinary environment – The Kitchen - helped to launch the careers of many artists who have defined the American avant-garde, including Philip Glass, Jonas Mekas, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Robert Mapplethorpe, Laurie Anderson and Cindy Sherman. The film examines the artistic struggles between the pair and celebrates the revolutionary power of the creative spirit.
In 1970, film-maker Luchino Visconti travelled throughout Europe looking for the perfect boy to personify absolute beauty as the character of Tadzio in his adaptation for the screen of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. In Stockholm, he discovered Björn Andrésen, a shy 15-year-old teenager whom he brought to international fame overnight and, as a consequence, changed the course of the boy’s life. The remainder of Bjorn’s youth was turbulent and intense and took him from the Lido in Venice to London, to a welter of attention at the Cannes Film Festival, and to Japan. Fifty years after the premiere of Death in Venice, Björn takes us on a remarkable journey back through his life in a film composed of personal memories, cinema history, stardust and tragedy – as he makes a late attempt to reconcile with his past and finally get his life back on track.
River takes its audience on a journey through space and time spanning six continents, showing rivers on a scale and from perspectives never seen before.
One hundred years after its publication, this reveals the tawdry, shocking, poetic, uplifting and gloriously kaleidoscopic humanity of James Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses.
2022 marks the centenary of one of the defining poems of the 20th century, 'The Waste Land'. TS Eliot's groundbreaking work first exploded into the world on 15 October 1922 and has continued to resonate with successive generations. But in 2020, there were dramatic new revelations that demonstrated how, behind Eliot's mask, there was a much more personal story to be found within 'The Waste Land' – which can now at last be explored
A visually arresting feature documentary, set in the present but which tells the rich story of Haiti’s past, that follows a number of carnival performers in the lead-up to, and during, the annual Jacmel Mardi Gras. This is not the carnival of sequins and sound systems found elsewhere in the Caribbean, but a celebration of rebellion and resistance resonating through the centuries.
The life and career of the pioneering musician, a black artist who grew up in the segregated American South and broke down barriers and took 1950s America by storm. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones supported him and took inspiration from his musicianship and stagecraft, and he went on to influence artists as diverse as David Bowie, Elton John, Michael Jackson and Prince.
A look at the fashion icon that was Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most flamboyant and recognisable figures in fashion - and one of the most mysterious. His influence was immeasurable, from the Chanel catwalk to the high street - but how many people ever really knew the real Karl Lagerfeld? Weaving investigations in the present with Lagerfeld’s biography – illustrated by illuminating and much unseen archive footage – this film shows his profound and lasting effect on those around him, including his beloved cat Choupette.
A look at the relationships and rivalries within The Rolling Stones in their formative years, as well as the creative musical genius of Brian Jones, key to the success of the band.
A profile of artist and activist Nan Goldin, using slideshows, interviews, photography and rare footage to tell the story of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid overdose crisis.
Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel transformed women's fashion, a truly revolutionary designer whose influence is still evident today. Her designs called into question the role of women, sex and power, and ignited a whole new way of dressing. Yet her life remains shrouded in mystery. This feature-length Arena documentary weaves together the story of Chanel’s creations - from the little black dress to the tweed suit and the iconic chain handbag - over the contours of her colourful life.
Poet, rapper, playwright and recording artist Kae Tempest is one of the most viscerally exciting artists working in Britain today. They are the youngest ever recipient of the prestigious Ted Hughes prize and have been nominated for both Brit and Mercury music prizes. This unique Arena film, shot over several years, gains a rare insight into their life and creative process.
A celebration of the unique life and talent of Caroline Aherne, featuring unseen photographs and contributions from a cast of her lifelong friends, including Steve Coogan, Jon Thompson, Craig Cash and producer Andy Harries. Aherne’s pioneering representation of working class and family life in The Royle Family won her two Baftas and changed comedy writing forever, while her alter ego Mrs Merton’s question to stage performer Debbie McGee - 'So what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?' - has been voted the greatest comedy put-down in British TV history.
The story of Noel Coward, the most prolific writer, director and entertainer of the 20th century, told in his own words.
