A profile of Barbara Hepworth, the world's first internationally celebrated woman sculptor. Born in Yorkshire in 1903, she had to fight to establish herself in a world dominated by men, and could still wield a chisel in her seventies.
Alan Yentob tells the inspirational story of Carlos Acosta, the gifted dancer who made the leap from the backstreets of Havana to become the first black principal dancer at the Royal Ballet. The film follows Acosta over six months as he embarks on the biggest challenge of his life - producing and choreographing his own show based on his upbringing in Cuba.
A look at the process of remaking hit British sitcoms into mediocre US sitcoms.
A celebration of the phenomena of the animated feature film and whether there is a future for traditional animated techniques in the age of computer and digital imaging.
The career of the reclusive artist Edward Hopper is covered in this beautifully-filmed episode. Includes interviews with Hopper's biographer, his friends and admirers such as Sam Mendes and Jonathan Miller, along with archive clips of the artist and his indomitable wife, Jo.
Arts series presented by Alan Yentob. An intimate look at one of Britain's greatest painters, Lucian Freud, as told by the people who knew him best - the sitters seen in his extraordinary portraits.
On the 40th anniversary of his most famous record, A Love Supreme, Alan Yentob examines the legend of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane whose obsession with music is matched by an equally obsessive following all over the world.
With Vernon God Little , his 2003 Booker Prize-winning debut novel, writer and self-confessed conman DBC Pierre, aka Australian-born Peter Finlay , became the most controversial character to win the award. Alan Yentob joins the enigmatic novelist on a road trip across Texas and Mexico, exploring locations central to the book and the house where Pierre grew up, in a bid to find out the truth behind the bizarre stories of serial mendacity and drug addiction.
Is modern children's fiction a dangerously influential portrayal of a degraded culture or an instruction manual for life in the 21st century? Along with contributions from authors including Salman Rushdie , Alan Yentob analyses the aptness of material that covers sex, drug taking, racial murder and the death of God.
Marking the publication of Simon Gray's latest book, The Smoking Diaries, Alan Yentob draws a rare insight into one of Britain's foremost playwrights, author of many West End hits, but best know for his work with Harold Pinter and as writer of the notorious Cell Mates. This intimate tribute gives a darkly entertaining account of his childhood experiences and very personal views on addictions to smoking and alcohol.
Renowned American playwright Arthur Miller discusses his life and work with Alan Yentob.
A profile of the US contemporary artist whose sound installation is currently transforming the vast space of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. The normally publicity-shy Nauman talks in detail about his oeuvre, while fellow artists Damien Hirst , Douglas Gordon and Tony Oursler offer their opinions of his work. Presented by Alan Yentob.
The brooding, raw and groundbreaking performances Marlon Brando gave in such films as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and The Godfather gave the actor an iconic status, despite his lifelong disdain for acting. Alan Yentob talks to Martin Scorsese , Francis Ford Coppola and Bernardo Bertolucci - as well as the Adler family of New York, with whom he was long associated - to piece together a portrait of a highly complex man.
Will the staging of Wagner's Ring Cycle provide a fitting climax to Antonio Pappano 's critically acclaimed first year as music director of the Royal Opera House? Alan Yentob follows the Italian conductor as he works on the opera and his many other projects, and charts Pappano's distinguished musical career.
It begins with the extraordinary story of the technology that made it all possible: steel cage construction and the lift. Elisha Otis’s demonstration of his safety lift was the star turn at the New York Worlds Fair in 1854, run by the great American showman, PT Barnum. This streak of showmanship and element of popular entertainment runs through the New York skyscraper’s golden age.
The skyscraper goes global, as Alan Yentob continues to chart the history of tall buildings, examining the cultural legacy of the tower and the rise of a new super class of sky-high buildings.
There are now more tall buildings in the Far East than in North America – the traditional home of the skyscraper – while China, the world’s largest country and fastest-growing economy, is building cities at a rate unprecedented in the history of mankind.
Alan Yentob explores the magical and mysterious world of the best-selling children's author Roald Dahl to discover what made him such a great storyteller. This intimate portrait has exclusive access to his personal archive and features interviews with members of his immediate family, including his widow, Felicity, his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal, his children Tessa, Theo and Ophelia, and his granddaughter, the model Sophie Dahl
In July 2011, 19-year-old pianist Benjamin Grosvenor made his debut at the Proms to great acclaim, wowing both audiences and critics with his performance of Liszt's Piano Concerto No 2 in A Major. The youngest ever soloist to perform in the First Night of the Proms, he returns to the Royal Albert Hall on August 6 to take on Britten's Piano Concerto. In 2005, Imagine discovered this musical prodigy in the making. Alan Yentob talked to the 12-year-old Grosvenor about his success the previous year, in the piano section of The Young Musician of The Year Competition. This is another chance to see that documentary. Imagine: Being a Concert Pianist gets under the lid of this extreme form of musicianship. Celebrated pianists, including Yevgeny Kissin, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Chinese wunderkind Lang Lang, talk intimately about their lives, their work and their motivation. The film gives a frank and personal perspective on a profession for which the only real qualification is genius, richly illustrated with specially recorded rehearsal and performance.
Alan Yentob presents a portrait of Israel's most celebrated writer and political commentator, Amos Oz, whose childhood memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness gives an eyewitness account of the birth of Israel. Yentob takes Oz back to the settings of the childhood in Israel and reveals a fascinating portrait of the early years of Israel, the tragic story of Oz's family and his widely respected views on the conflict with Palestine.
Critics say the British sitcom is dead by virtue of its middle-aged, middle-class "appeal". Why then are our finest comic writers and performers making prize-winning shows? As he talks to Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Armando Iannucci, Graham Linehan and Chris Langham - and makes a surprise entrance on My Family - Alan Yentob finds the genre in rude health.
Self-confessed chair addict Alan Yentob encounters a vast range of his objects of desire in this whimsical journey through the changing styles of the modern chair - a furniture item intimately and inextricably intertwined with the physicality of our everyday lives, whose look has been transformed over the centuries by designers such as Le Corbusier and Terence Conran , from hand-crafted descendants of royal thrones to wipe-clean plastic garden chairs.
Famous for his cello and violin concertos, it's not widely known that Edward Elgar also wrote sketches for a piano concerto. This often hilarious film shows how the embryonic piece - a performance of which follows - came to life.
Tragedy and history loom large in the background of writer and political commentator Amos Oz. His memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness is an eyewitness account of the birth of Israel. Alan Yentob takes Oz back to his childhood for a fascinating portrait of the state's early years - and his views on the Palestine conflict.
As a child, portrait painter Chuck Close was written off as a failure because his dyslexia remained undiagnosed. Then, in 1988, he was partially paralysed by a stroke. Undaunted by these hardships, he continued to paint and his latest work is on display at London's National Portrait Gallery. Alan Yentob meets the American artist in New York.
Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra believe so - but can they convince 250 underprivileged teenagers from suburban Berlin? The aim is to stage Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, and Royston Maldoom is the British choreographer who must persuade the reluctant youngsters to get their steps up to performance standard. Alan Yentob presents.
Could New Orleans's days as a great musical powerhouse be coming to an end? As Alan Yentob traces the city's vast musical heritage, he meets musicians who have lived and worked there all their lives, and are determined to return despite the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina last year. With contributions from Paul McCartney , Dr John, Jools Holland and Elvis Costello.
The joy of some collectors at owning what they believed to be genuine Andy Warhol works has been ruined by the artist's authentication board's declaring them fake. They speak of their disillusionment here as Alan Yentob visits New York to investigate acquiring art by the "Pope of Pop", while Warhol collaborators reveal his unusual working methods.
Alan Yentob presents a documentary about short, stocky Welsh actor Wayne Cater as he prepares to play Hamlet. Yentob follows Wayne and three other Hamlets as they rehearse for the role of their life, getting advice and support from actors who have previously played the Dane, such as Ralph Fiennes, Derek Jacobi, David Warner, Jonathan Pryce and Simon Russell Beale.
Alan Yentob presents a documentary telling the story of Yusuf Islam - the singer/songwriter who captured the hearts of a generation in the 60s and 70s with songs like Moon Shadow and Morning Has Broken under the name Cat Stevens. Yusuf explains that his hit songs were written to help him out of a spiritual depression, and that he shared with his listeners a quest for a deeper meaning to life. After a decade of flirting with religion he finally converted - after a near drowning incident off Malibu beach he promised to serve God if he was saved; he was and it was to the Koran he turned. Now one of Britain's foremost representatives of Islam, founder of a Muslim School paid for by his royalties, he has finally returned to the music he abandoned 23 years ago.
Alan Yentob presents a documentary profiling Thomas Heatherwick, most famous as the creator of the enormous sculpture The B of the Bang in Manchester. Heatherwick has established himself as one of the most exciting and innovative figures in British design. Described as a new Leonardo, he has turned his talents to everything from artworks and architecture to extraordinary feats of engineering and an ingenious handbag.
Alan Yentob presents a profile of painter Howard Hodgkin. Despite being one of Britain's most successful living artists, he doesn't like talking about his work and no one has seen him paint for over 20 years. With a major retrospective coming up at Tate Britain, he travels with Yentob to India, which has been described as his emotional lifeline. They seek out some of the great monuments of the Mogul empire, visit Hodgkin's huge mural in New Delhi, and go in search of the perfect Bombay sunset.
To coincide with the publication of upcoming sequel Peter Pan in Scarlet, Alan Yentob presents a documentary which explores why JM Barrie's character has such lasting power and mythical status and looks at the secret behind its eternal appeal. He goes in search of the real JM Barrie, visiting the remote Scottish island of Eilean Shona, his home town of Kirriemuir near Dundee, Black Lake in Surrey where Barrie played, and Kensington Gardens, where Peter Pan was born.
Imagine presents a portrait of the artist regarded by many as the greatest painter of all time. Court painter to Philip IV of Spain, Velazquez is the artist other painters most admire, and his masterpiece, Las Meninas is considered the high point of European Art - yet he virtually abandoned his art for material gain and social ambition. Alan Yentob travels to Seville, Madrid, Rome and New York to meet artists and critics who add more to the story of Velasquez's genius
Alan Yentob presents a documentary about Jeremy Weller's attempts to get his play The Foolish Young Man ready in time for the reopening of Camden's Roundhouse theatre. His main problem is that he has only one actor, David Harewood, on his team. The rest of the cast is made up of young people from the streets, drop-in centres, those excluded from school and kicked out of home.
Something interesting seems to be happening in American cinema, with a new group of maverick American directors led by Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino having emerged to revitalise Hollywood. They include directors such as Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne and David O Russell. Alan Yentob meets them and asks how they managed to radicalise American cinema with Hollywood backing.
Documentary which tells the stories of five people who spend their days guarding great treasures in museums and galleries. Some have tragic personal stories, and all began not caring or knowing much about art, but they feel that spending their days surrounded by the world's greatest masterpieces has been their salvation.
Hans Holbein, long recognised as the father of British painting, is an artistic enigma, wrapped up in historical myth and nationalist hyperbole. Holbein, so the story goes, was a child prodigy, who famously branded Henry VIII, painted his courtiers and then his brides and spied for his ministers, before ending his life in debt. But how much of this is true? In this film, Alan Yentob goes in search of the real Hans Holbein. It's a detective trail that takes him to Basel in Switzerland, where Holbein spent his early years, as well as across the length and breadth of Britain. Alan employs the tools and science of the detective, beginning with a magnifying glass and ending in the reconstruction of the scene of Holbein's greatest exploit. Holbein's most famous painting The Ambassadors is recreated as a contemporary photograph by the renowned White Cube photographer Tom Hunter.
Alan Yentob is granted an audience in the dressing rooms of some of the great operatic divas of today, from Angela Gheorghiu and Renee Fleming to Kiri Te Kanawa and Frederica von Stade. He explores what it takes to survive and succeed in this ultra-competitive world, for both stars and newcomers, and asks if these singers still need to be divas - in the modern sense of the word - to get to the top in this business.
Alan Yentob journeys into the world wide web to find out how it began, who's out there, and where it's taking us. He meets Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the web, and explores how Lee's creativity has fuelled the creativity of millions of others - such as Dandy blogger Dickon Edwards and sex blogger Abby Lee, the hardcore members of the Arctic Monkeys message board, masked animator David Firth, and Ewan Macdonald, the young Scot who wrote the millionth entry in Wikipedia.
Exploring the development of television and the BBC on the 70th anniversary of the first highly defined TV broadcast from Alexandra Palace. Alan Yentob follows pioneering engineers and on-screen talent back to the studios, where they reminisce about the early days, including the famous potter's wheel 'interlude' shown when the cameras failed. Alan Yentob celebrates the 70th anniversary of the world's first scheduled high-definition television service, by the BBC from Alexandra Palace in 1936. He take some of the pioneering engineers and on-screen talent back to the studios to see what they can remember of TV's early days - from Picture Page to Muffin the Mule to the first news programme and the potter's wheel 'interlude'. Plus, some amazing archive footage and the Queen's 1953 coronation, TV's big breakthrough to mass acceptance.
Arts series presented by Alan Yentob. Over the last 40 years, British artists Gilbert and George have fascinated, outraged, delighted and confounded the art establishment. Since their first appearance as 'living sculptures' in the late 1960s, their work has persistently taken a provocative, often uncomfortable look at both their own lives and the life of the city that continues to inspire their art - London. Alan is invited into their East End home, where the couple have lived together for four decades, for an intimate look at what is the most unique, productive and long-standing partnership in contemporary art.
Alan Yentob tells the story of the struggle by 90-year-old Maria Altmann to recover five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis in 1938 and which have hung in the Austrian National Gallery ever since. It chronicles Maria's early life in glittering fin-de-siecle Vienna, her escape from Nazi terror and her fight to recover the Klimts against all the odds, which takes her to the US Supreme Court and pits her not just against Austria, but also against the Bush administration.
Alan Yentob tells the story of Scott Walker, who was one of the all time great voices of pop, and then disappeared. This is the story of one of the enigmas of modern music, who has influenced a huge range of artists from David Bowie to Lulu to Radiohead, told through his ever-changing music. Scott Walker has crooned ballads to swooning orchestral accompaniment, and created percussion by thwacking a side of pork. For decades he was a recluse with a reputation for eccentricity, but the music was evolving all the time. Rare exclusive interview material of Walker at work on his latest album is the climax to a story told by a gallery of musicians and producers touched by his music: Brian Eno, Marc Almond, Johnny Marr, Alison Goldfrapp, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker, and Ute Lemper among them.
Surrealism has been described as one of the most successful revolutions of the 20th century, a revolution in perception that broke down the barriers between the world of dreams and the world of everyday reality. Its influence can be felt everywhere, in design and architecture, fashion and furniture, cinema and advertising. Even so, Surrealism is disdained by most contemporary artists, its ambitions regarded as overblown, its ideas out-moded and its greatest artists, like Magritte and Dali, dismissed as poster-art for teenage bedrooms. In this programme Alan Yentob takes a personal and dream-like journey, from Sigmund Freud's couch, where the story of Surrealism begins, to the current Surreal Things exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Exploring the history of Surrealism and its legacies, he makes the case for the Surrealist conviction that the world is 'an immense museum of strangeness'. Along the way he encounters people with direct links to the original Surrealist movement or whose work has been marked by its example. With contributions from singer and surrealist poet George Melly, designer Philippe Starck, film maker Michel Gondry and artist Grayson Perry.
Alan Yentob in a highly thoughtful, insightful and rare interview with Simon Amstell, about the pressures of hosting the popular pop music quiz, Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Yentob also takes a look back at the most talked-about moments from the series, including Amy Winehouse spitting, Preston walking and Lily Allen controversially wearing funny glasses.
At 15 years old, Henry Perkins is one of the most promising young ballet dancers in Britain. Last year he gave up life with his family in Hampshire to begin four years training at the The Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow, widely regarded as the best ballet school in the world. Only the second ever British boy to win a place at the academy in its illustrious 230 year history, Alan Yentob presents a gritty and challenging portrait of Henry's life during his first gruelling year at the school, 1500 miles from home.
Alan Yentob presents a profile of Bollywood A-lister Amitabh Bachchan, the biggest actor India has ever produced and a man with global appeal, whose Hindi films reach huge audiences from Australia to the Middle East, from Africa to Britain. Now he's no longer just a successful actor, he's a demi-god and everyone wants a piece of him.
Helvetica is a shorter version of the feature-length film by Gary Hustwit about the most popular typeface in the world, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year. Why Helvetica? Because it is everywhere. Millions of people use it and read it everyday, on public transport, newspapers, shop fronts and, of course, their computers. The film tells the story of how a typeface drawn by a little-known Swiss designer in 1957 became one of the most popular ways for us to communicate. It has been described as the Kate Moss of fonts - ultrathin, misunderstood and plastered all over the tabloids. The Museum of Modern Art in New York even staged an exhibition devoted to it.
Alan Yentob presents a profile of the provocative French-born American artist Louise Bourgeois, who was still producing cutting edge work at the age of 95. Memories of a disturbed childhood have produced fantastic and disturbing sculptures of giant spiders and poured-plastic body parts. As a girl she restored old tapestries, worked with Leger and knew surrealists like Breton and Duchamp. In New York she emerged as an artist in her own right, bringing dread, desire, sex and the psyche into her work.
Armed with 5,000 pounds of his own money to spend on art, Alan Yentob immerses himself in the frenzied fun of Frieze Art Fair week in London's Regent Park. He meets artists, dealers and collectors to investigate what is driving the current creative and sales boom in contemporary art, and also to find out what hot tips they can offer a novice collector.
Starting with a look at the latest self-help phenomenon, The Secret, Alan Yentob sets out to learn from the big hitters in the self-help world: Susan Jeffers, author of the bestselling Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway; David Burns, whose book Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy has sold over 5 million copies, and Anthony Robbins, who fills stadiums with his can-do performances. “Most people see things worse than they are so they never have to try,” says Robbins. “People say to me ‘I’m sceptical’ and I say no you’re not, you’re gutless.” Robbins has been the personal coach to a raft of celebrities including Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton. At last year’s Wimbledon, Serena Williams, another Robbins follower, was spotted with her own self-help notes: “My good thoughts are powerful. Any negative thoughts are weak. You are number one. You are the best. You will win Wimbledon.” “But let’s face it, none of us are going to win Wimbledon,” says Yentob. “And anyway, we keep being told it’s not all about winning, so why do we need these books?” “I think we all have pain,” says Amy Jenkins, writer of This Life and a self-help fan. David Burns, a pioneer of cognitive therapy, challenges pain head on with the idea that “your thoughts create your feelings, so your thoughts can change your feelings.” This is not just a fad; his self-help book on cognitive therapy is now prescribed by doctors around the world instead of antidepressants. Yentob’s optimism is bought crushingly down to earth by the Freudian psychoanalyst Adam Philips. “Freud said the purpose of psychoanalysis is to turn neurotic misery into everyday unhappiness, and what he meant by that is that people aren’t going to be transformed magically.” In search of the roots of the self-help genre, Yentob discovers Self Help by Samuel Smiles, which was published in 1859, the same year as Darwin’s The Origin of Species. “Guess which one was the bestseller
Alan Yentob traces the career of Richard Rogers, uncovering the influences that have produced some of the greatest landmarks in modern architecture. Tracking Rogers' life, from his birth in Florence, we re-visit some of his most famous buildings from the Pompidou Centre in Paris and Lloyds of London to the earlier and more personal work that defined his style.
Marc Newson is an industrial designer whose imagination knows no bounds. He has created everything from the iconic Lockheed Lounge chair - the most expensive piece of furniture by a living designer ever to sell at auction - to coat hangers, dish drainers and vibrators. His latest and most audacious project is a suborbital jet that just might be the future of long-distance travel. In this profile, Marc Newson talks to Alan Yentob about his inspirations, thought processes and designs. He remembers when, aged just 23, he sculpted the Lockheed Lounge from a piece of foam in a frenzied few days. “It felt like a monumental moment.” He couldn’t get rid of the Lounges back then. Today, with just thirteen in existence, they are one of the most sought-after collectors’ items in the world. The programme follows Newson to Bodylines, an extraordinary Aston Martin panel beating workshop outside Milton Keynes, where men who usually work on vintage cars create his limited-edition furniture pieces - and one craftsman gives him a piece of his mind about the flaws in his Black Hole table. In the marble quarries of Carrara in Italy, we see the processes behind his exquisite sculptures. Newson’s designs push marble into contemporary shapes, with each piece carved from one individual block. The programme also takes in the launch of Newson’s Space Plane, which, he hopes, will one day do exactly what it says on the tin.
Another chance to see a rare film made with writer Doris Lessing, five years before her recent death at the age of 94. Alan Yentob meets this acerbic, forthright yet warm woman, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature. Brought up in southern Africa, she took London by storm in 1950. She has believed in 'ban the bomb' and telepathy, been a Communist and a 'Free Woman', written realist novels and science fiction. She is perhaps most remembered for her raw and revealing Golden Notebook, which inspired and influenced a generation of women.
Alan Yentob investigates the extraordinary impact music can have on the human brain. He travels to meet Tony Cicoria, who was struck by lightning and suddenly developed an insatiable passion for the piano, and Matt Giordano, who can alleviate his severe Tourette's syndrome by drumming - both remarkable case studies from neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks's latest book, Musicophilia. Alan even has his own brain scanned - with surprising results.
Internationally-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, who has captured famous faces from Demi Moore through Yoko Ono to the Queen, is the subject of this intimate profile by her sister Barbara. Always controversial, the last 12 months have seen the American at the heart of two scandals - 15-year-old Disney star Miley Cyrus pictured in just a sheet, and the Queen in the infamous storming-out episode.
The musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic set off on a concert tour of Asia and, with remarkable frankness, talk about the hopes and regrets that come from a life on the road. The players and their conductor, Sir Simon Rattle, offer their reflections on friendship and competition, the pressure to perform, the loss of technique with getting older, and that overwhelming sensation that keeps them coming back for more.
Alan Yentob visits Japan to find out more about the world of internationally acclaimed author Haruki Murakami. He travels to Tokyo and Kobe, delving into the social and political background of Murakami's literature. He also meets some of the reclusive writer's fans, critics, translators and even a talking cat, before Murakami gives a rare off-camera interview, explaining why privacy is essential to his work.
Alan Yentob travels to Los Angeles to meet acclaimed director, screenwriter and producer Werner Herzog. The pair discuss Herzog's career to date, including films such as Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo - one of several projects that saw him working with eccentric actor Klaus Kinski. They also talk about what the future might hold for a man known to be uncompromising in his search for the truth.
Alan Yentob is joined by a distinguished list of contributors including Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Alan Rickman and Ralph Fiennes to pay tribute to Academy Award-winning director Anthony Minghella, director of films including The English Patient and Cold Mountain, who died suddenly in March aged 54. A Special tribute program added to the series 13 run.
Arts documentary series. Following British-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan as he takes the risk of his life. He has just months to teach Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche to dance. She must also be confident enough to perform with her teacher in front of the National Theatre's discerning audience. Akram, for his part, will attempt to learn to act. Interviewees include Juliette Binoche, Sylvie Guillem, Joseph Fiennes, Antony Gormley, Nitin Sawhney and Anish Kapoor.
What makes a great love story? Imagine looks at the great books, films and pop songs that have tackled the thorny issue of love, pain and desire. Lancelot and Guinevere, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Lady Chatterley's Lover, 24 hours from Tulsa, Casablanca, Brief Encounter and Lolita are all great love stories. But what makes them special? 'A great love story has to have a fly in the ointment', according to Pulitzer prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides. Other contributors include best selling authors Sarah Waters, Helen Fielding, Jane Austen's biographer Claire Tomalin, Burt Bacharach's lyricist Hal David, screen doctor Robert McKee, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and literature professor John Sutherland.
Alan Yentob explores the life and work of the chart topping rapper and multi-millionaire businessman Jay-Z. With an exclusive insight into his world Yentob accompanies Jay-Z for six months, including the build up to his triumphant headline gig at Glastonbury and backstage access to his concerts in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York. Jay-Z also talks in depth about his other passions, which include modern art, architecture, politics, sports and fashion.
Alan Yentob explores the work of artists whose primary medium is light. On his trip down the light fantastic, Alan encounters material from outer space, solid light sculptures, paintings made by the sun and an extinct volcano that has been turned into a temple of perception by the legendary American artist James Turrell.
The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, which caused a sensation at last year's Proms, is the product of an extraordinary music education system that has been running for more than 30 years. Children as young as two get intensive music lessons designed to steer them away from the dangers of the street. With Scotland now trying its own version of the scheme, Alan Yentob investigates the phenomenon and meets its most successful graduate, 27-year-old conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who next year becomes music director of the LA Philharmonic.
Sculptor and giant of modern art Richard Serra discusses his extraordinary life and work. A creator of enormous, immediately identifiable steel sculptures that both terrify and mesmerise, Serra believes that each viewer creates the sculpture for themselves by being within it. To this end, a Japanese family are reminded of the Temples of Kyoto, a Londoner finds sanctuary in the Serra near Liverpool Street station, and most movingly, a Holocaust survivor sees one piece as a wall separating the living from the dead. Contributors include Chuck Close, Philip Glass and Glenn D Lowry, Director of MoMA.
Rock doc Heavy Metal in Baghdad follows the struggles of Iraq's one and only metal band, Acrassicauda, and tells its own story about the horror of daily life in the war-torn city. Following the documentary's limited cinema release Imagine presents an edited down version of that film, then picks up the story as the four band members have fled Iraq and are attempting to re-form their band in the West. Lost in a nightmare of bureaucracy, the four young musicians hold onto their dream, which is simply to play their music.
Alan Yentob embarks on a three-part personal journey to discover how the guitar became the world's favourite musical instrument. Beginning with the rise of the acoustic guitar, the series takes him from an ancient Middle Eastern ancestor of the lute, to the iconic guitars draped round the necks of Bill Hailey and Elvis Presley and beyond.
As the guitar turns electric, music is changed for ever. The world's first electric guitar had nothing to do with jazz or blues, but Hawaiian-style music and was known as the 'frying pan'. Yentob continues his investigation from the blues of the Mississippi to the guitar wars of the 1950s, when the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul were battling for supremacy.
In the final programme of the series the guitarists talk about how they find their own sound, and how the guitar has changed their lives. Since its invention, the electric guitar has unleashed a seemingly inexhaustible sonic invention among guitarists.
As part of an evening of programmes celebrating the life and work of the playwright and diarist, Simon Gray, who died in 2008. This updated Imagine is a rare insight into one of Britain's foremost playwrights, author of many West End hits, but best known for his work with Harold Pinter, and as the writer of the notorious Cell Mates. This intimate film gives a darkly entertaining account of his childhood experiences and very personal views on addictions to smoking, alcohol and the traumas of modern day life for a writer. By way of tribute, the conclusion to the film is provided by a number of friends, well known actors and writers, reading from Simon Gray's last volume of diaries,
At an age when most people are content to take it easy, one group of pensioners have taken up contemporary dance for the first time. Alan Yentob follows them on their journey as they prepare to perform at Sadler's Wells, one of the top dance venues in the world. Save the Last Dance for Me challenges people's preconceptions about the physical and creative abilities of the over sixties.
Filmed over three years with unprecedented access, this documentary captures the return from California of England's favourite living artist. As Hockney approaches the age of 70, he re-invents his painting from scratch, working through the seasons and in all weathers out in the Yorkshire countryside, ending up with the largest picture ever made outdoors. It is at once the story of an unusual homecoming and also an intimate portrait of what inspires Hockney as his time runs out.
Alan Yentob explores the rapid rise of one of modern music's most mercurial talents, Rufus Wainwright. Wainwright talks candidly about his background, his family of musical luminaries - father Loudon Wainwright III, mother Kate McGarrigle and sister Martha Wainwright - his troubled personal history with drugs and the tensions that have informed his music. The film also follows his journey into the classical world as he creates his very first opera, Prima Donna.
William Eggleston is one of the most influential and original photographers alive today. A Mississippi aristocrat with a fondness for guns, drink and women, he dragged colour into the world of art photography. Reviled in the 1970s, he is now considered a legend whose unique visual style has influenced generations of photographers and filmmakers. Imagine shows the normally shy and elusive Eggleston at work - taking photographs on the road, in and around his home town of Memphis.
The Great Depression and the Second World War changed what was expected of the arts; Alan Yentob asks if this recession could see the next transformation. Artist Chuck Close talks about the New Deal in America in the 30s, when the government paid artists to work, while actor Simon Callow tells how thrilled actors were to feel their work mattered. And dealer Kenny Schachter explains how, in a perverse way, he feels this recession is the best thing that has happened to the art world in ten years.
In times like these, what is art worth? And what is art for? The big moment for publicly funded art in Britain was the Second World War. "Something absolutely remarkable happened during the war", says actor Simon Callow. "The theatre suddenly was right at the heart of society." After the war, the idea of "art for all" led to the founding of the Arts Council - "very much a response to the distress, the fear, the uncertainty of war." Alan Yentob asks if culture can play that role again today.
Anish Kapoor is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation, known for works of staggering complexity and scale. He now faces his biggest challenge yet as the first living British artist to have a solo show occupying the entire Royal Academy gallery. His response is a series of audacious installations. With exclusive access to his studio, Alan Yentob follows him through a period of intense productivity. Kapoor talks candidly about his childhood in India, his early years as an artist and his creative process. An insight into one of Britain's most accomplished and popular sculptors.
Alan Yentob gains exclusive access and insight into the creative world of Dame Shirley Bassey. After a triumphant Glastonbury appearance and a major illness, at 72, Dame Shirley, one of our greatest singers, tentatively re-enters the ring to confront her life in song. Some of the best contemporary songwriters, including Gary Barlow, the Pet Shop Boys, Manic Street Preachers, Rufus Wainwright, Richard Hawley and KT Tunstall, along with the famous Bond composer John Barry and lyricist Don Black, have interpreted her life through song for a new album produced by David Arnold. The songs frame and explore the myth of Shirley Bassey, the girl from Tiger Bay, and the voice and the desire are not found wanting.
There is a new breed of art collector on the block. No longer do you need to be fabulously wealthy to afford a Blake, a Banksy or a Hockney over your fireplace. Imagine meets a variety of people who are part of a small revolution in the art world. A factory worker, a pig farmer and a policeman are just some of those whose lives have been changed by an Arts Council scheme called Own Art, which has enabled them to take out an interest free loan to buy contemporary artwork.
The American singer-songwriter Joan Baez talks, more candidly then ever, about her personal life and a career spanning 50 years. Political ally to Martin Luther King, lover to Bob Dylan, she was the most admired and desired performer of her generation, using her unique voice to get her message of peace and racial equality heard around the world. Baez tells about her unconventional upbringing with Quaker parents, her near-breakdown due to stage fright, and her complicated relationships with lover Dylan, husband David Harris and son Gabe.
He has performed in 3,400 performances in over 130 roles, conducted upwards of 450 performances, and is general director of both the Washington National and Los Angeles Operas. Placido Domingo is at the peak of opera, and now at the age of 68, he has embarked on a role he has long dreamed of performing - Simon Boccanegra - his first as baritone in an opera. Exploring with him his astonishing career as a tenor leading up to this moment, the film looks back at his most famous opera roles and examines how Domingo won BBC Music Magazine's title of Greatest Singer in History.
Scrabble is experiencing a renaissance. The younger generation have rediscovered the game online - through the copyright busting Scrabulous - and they're having night after night on the tiles. LANA BOTNEY sets out to discover why the word game leaves us spellbound, tracing its surprising history, meeting the American tournament Word Freaks, and paying a visit to the S.A.S. style training camp that the Nigerian government trains their players at. With triple word score contributions from Moby, Richard Herring, Lynn Barber and Noreena Hertz.
The virtuoso violinist Nigel Kennedy became Britain's most celebrated classical musician after the release of his 1989 recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which sold 2 million copies. But Kennedy had always harboured a love of jazz - an affection which the former child prodigy has been pursuing in his new home. Kennedy now lives in Poland, where he fronts an all-Polish jazz band, the Nigel Kennedy Quintet, and has recently founded The Orchestra of Life, an ensemble consisting of mostly young musicians. In Imagine: Nigel Kennedy's Polish Adventure, Alan Yentob traces Kennedy's personal odyssey, and follows him as he explores the rich musical traditions of his adopted homeland.
For many great cultural figures, the formative childhood experience of play has helped to unleash their creativity and shape their later work. In this programme, Alan Yentob considers the influence of play with some of Britain's leading artists, including Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry, Marc Quinn, Gavin Turk, Mat Collishaw and David Bailey, who offer fascinating insights into the transformative power of their early creative experiences.
At the age of 92, Diana Athill is suddenly a celebrity. Her frank and entertaining memoirs, mainly written after the age at which most people retire, chart a life less ordinary. She's had a string of love affairs, mainly with married, black and/or younger men; enjoyed fifty years of success as an editor, worked with writers as distinguished as Jean Rhys, Norman Mailer and VS Naipaul; and led a privileged childhood in a Norfolk mansion. Recently, she has chosen to go into an old people's home, where they take people 'who have had interesting lives'. Alan Yentob meets her to discuss her life, her work - and her outspoken thoughts on death.
As he prepares to celebrate his 70th birthday, singing legend Sir Tom Jones is still recording, performing and collaborating with some of the biggest names in pop. In this episode of Imagine, Alan Yentob examines the extraordinary story of one of Britain's most recognisable pop icons. In a frank and revealing interview, Sir Tom describes the dizzying ascent from his humble beginnings as a miner's son in South Wales to becoming a headline act in Las Vegas, and recalls many of his most cherished moments from a career that enabled him to sing alongside Elvis, establish himself as a hairy-chested sex symbol, and make one of the most successful comebacks in pop history.
Architect, photographer, curator and blogger, Ai Weiwei is China's most famous and politically outspoken contemporary artist. As Ai Weiwei's latest work is unveiled in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, Alan Yentob reveals how this most courageous and determined of artists continues to fight for artistic freedom of expression while living under the restrictive shadows of authoritarian rule.
Widely considered to be the world's first paparazzi photographer, the controversial American photojournalist Ron Galella was sued by Jackie Kennedy and had his jaw broken by Marlon Brando. Throughout a career spanning more than 40 years, Galella's stalking tactics have attracted criticism, hostility and lawsuits. But his relentless pursuit of the famous has enabled him to amass an archive of 3 million photographs that represent a unique record of modern American celebrity culture. In this film, the award-winning programme-maker Leon Gast follows Galella as he revisits some of his old haunts and recalls his encounters with the stars who have tried - and usually failed - to evade his lens.
Pioneer photographer, forefather of cinema, showman, murderer - Eadweard Muybridge was a Victorian enigma. He was born and died in Kingston upon Thames, but did his most famous work in California - freezing time and starting it up again, so that for the first time people could see how a racing horse's legs moved. He went on to animate the movements of naked ladies, wrestlers, athletes, elephants, cockatoos and his own naked body, projecting his images publicly with a machine he invented and astounding audiences worldwide with the first flickerings of cinema. Alan Yentob follows in Muybridge's footsteps as he makes - and often changes - his name, and sets off to kill his young wife's lover. With Andy Serkis as Muybridge.
Alan Yentob presents this special edition of Thom Zimny's documentary in which Bruce Springsteen describes his attempts to create a sequel to one of the most popular albums of all time, sealing his legendary status in the tortured, but ultimately triumphant, process. Darkness on the Edge of Town was Springsteen's make-or-break follow-up to the classic 1975 album Born To Run - the recording that made him a superstar. In the period before the album was made, Springsteen was mired in a protracted legal battle that thwarted his desire to produce an album that would surpass his previous achievements. Zimny's film shows the young Springsteen driving himself, his band and his manager almost to distraction in his search for perfection, as he writes and records new compositions and produces ground-breaking work in song after song. Zimny's film features reflections from Springsteen, manager Jon Landau and members of the all-important E-Street Band on the extraordinary process of making this crucial rock 'n' roll album. It includes visceral, previously-unseen black-and-white footage shot between 1976 and 1978 from the rehearsals that took place both at Springsteen's home and at the Record Plant recording studio in New York.
Alan Yentob learns what links Radio 4 soap The Archers with Ben-Hur, one of the most epic Hollywood blockbusters of all time, as he charts the progress of 350 "everyday folk" as they benefit from an unusual bequest. Margot Boyd, the actress who played Ambridge's Mrs Antrobus, wanted ordinary people to experience the joy and excitement of being involved in theatre. They took up the challenge, and spent a year preparing to perform Ben-Hur on stage in Bath's historic Theatre Royal.
As the creative powerhouse behind hugely influential band The Kinks, Ray Davies was responsible for writing some of the best-loved songs of the 60s, including pop classics You Really Got Me, Tired of Waiting For You, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Sunny Afternoon and Waterloo Sunset. Alan Yentob meets Davies, a unique talent who describes with rare candour his troubled relationship with fame and the vicissitudes of his career. They also discuss a new album of Klassic Kinks Kollaborations which is near completion and features musical luminaries such as Bruce Springsteen, Mumford and Sons and Metallica.
Alan Yentob takes an epic train ride through Tolstoy's Russia, examining how Russia's great novelist became her great troublemaker. In this programme, he reveals a difficult and troubled youth, obsessed with sex and gambling, who turned writer while serving as a soldier in Chechnya and the Crimea. His experiences on the frontline eventually fed into War and Peace, a book now recognised as, 'the gold standard by which all other novels are judged'. They also triggered his conversion to outspoken pacifist. Alan's expedition takes him to the Tatar city of Kazan, where Tolstoy was a teenager, the siege of Sevastopol on the Black Sea and Imperial St Petersburg, as well as the idyllic Tolstoy country estate, the writer's cradle and grave, and home throughout his passionate but brutal 48-year marriage to Sofya - a marriage that began with rape, produced 13 children and ended with desertion and denial. Contributors include Tolstoy's great great grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, AN Wilson and author of a new Tolstoy biography, Rosamund Bartlett.
Alan Yentob continues his train ride through Tolstoy's Russia, examining how Russia's great novelist became her great troublemaker. The success of War and Peace brought Tolstoy fame, wealth and a massive mid-life crisis. Alan follows the writer through the tortured second half of his life as he transformed himself from aristocrat to anarchist and turned his back on his novels, his possessions and finally his wife of 48 years. Alan travels east into the remote emptiness of the Russian steppe, through the dark, pages of Tolstoy's great romantic novel, Anna Karenina, on to the small town where Anna takes her life, and then on the pilgrimage to the spectacular monastery where Tolstoy's spiritual quest began. Using extraordinary early film of Tolstoy, we witness the tumultuous events of Tolstoy's final years and his passionate relationship with his disciple Chertkov, the man his wife called "the devil incarnate". Finally, Alan retraces Tolstoy's flight from home at the age of 82, a journey that ended in a remote railway station. Heartbreaking archive footage shows his wife Sofya being turned away from the deathbed of her husband. So great was Tolstoy's influence at the time of his death that the government feared the news would spark revolution. Contributors include leading Russian commentators, as well as AN Wilson and the author of a new Tolstoy biography, Rosamund Bartlett.
Presenter Alan Yentob meets clinical neurologist and author Dr Oliver Sacks to investigate the myriad ways we experience the visual world and the strange things that can happen when our mind fails to understand what our eyes see. In the course of this investigation, Yentob tells the life story of Dr Oliver Sacks, the man who would become one of the world's most famous scientists. Alan delves into this world by going to meet several of the case studies from Sacks latest book, The Mind's Eye. He meets Stereo Sue, neurobiologist Sue Barry, who always saw the world as a flat 2D image until she suddenly acquired stereoscopic 3D vision in her late forties; Canadian crime writer Howard Engel, the man who forgot how to read, who remarkably continues to write despite a stroke that destroyed his reading ability; Chuck Close, the renowned portrait artist, who cannot recognise or remember faces and Danny Delcambre, an extraordinary and spirited man who, although having a condition which means he was born deaf and is gradually going blind, lives life to the full and uses close-up photography to record the world around him. Often overlapping with these case studies is Sacks' own story. Here, doctor and patient combine as he talks about his childhood, his own struggle with face blindness, and the loss he felt when eye cancer recently destroyed his 3D vision.
Alan Yentob visits Egypt's National Museum, possibly the most precious museum in the world, with its dust-covered collection of thousands upon thousands of priceless ancient antiquities. The museum was caught up in the revolution on Cairo's Tahrir Square, standing right at the centre of the action. Its precious cargo was looted, and young revolutionaries formed a cordon around it to protect it. The museum is the heart of Egypt, containing the key not just to the country's past but to its future, offering inspiration and hope. Alan discovers that the pharaohs were not the slave-drivers of Hollywood legend, and that 4,000 years ago there was another revolution, foreshadowing today's, and even a goddess of social justice. With Omar Sharif and novelist Ahdaf Soueif.
In September 1971, two years after the Beatles split up, John Lennon, dispirited and disillusioned with life in England, escaped across the Atlantic to New York City. He was tired of the constant scrutiny and criticism at home, and hated the venomous press hounding him and Yoko Ono. He dreamt of starting a peaceful new life in a city he'd come to love. Instead what followed was more like a rollercoaster ride: a tempestuous period in his relationship, a battle against the US immigration authorities, and a famous wild spell: the 'lost weekend'. Michael Epstein's fascinating film, featuring previously unseen archive footage and unprecedentedly candid interviews with key figures including Yoko Ono, charts this little-known period of Lennon's life - the years leading up to his untimely death.
Alan Yentob introduces John Scheinfeld's documentary Harry Nilsson - The Missing Beatle, a film that tells the story of the riotous life and music of Harry Nilsson. Nilsson, a friend and hero of Lennon's, was one of the most successful and influential, but least known, songwriters of his generation. He is remembered as much for his wild lifestyle as for his outstanding performance of Everybody's Talkin' from the movie soundtrack Midnight Cowboy. The film showcases new and archived audio and film, including home movies, music videos, promotional films and segments from the unreleased documentary made during the recording of Son Of Schmilsson, Did Somebody Drop His Mouse? The film also features interviews with Robin Williams, Yoko Ono, Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, Ray Cooper, the Smothers Brothers and Micky Dolen
Iraq and art are not words that usually go together. Yet this year, for the first time since Saddam Hussein's rise to power some 35 years ago, Iraq has a presence at the Venice Biennale - the show that is the Cannes Film Festival or the Olympics of the international art world calendar. Thousands of years ago, Iraq was the cradle of civilisation - Mesopotamia, the 'land between two rivers' - the Garden of Eden. Decades of despotism, destruction and despair have stifled its art, but now, despite all the dangers and difficulties, art is re-emerging. Jill Nicholls' film tells the moving stories of six Iraqi artists, all scattered around the world, and follows them as they prepare their work for Venice. The artists include Halim Al Karim, who survived for three years in a hole in the desert, escaping conscription into the Iran Iraq war; as well as Walid Siti, dreaming of the mountains of Kurdistan in his East London studio and going back to Iraq to gather images for his work. Also Ali Assaf, poetically evoking his home town of Basra back in the days when it was called the Venice of the East; and Ahmed Al Soudani, whose visceral paintings of violence and chaos sell for six-figure sums. The theme of this Iraqi show is not war but water - 'wounded water'. There is a water shortage crisis looming - already a litre of drinking water costs as much in Iraq as a litre of oil. The artists explore this issue through contaminated dates (once the pride of Basra, until Saddam deliberately destroyed 20 million date palms), dried-up waterfalls in Kurdistan (the fountainhead on which all of Iraq depends), and outsize taps looming over piles of plastic bottles. But the work is always imaginative, never just didactic. This is an epoch-making event in the history of a war-torn country. The film opens a new window on that world, seeing it through the eyes of artists who have been torn away from it.
Imagine presents a feature-length documentary about the making of U2's seminal album Achtung Baby. Early in 2011, U2 returned to Hansa Studio in Berlin to discuss the making of Achtung Baby in this film directed by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim (It Might Get Loud, Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth). From The Sky Down was then selected to open the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September, the first ever documentary to open the festival in its 36-year history. Twenty years after the 1991 release of Achtung Baby, Davis Guggenheim traces the album's genesis using animation and previously unseen footage from Berlin and Dublin alongside interviews with the band as they reflect on what was a key chapter in their career. 'In the terrain of rock bands - implosion or explosion is seemingly inevitable. U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction... this band has endured and thrived. From The Sky Down asks the question why.' Davis Guggenheim.
Artist Grayson Perry has been working behind the scenes at the British Museum to stage his most ambitious show yet: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. Given free rein to choose whatever he wants from the Museum's vast collections, Perry has also produced some 25 new works of art, from his trademark ceramics to a working motorbike. Imagine follows Perry for more than two years as he creates his own imaginary civilisation at the heart of the British Museum.
In Jennifer Lebeau's film, Simon and Garfunkel: The Harmony Game, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel talk openly and eloquently about an extraordinarily creative period in their career - the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The story behind what was to become their final album has long been shrouded in rock and roll mythology and is told in gripping detail in these rare interviews. Archive footage is used to reveal technical breakthroughs and the emotional feelings the two artists had for each other.
Sir Alan Ayckbourn is often described as the world's most performed living playwright. Yet it is his popularity that has often led to him being overlooked as a serious dramatist in the UK. As he premieres his 75th play in his seaside theatre in Scarborough, Imagine sets out to discover why Ayckbourn is so popular, and a chorus of distinguished fans explain why he must be recognised as one of the great dramatists of our time.
Vidal Sassoon is more than a hairdresser - he created styles that defined a generation. Craig Teper's film charts the career of the man who invented the bob-cut and, over the course of more than fifty years, created one of the most recognisable brands in the beauty business.
The arts series takes a road trip round the desert state of Rajasthan, meeting musicians whose existence is under threat from the new India. They meet Bhopa bards who recite four-night-long epics in front of huge hand-painted scrolls, saffron-clad, chillum-smoking sisters, cross-dressers and gypsy dancers who literally bend over backwards to pick up rupees.
With the rise of electronic books, is the final chapter about to be written in the long love story between books and their readers? Will the app take the place of the traditional book? Alan Yentob discusses the subject with writers Alan Bennett, Douglas Coupland, Ewan Morrison and Gary Shteyngart, publisher Gail Rebuck, agent Ed Victor and librarian Rachael Morrison. They also smell books, making precise notes about the distinctive aroma of each.
Alan talks to comedians both in Britain and America, finding out their about different backgrounds and influences and their passion for making people laugh.
The second of a two-part series for Imagine on the art of stand-up comedy. Alan Yentob talks to comedians in Britain and America, exploring the evolution of stand-up and how it transfers to other mediums. He also joins Eddie Izzard backstage for the first solo stand-up show at the Hollywood Bowl.
From rehearsal room to triumphant performance, imagine... follows the extraordinary theatrical production of The Two Worlds of Charlie F. Professional front line soldiers, all of whom have sustained injury ranging from amputation to post traumatic stress, join forces with a professional theatre company to help write, rehearse and perform a play based on their experiences of war in the killing fields of Afghanistan. What happened when they swapped the theatre of war for the London stage?
Paul Simon's Graceland album is one of his greatest achievements - a brilliant fusion of African rhythms and western pop which became a global phenomenon. It also proved hugely controversial, as Simon broke the UN-backed cultural boycott of a country still under the grip of apartheid. Joe Berlinger's film captures Simon's return to South Africa 25 years on and contrasts the value of individual artistic expression versus collective political action as instruments of change. Did Paul Simon's unique collaboration with South Africa's township musicians set back the clock of South African liberation or drive it forward?
From the Beach Boys to Queen and Jeff Buckley, falsetto singing has a long and distinguished presence in all types of music, one that continues to fascinate and enthral audiences. Alan Yentob delves into the world of falsetto singing, the high-pitched vocal range sung by men that comes closer to the female voice, and discovers why falsetto can express emotions that could not otherwise be achieved. With contributors including Frankie Valli, Brian May, Philip Bailey from Earth, Wind and Fire and Harrow School Chapel Choir, imagine... asks why men are compelled to sing in such a voice.
imagine... explores the story of a group of artists and curators who stormed the international art world and turned their home city of Glasgow into a global capital for contemporary art. Amongst the artists Alan Yentob encounters are 2011 Turner Prize-winner Martin Boyce, as well as previous winners Douglas Gordon, Simon Starling and Richard Wright, to tell the story of a city now as famed for its contemporary art as it was for its shipbuilding.
With three of Titian's mythological paintings of the goddess Diana being shown together for the first time at the National Gallery, Alan is behind the scenes of a collaboration with the Royal Ballet. He talks to the creative team transforming the works into contemporary dance.
Britain's most successful crime writer, Ian Rankin, invites imagine... to get up close and personal and follow him as he writes his next novel. Maverick cop DI John Rebus propelled Rankin to fame as an author, but having retired his most famous creation five years ago, Rankin is now faced with a dilemma: what will he write about next? Through Rankin's own video diary footage, we see him wrestle with his demons and numerous unfolding plots. Will they lead to a dead end? Alan Yentob and imagine... were there on the first day of writing and on the very day Ian Rankin finished the novel. Tune in to find out the result.
From child prodigy to global phenomenon, Alan Yentob reveals the extraordinary life of Lang Lang, China's classical music superstar. With sell-out concerts around the world and a growing popularity that reaches far beyond traditional classical audiences, Lang Lang has redefined the idea of the celebrity concert pianist. His ability to connect with a younger generation has played a significant role in inspiring over 40 million Chinese children to take up the piano. In this feature-length documentary, imagine... explores the compelling personal story behind the Lang Lang phenomenon.
The pianist performs Chopin and Beethoven at Latitude, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall.
William Klein has lived many lives. One of the world's most influential photographers, he pioneered the art of street photography and created some of the most iconic fashion images of the 20th century. He also made over twenty films, including the first ever documentary about Muhammad Ali and a brilliant satire of the fashion world, Who Are You Polly Magoo? With a major Tate Modern exhibition currently celebrating his work, imagine... spends time with William Klein to discover the irrepressible, charismatic personality behind a remarkable creative life.
Many people turn to music when words are not enough, at funerals and weddings, at times of heartbreak and euphoria. It seems to hold more emotion and go deeper than words. Musicians as varied as Emeli Sande, who enthralled the world when she sang at the Olympics, opera diva Jessye Norman, dubstep artist Mala and modern classical composer George Benjamin explain how music makes them feel. Alan Yentob also talks to a vicar, a psychologist, a Hollywood composer, an adman and even the people who choose the music played in shopping malls. He sees babies dance to a rhythm, and old people brought forth out of silence by the power of music.
Nearly 30 years after her triumphant debut novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson returns with Alan Yentob to the scene of her childhood in Lancashire. She was adopted and brought up to be a missionary by the larger-than-life Mrs Winterson, but Jeanette followed a different path - she found literature, fell in love with a girl and escaped to university. Following her recent memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, she tells the story of her recent breakdown and suicide attempt, her quest to find her birth mother and how the power of books helped her to survive.
Matthew Bourne is Britain's most commercially successful choreographer. A virtuoso storyteller, he famously reimagined the traditional Swan Lake ballet with muscular male swans, instantly creating a worldwide hit. Now he is reinterpreting Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty. imagine... and Alan Yentob have exclusive access to the creative process, from first workshops to final rehearsals with set and costumes, and the programme revisits Bourne's many ground-breaking shows to chart his inexorable rise.
The incredible story of a mysterious nanny who died in 2009 leaving behind a secret hoard - thousands of stunning photographs. Never seen in her lifetime, they were found by chance in a Chicago storage locker and auctioned off cheaply. Now Vivian Maier has gone viral and her magical pictures sell for thousands of dollars. Vivian was a tough street photographer, a secret poet of suburbia. In life she was a recluse, a hoarder, spinning tall tales about her French roots. Presented by Alan Yentob, the film includes stories from those who knew her and those who revealed her astonishing work.
imagine... presents McCullin, a powerful documentary portrait of legendary British war photographer and photojournalist Don McCullin. Told through a series of searingly honest and often graphic interviews, McCullin recounts a life lived in the theatre of war - from his first assignment with the violent teenage gangs on his home turf of Finsbury Park, to capturing international conflicts of the past 50 years. The film lays bare McCullin's disgust for the destruction of human life, juxtaposed with the adrenaline rush of a life spent under enemy fire.
From beatnik to mod, from folkie to disco tart, from glam rocker to, most recently, crooner of American standards, Rod Stewart has had a remarkable musical journey. Alan Yentob visits Rod at his homes in Beverly Hills and Essex and talks to his friends and family, including all eight children aged from two years old to 50. Featuring rare archival footage of Rod when he was barely out of his teens and living above his parents' north London sweetshop, lmagine examines an entertaining career across five musical decades.
imagine... presents Robert B Weide's intimate two-part study of the multi-Oscar winning New York auteur. In this first part, Woody Allen talks candidly about his childhood in Brooklyn, his early fame as a stand-up in New York City and his first forays into screenwriting and filmmaking. He discusses his prolific body of work, which includes some of the most memorable cinematic moments of all time. With unprecedented access to the director, Weide reveals the man behind the trademark glasses.
imagine... presents the second part of Robert B Weide's intimate profile of Woody Allen. The New York writer, director and actor doesn't shy away from discussing his sometimes controversial relationships with the leading ladies in his life, or the hits and misses of an unparalleled body of work spanning five decades of filmmaking. Contributors including Martin Scorsese, Diane Keaton, Scarlett Johansson and John Cusack join Allen's family of filmmakers for a unique insight into one of the most obsessive and enduring directors of all time.
Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, Zaha Hadid, who has designed buildings around the globe - everywhere from Austria to Azerbaijan.
In just four years, Jimi Hendrix revolutionised the music scene with his transcendent sound and explosive stage presence. A peacock, poet and perfectionist, he was a true original, who restlessly pushed his musical gifts to their extremes. imagine... tells the story of how this shy, former private in the 101st Airborne became the greatest rock guitarist of all time, using never-before-seen performance footage, home movies and family letters. With contributions from the Hendrix family, Sir Paul McCartney, and former band mates Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, imagine... presents an in-depth look at Hendrix's life and career that was tragically cut short at just 27 years old in 1970.
Edmund de Waal is the bestselling author of The Hare With The Amber Eyes, a family memoir that captured the hearts of millions. But he isn't just a writer; from the age of five he has been making thousands and thousands of pots. After 45 years, he is exhibiting his work for the first time in America and researching his next book, a globe-spanning journey through porcelain. imagine... follows Edmund over a remarkable year.
For generations of Jewish songwriters, the bright lights of Broadway have been a catalyst for transformation. New York's musical theatres offered a chance for those who had fled persecution and oppression to make it big in America. On Broadway, the idea of outsiders beating the odds could be dramatised in a uniquely American art form, with melodies derived from Jewish prayers inspiring catchy new songs that tens of millions around the world would come to embrace. imagine... looks at the unique role Jews have played in creating the modern American musical, from Porgy and Bess to West Side Story and Cabaret. Featuring performances by Broadway's most creative talents, plus a medley of amazing archive footage and interviews, the film explores the work of some of America's pre-eminent musical maestros - including Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Kurt Weill, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jule Styne.
What do a UFO-obsessed Romanian refugee, a schizophrenic Italian war veteran, and an 80-year-old sex-mad Russian woman have in common? Answer: They are all outsider artists. After the huge success of recent shows in Venice, London and Paris, interest in Outsider Art has never been higher. But what exactly is it? How do we define it? And who are its gurus and leading lights? Alan Yentob explores this captivating, compelling and magical alternative art universe. Why in 2013 is Outsider Art finally being feted by the art establishment, and what took it so long? imagine... embarks on a worldwide journey to meet some visionary creators, and their equally obsessive collectors and enthusiasts.
Look up "spry" in the dictionary and you might see a picture of children's author Judith Kerr, who turned 90 this June, but still bounded up the stairs to the her attic study, leaving Imagine host Alan Yentob panting behind her. She also walks around Barnes, in south-west London, for an hour every evening, takes a sip of martini every day at lunch and dismisses the Janet and John learn-to-read series as "boring". My kind of woman. What a pleasure it was to look at the world through Kerr's eyes for a little while in Imagine – Hitler, the Tiger and Me on BBC1. She hasn't ceased her eager observation for 80-odd years and in that time has produced beautiful sketches, paintings, textiles and illustrations, all almost as lively as the artist herself. It's this creative curiosity, inherited from her father, that has been her lifelong solace. "He was looking at things all the time and if you do that, you don't despair. He would say, 'Yes, this is bad, but it's interesting.'" Alfred Kerr was a leading Jewish intellectual in pre-war Berlin, but escaped with his family in the nick of time. The Nazis came to power the day after they left for England. On a trip back to her childhood home, Judith told the little girl now living there about her wartime experience, "It wasn't so sad, it was very interesting." In fact, as she later acknowledged, the trauma of these years cast a long shadow over her family, especially her mother, who bore the greatest amount of stress and attempted suicide several times. Kerr drew on this these years in her semi-autobiographical books for older children, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and The Other Way Round. This Imagine was an example of the increased cultural significance children's books are now accorded and it's good to see. Making children laugh is a noble pursuit. As Michael Rosen, another great in the genre, usefully pointed out, there are darker shades in Kerr's work too. In a literary form where most characters drift on forever
With performances from Peter Capaldi, imagine... marks the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli's notorious book The Prince. Famous for lines like 'It is better to be feared than loved', The Prince has been a manual for tyrants from Napoleon to Stalin. But how relevant is The Prince today, and who are the 21st century Machiavellians? Alan Yentob talks to contributors including Colonel Tim Collins, who kept a copy of The Prince with him in Iraq; plus Hilary Devey, Alastair Campbell and Game of Thrones writer George RR Martin.
As Brazil prepares to host the Fifa World Cup this summer and the Olympic Games in 2016, imagine... explores the cultural and social history of the city of Rio de Janeiro, home to more than six million Carioca. A city of extremes, Rio is still seen by many as a tropical paradise, but it is also a city divided by class, ravaged by poverty and gun crime. With its roots and rhythms in samba, the music of Rio has directly influenced decades of social and cultural change. imagine... journeys through an extraordinary city, illustrated and narrated by the music and voices of this Brazilian metropolis.
After Portnoy's Complaint launched him as a new literary voice, not to mention a scandalous one, Philip Roth went on to be hailed by many as America's greatest living writer. Never afraid to look hard at the extremes of human experience, he has been both consistently controversial and intensely private. But now, having celebrated his 80th birthday in his home town of Newark, New Jersey, Roth, in conversation with Alan Yentob, is ready to tell the whole story in this special two-part film for imagine... Philip Roth Unleashed.
Alan Yentob talks to Philip Roth in the second half of a two-part film. After his scandalous debut with Portnoy's Complaint, and the intensely personal novels of his early career, Philip Roth turned this same fearless vision to some of the great themes of the American century - civil rights, McCarthyism, the Vietnam war - as his characters become impaled on history. In a career spanning six decades Roth became one of the most controversial and influential writers of the modern age, and only now, with the advent of his 80th birthday, is he ready to reveal all.
The five surviving members of Monty Python have spent the last 20 years dismissing a reunion as 'absolutely impossible'. Now, it seems, they've changed their minds... In this special edition of imagine... Alan Yentob follows Cleese, Palin, Jones, Gilliam and Idle (collective age 357) as they pursue solo projects in far-flung locations, reflect on old age, and prepare for the shows in London that will bring the final curtain down on Python after 45 years.
On a train crossing from Switzerland to Germany, an old man was searched by customs officials. They found 9,000 euros in cash. Their suspicions started a journey back in time, to a hoard of art hidden since the Third Reich. It has reignited passions that seemed long spent. These were not old masters but new - works the Nazis labelled 'degenerate', like the Jews themselves. They tried to wipe out both. The father of the old man on the train was a dealer for the Nazis, selling these works abroad and keeping some for himself. In a two-part special, imagine... follows both his story and those of the families who have been fighting to find their lost art.
imagine... tells how the end of the war was only the beginning of another battle. In the art world in Germany, it was business as usual. Many people in museums, galleries and auction houses in Germany remained in their positions when the war was over. So people involved in looting art might now be in charge of deciding whether to return it. For families, often living in exile, it was an uphill struggle. For them the discovery of the Gurlitt hoard has raised new hopes - and repeated some old disappointments.
For five decades the woman they call The Divine Miss M has forged a path which has taken her from a pineapple canning factory in Honolulu to becoming a Hollywood legend. Alan Yentob joins Bette Midler on a journey through the chorus lines of Broadway, the bathhouses and nightclubs of the 1970s, to the very top of the film industry. Her combination of a soulful voice and the raucous wit of Mae West has made her name as an outrageous, but always captivating, all-round entertainer.
There is no-one quite like Anselm Kiefer. Having achieved fame and notoriety in equal measure in the 1980s, he has become one of the world's most singular and successful artists. Working with themes of history, memory and mythology, Kiefer produces work that is consistently controversial, and monumental in its scale and ambition. In this imagine... Alan Yentob joins the artist at his studios in France and Germany as he prepares for a retrospective at the Royal Academy. In a series of frank interviews set against the backdrop of his awe-inspiring studios, Kiefer discusses the impact of his most significant pieces, installs a selection of new work, and explains why he is as excited and driven by his practice now, at the age of 69, as he was when he began.
In a revealing documentary, Mike Leigh, director of Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake and Abigail's Party among many others, talks to Alan Yentob about a unique body of work and a lifelong struggle to make films on his own terms. On day one of a Mike Leigh film, there is no script, no story and the actors do not know if they will even be in the final film. It is a process that has yielded some of cinema's most celebrated performances, and Leigh's new film Mr Turner is already winning critical acclaim. Actors including Jim Broadbent, Eddie Marsan, Sally Hawkins, Lesley Manville and James Corden give fascinating insights into the director and his distinctive method of working.
In this thoughtful, lyrical film, Imagine talks to the acclaimed and curiously divided Irish writer Colm Toibin. Loud and affable in person, Toibin writes sombre stories of grief and quiet heartbreak, repeatedly returning to the dark narrative of his own childhood and the complicated relationships between mothers and sons. In the year that his bestselling novel Brooklyn is being adapted for the cinema and The Testament of Mary continues to provoke controversy, Toibin publishes his most poignant and personal novel yet. With Fiona Shaw, Anne Enright and Nick Hornby.
A fascinating look at the colourful career of architect Frank Gehry who despite being well into his eighties remains one of the world's most celebrated and famously provocative creative forces. From the iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gehry's buildings both intrigue and ignite. For Frank, rules are there to be broken. Alan Yentob explores Gehry's remarkable journey from poor outsider in Toronto to global 'starchitect' and follows the construction of a characteristically audacious new Gehry building in Sydney - his first in Australia.
In Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer, imagine... enters the world of one of the most successful, controversial and downright odd artists of our time. His gigantic balloon dogs and even bigger flower puppies have become iconic. His rows of virgin vacuum cleaners are frozen in time. Michael Jackson sits with his pet chimp Bubbles. But the artist who celebrates the commonplace and has put sex and the banal on a pedestal has mined some dark territory. Is it playtime or parental guidance recommended? As Jeff Koons' first retrospective takes over the Whitney Museum in New York and the Pompidou in Paris, imagine... asks what lies beneath the shiny surfaces.
Summer 2015: 3. Beware of Mr Baker imagine... presents Beware of Mr Baker. In this award-winning documentary, Cream drummer Ginger Baker reflects on his sixty-year career. It began in the jazz clubs of Soho and led to sellout stadium concerts, via the back streets of Lagos. The film's director Jay Bulger catches up with the irascible instrumentalist at his ranch in South Africa to talk drums, drugs and everything in-between. Has the young director bitten off more than he can chew?
Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison is America's first lady of literature. Her books encompass black American history but live and breathe in the present, rich in vivid characters, haunted by ghosts. Born poor in Ohio in 1931, she now lives in New York. She tells Alan Yentob how her father hated whites so much he wouldn't let them in the house. Her masterpiece, Beloved, shows the horrors of slavery perhaps better than any other artwork. She talks as she writes - with warmth and wit. Contributors include Angela Davis (whose biography she edited) and singer Jessye Norman.
Richard Flanagan: Life After Death chronicles the life and work of 2014's Man Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan. The grandson of illiterates, a school drop-out, a river guide, builder's labourer, and a passionate campaigner for conservation, Flanagan journeys with Alan Yentob through his native Tasmania, visiting the places that have inspired his novels, and on to Thailand, to see first-hand the site of the Death Railway - the brutal setting of his award-winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Alan Yentob travels to the ghetto in Venice with award-winning novelist Howard Jacobson as he embarks on a retelling of Shakespeare's most performed play, The Merchant of Venice. Through a series of lively - often fiery - interviews, they examine the charge of anti-Semitism against Shakespeare, whose character Shylock remains one of the most odious and divisive fictional Jews in history. How did the moneylender from Venice become such a useful propaganda tool in Nazi Germany? And how much of a liberty will Jacobson be taking when he uproots the action to modern-day Alderley Edge, and audaciously reinterprets the infamous 'pound of flesh'? Interviewees include Antony Sher, Anthony Julius and Stephen Greenblatt.
Alan Yentob meets the sculptor Antony Gormley, creator of the iconic Angel of the North, and uncovers the influences that have shaped his life and work. Across a career spanning more than forty years, Gormley has used sculpture as a means to examine the human condition. He explains how his strict Catholic childhood and his subsequent search for enlightenment in India influenced his decision to become a sculptor. 'If you are brought up a Catholic you may lose your Catholicism but the fact is it has marked you for life. And the need to replace its belief system with something else becomes your life's work.' Imagine shows rare archive footage of the creation of Gormley's key works, including the sculptor being fully encased in plaster to create casts of his own body, as well as footage of the installation of the Angel of the North. We also follow exhibitions this year in Paris, Florence and on Lundy Island.
Opening in 2012 at the National Theatre, the stage production of Mark Haddon’s bestselling book The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time has gone on to win seven Olivier Awards, is touring the UK and Ireland, and the Tony Award-winning Broadway production is taking New York by storm. The narrator of the book and the play is a 15 year-old boy who finds other people frightening and confusing, and it has helped transform our understanding of a neurological condition that affects one in 100 children. Imagine... meets those involved in the play, from early rehearsals and research, to stage performances in both London and New York. This is interwoven with moving testimony from other children and families who live with autism. Pictured: Christopher Boone (Alex Sharp)
The story of the most famous man you never heard of - producer Michael White. Imagine presents Gracie Otto's film The Last Impresario and the story of the most famous man you have never heard of - Michael White. White's career as a theatre and film producer has spanned over 50 years. The British producer paved the way for internationally acclaimed stage hits including A Chorus Line, Sleuth and The Rocky Horror Show. He has produced over 300 shows, often against the odds and at great personal cost. His gregarious personality and philanthropic largesse have endeared him to some of the world's most celebrated stars. Otto's film looks back on White's halcyon days in show business as he starts to sell off his cherished collection of personal photographs and papers.
Julien Temple updates the remarkable story of Dr Feelgood musician Wilko Johnson. Reflecting on his impending death following his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, Johnson muses on the transformative power of mortality. Determined to live out his remaining months playing music, he records an album with Roger Daltrey in a mere eight days and embarks on a series of farewell tours. Yet, there is an unexpected twist in the tale, captured here by Julien Temple and interwoven with remarkable archive footage and music.
The internationally renowned British architect puts substance before image, and isn't interested in a building's iconic presence on a skyline. 'How many squiggles can a city take?' he once asked. He has been described as classical, minimalist, simple, but if there is a word he would like to apply to his architecture, it is 'humane'. Alan Yentob talks to Chipperfield about his breakthrough in Berlin, his love of the city and its history and the 11 years spent on the transformation of the Neues Museum, his 'masterpiece'. After successes at the Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield, and Turner Contemporary Margate, he is now embarking on his most prestigious project ever, a new gallery for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Imagine follows Cuban ballet superstar Carlos Acosta in London and Havana as he masterminds a new production of Carmen for the Royal Ballet before stepping back from the classical repertoire and looking to the future with a series of ambitious new projects in Cuba. Alan Yentob explores Acosta's plans to create his own unique dance company and foundation in his homeland, and his dream of transforming a spectacular yet derelict architectural treasure in the outskirts of Havana into a world-renowned beacon for dance, finishing a project first begun by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara over 50 years ago. Imagine offers a fascinating insight into a remarkable artist at a critical time for both him and Cuba.
Imagine reveals the darker side of one of Britain's most original and inventive artists. A sculptor working with found materials, Cornelia Parker creates beauty from acts of brutality - an exploded shed, piles of squashed silver, the charred remnants of a burnt church suspended in time. Born in 1956 to a German mother and an English father in rural Cheshire, Parker always struggled to fit in. Art was her escape. In 2016 she embarked on the most high-profile commission of her career - the roof of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alan Yentob follows Parker's creative process in a film that sees her delve deep into America's history, cinema and art, as well as her own personal past.
On the brink of the Depression in 1929, Georgia O'Keeffe - America's first great modernist painter - headed west. In the bright light of the New Mexico desert, she forged an independent life and found the solitude she needed for her truly original art. The photographs taken of her by her older lover scandalised the public. Her flower forms were seen as a shocking and vibrant display of femininity, her bones and skulls as surreal and disturbing. Now, 30 years after her death, to coincide with a major Tate Modern show, imagine... tells the story of Georgia O'Keeffe, one of the most inspiring artists ever.
From beatnik to mod, from folkie to disco tart, from glam rocker to, most recently, crooner of American standards, the newly ennobled Sir Roderick Stewart has had a remarkable musical journey. Alan Yentob visits Rod at his homes in Beverly Hills and Essex and talks to his friends and family, including all eight children aged from two years old to 50. Featuring rare archival footage of Rod when he was barely out of his teens and living above his parents' north London sweetshop, in a revised repeat Imagine examines an entertaining career across five musical decades.
2015 was a momentous year for novelist Marlon James. He became the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker prize for his magisterial novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, about the events surrounding the attempted assassination of Bob Marley and their aftermath. He also chose to come out as gay in an article for the New York Times - a brave move for a man born in what has been called the world's most homophobic country. Alan Yentob accompanies the charismatic and provocative James back to Jamaica and finds in his three highly praised novels a complex portrait of the turbulent history of his native country.
Alan Yentob joins South African artist William Kentridge as he prepares an epic frieze along the banks of the river Tiber in Rome. Alan visits him in his hometown of Johannesburg, the inspiration for the magical hand-drawn animated films he calls 'drawings for projection'. Brought up under apartheid, Kentridge has witnessed the fragile transition to a multi-racial democracy, and his art continues to reflect South Africa's turbulent times.
A look at the work of South African artist William Kentridge who first became well known for making hand-drawn animations featuring a pair of alter egos, set in the urban-industrial landscape of Johannesburg. His first film in the series is Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris (1989). The work reflects the oppressive world of the Apartheid era and South Africa's painful transition into a multiracial democracy and was created over many months as Kentridge painstakingly filmed and erased the drawings frame by frame. Introduced by the artist and Alan Yentob.
A look at the work of South African artist William Kentridge who first became well known for making hand-drawn animations featuring a pair of alter egos, set in the urban-industrial landscape of Johannesburg. Felix in Exile (1994) reflects the increasing political violence and civil unrest in South Africa as Apartheid came to an end. Introduced by the artist and Alan Yentob.
Alan Yentob explores the enthralling world of female crime fiction in the company of some of its best-selling authors, including Patricia Cornwell, Val McDermid and Paula Hawkins - the newcomer whose The Girl on the Train was the breakout hit of 2015. While these writers stand on the shoulders of giants such as Christie, Highsmith, Rendell and PD James, their dark imaginings are more likely to have been nurtured at newsroom crime desks, in mortuaries, piecing bones of murder victims back together and in the bedrooms of modern marriages, where dark thrillers are sparked not by strangers in alleyways but by anxieties and paranoia much closer to home. Why are we so willing to be scared out of our wits, and why are women in particular so attracted to the thrills and comforts of crime fiction?
One of the most provocative and elusive figures in contemporary art finds himself the subject of Maura Axelrod's film. Catapulted to worldwide notoriety in 1999 by The Ninth Hour, a sculpture of Pope John Paul II toppled by a meteorite, Maurizio Cattelan's work has bordered on criminal activity (breaking into a gallery and stealing another artist's work) and regularly defies good taste - Him features Hitler in prayer and sold earlier this year for ú12,000,000. Building his career on evasion, trickery and subversion, Cattelan is perhaps not the most reliable of interviewees, but ex-girlfriends, family members, collectors and dealers build a compelling and intimate portrait of an enigmatic figure.
Stevan Riley's award-winning documentary Listen to Me Marlon uses hundreds of hours of Marlon Brando's own archival audio tapes and home movie footage, combined with excerpts from his extraordinary performances to create an exceptionally emotive and vivid portrayal of a man and actor who was by turns tremendously talented, tenacious and tormented. Covering the full breadth of his life and career, this is a rare opportunity to experience the notoriously private Marlon Brando's feelings and fears in his own words, in order to see behind the actor's mask and meet the man that was Brando.
The Egyptian author Nawal El Saadawi was a global legend, as outspoken, hilarious and totally un-self-censored into her 80s as she ever was, always a force of nature. First shown in 2017 when she was 85, imagine... visited her at home in Cairo and travels with her to the village where she was born. A writer of over 50 books and a winner of numerous international awards, she is famed as a pioneer in the fight against female genital mutilation, to which she herself was subjected. In this edition of the programme, she addresses some of the world's biggest challenges in a surprising and personal way.
Imagine presents Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, the first documentary portrait of the trail-blazing activist, poet and writer Maya Angelou. Born in 1928, she enthused generations with her bold and inspirational championing of the African-American experience, pushed boundaries and redefined the way we think about race and culture.
On the eve of International Women's Day, Imagine…presents a portrait of a remarkable artist, Alice Neel. American painter Alice Neel was an extraordinary and prolific figurative painter, yet spent most of her life working in obscurity, struggling as a single mother to survive.
Alan Yentob follows the celebrated Turner Prize-winning British artist Chris Ofili as he creates a spectacular contemporary tapestry - The Caged Bird's Song. Nearly three years in the making, it is a triumph of craft and dedication, transforming Ofili's free-flowing watercolour paintings into vibrant wool on a giant scale. Made with a team of master weavers in Edinburgh, the piece, over seven metres wide and three metres tall, draws together the sights and sounds of tropical Trinidad, where Ofili lives. Imagine explores Ofili's passion for his adopted island home and its inspiration on his creative practice, and reveals the final tapestry as it is installed in an exhibition at the National Gallery in London.
An unflinching and uncompromising portrait of one of the most controversial photographers.
An unflinching and uncompromising portrait of one of the most controversial photographers.
For decades Margaret Atwood has been universally acclaimed as Canada's greatest living writer. Fearlessly outspoken in life and in her work Atwood has always been an unrelenting provocateur. Now at the age of 77 her star shines brighter and bolder than ever with an explosive television adaptation of her best-known work The Handmaid's Tale which was first published in 1985. It's a dystopian work of speculative fiction set in the future, which has drawn comparison with aspects of Donald Trump's leadership, in particular the charges of misogyny which have inflamed anti Trump campaigners across America. Alan Yentob meets up with Margaret Atwood in Toronto and discovers how a childhood spent between the Canadian wilderness and the city helped shape her vision of herself and the world, set alight her imagination and set her forth on a path to literary success.
In this imagine… profile, Alan Yentob meets the musical prodigy Alma Deutscher. Aged 11, Anna is staging her first ever full-length opera, Cinderella. Composer, pianist, violinist, Alma learned to read music before she could read words. She began playing the piano aged two and at four years old she was composing her own music. From a tree house in Dorking to an opera house in Vienna, imagine… spends time with Alma at work and at play. In the months leading up to the premiere of her opera in Vienna, we discover the inspiration and motivation behind a truly remarkable talent.
Sir Cameron Mackintosh was once a theatre stagehand on Drury Lane and is now a musical theatre impresario, with a career spanning 50 years and a catalogue of musical theatre hits to his name - including Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon, and he is now about to launch the US hit musical Hamilton in London. Alan Yentob meets Cameron Mackintosh to discover how a timber merchant's son with a passion for song and dance, an abundance of ambition and a keen eye for detail became the most successful man in the musical theatre business and in the process changed the face and sound of musical theatre across the globe.
An intimate portrait of British sculptor Rachel Whiteread as she unpacks her life's work for a major retrospective at Tate Britain in London. Though she rose to prominence with the YBA generation of Young British Artists, Rachel Whiteread was always something of an outsider. Her work explores themes of memory and absence, casting sculptural forms from familiar domestic objects small and large, from sinks and hot water bottles to living rooms - and a terraced house. This film revisits Whiteread's acclaimed and controversial work House, a full-scale replica of the interior of a terraced house in London's East End that fuelled a national debate about contemporary art. Alan Yentob visits Rachel in her studio. She recalls the turbulent day in 1993 when she became the first woman to win the Turner Prize and simultaneously learned that house was to be demolished - and she would be obliged to accept a protest prize as the Worst Artist in the World. That day proved to be a turning point in a remarkable career. Since, Whiteread has represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and won the commission for yet another highly controversial, now universally-acclaimed work - The Holocaust Memorial in Vienna.
At the age of 91, Mel Brooks is unstoppable, with his musical Young Frankenstein opening to great critical acclaim in London in late 2017. Alan Yentob visits Mel at home in Hollywood, at work and at play. With the aid of BBC archive stretching back decades, together they embark on an unpredictable, irresistible journey through the city of stars, meeting the legendary Carl Reiner along the way. The driver is Mel Brooks - you have been warned
Romantic, fearless, fantastical; this edition of Imagine delves into the thrilling world of Philip Pullman and explores the author's own dark materials. Philip Pullman has been named both one of Britain's greatest writers and the most dangerous writer in Britain. He is best-known for the much loved His Dark Materials trilogy, which follows a young heroine, Lyra, through a series of heart-stopping adventures into other worlds. Appealing to both adults and children alike, his books have sold over 20 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. La Belle Sauvage, his recent prequel, became an instant best-seller. 'The things we need most in the world are stories,' he says. Alan Yentob spends time with Pullman in Oxford, discovering how the inspirational middle-school teacher became an acclaimed author of fantasy fiction and an outspoken critic of organised religion.
Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over musical theatre for nearly five decades and delighted millions worldwide with hit shows like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love and, most recently, School of Rock the Musical. To mark his 70th year, Lloyd Webber has written an autobiography - Unmasked, a candid and confessional account of his early life and career up to the opening of Phantom. In this imagine special, Alan Yentob talks to Andrew about the book, his bohemian childhood and the memories he's chosen to reveal.
Documentary exploring Ingrid Bergman's life and career. Widely regarded as one of the greatest actresses of the 20th century, Ingrid Bergman's talent was matched only by her incandescent screen presence. From her infamous performance as Ilsa in Casablanca, to her work with directors Alfred Hitchcock and Roberto Rossellini, her performances won her Oscars, Emmys and Golden Globes, as well as a place in Hollywood history. Ingrid Bergman in her Own Words is a captivating documentary which paints a portrait of her life away from the film and the theatre. Combining access to Bergman's archives of home movie footage, private diaries and letters, read by Oscar-winning Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, with contributions from her children, including Isabella Rossellini, director Stig Bjorkman reveals Bergman's journey from Swedish school girl to Hollywood icon, in a life lived to the full.
Raul Castro has recently stepped down as president of Cuba, almost 60 years after his brother Fidel and a small band of bearded cigar-smoking guerrillas entered the capital Havana and changed the lives of their people forever. Using extraordinary and previously unseen archive footage, and shot over the past three years, Julien Temple's two-part film captures the mood of Havana and its people - the Habaneros - at a pivotal moment in time. They share their experience of life in this extraordinary city - the highs and lows, the exhilaration and the suffering. It's a rollercoaster ride from Spanish colony to republic to revolution to the precarious present. Fidel is dead, Obama's hand of friendship is withdrawn and as the US blockade continues to strangle the economy, Havana is literally falling apart.
Almost sixty years on, Castro's Cuban revolution continues to split world opinion as decisively as it did when that small band of bearded guerrillas first entered Havana. In the second part of Julien Temple's film we hear from the citizens of this extraordinary city how these young revolutionaries put their dreams into practice. With access to remarkable archive footage, we see how they set about building a brave new socialist world on America's doorstep. Now with Obama gone, Trump in the White House, Fidel dead and his brother Raul stepping down from the presidency, Havana too is about to step into the unknown.
The story of Rupert Everett's ten-year quest to write, direct and star in his own film about the tragic last years of his hero Oscar Wilde, the great Irish writer imprisoned for loving another man. imagine... joins Everett five years on, halfway through his epic journey. The programme follows Everett from his onstage triumph playing Oscar in the West End, through numerous false starts and setbacks. As the years go by there are highs and lows, peppy optimism and lunatic serendipity.
Turkey's best-known writer, the Nobel Prize-winning Orhan Pamuk, glories in his city of Istanbul, which in his lifetime has grown from two to fifteen million people. Despite political controversy which nearly forced him into exile, he continues to live in the city which feeds his novels. They evoke the lost world of his own eccentric family, explore Turkey's rich Ottoman past and engage with its teeming troubled present. Poised between east and west, it is at once modern and traditional, secular and religious. An obsessive, outspoken and engaging man, Pamuk paces through the backstreets of Istanbul, showing Alan Yentob the places which have inspired his work - the Ottoman palace recreated in his best-selling murder mystery My Name Is Red, the burgeoning building sites and high rises which are the surprising setting for his recent books, and his extraordinary Museum of Innocence - a novel and a real museum in one.
Very few people would have recognised the name Rose Wylie until this remarkable artist was in her mid 70s. Youthful, playful and unpredictable at the age of 83, this is an artist in her prime. Her unlikely subjects are drawn from the world around her - from footballers like Wayne Rooney, the gory brilliance of Quentin Tarantino films, memories of her childhood in the London Blitz, to the stuff of everyday life - gas hobs and even her own pet cats. In Rose Wylie's universe past and present collide in vivid explosions of colour and form. Her exuberant large scale canvases are being exhibited, and sold, all over the world. Alan Yentob meets Rose Wylie and delves into her curious and colourful world to discover how her memories and experiences have helped mould the artist that she is today, and how she transforms the stuff of everyday experience into new and hitherto unseen painterly visions.
It is unprecedented for an artist to be exhibited simultaneously in three of London's leading galleries, each one exploring a different theme: landscape, portraiture and still life. But that is the accolade bestowed on the internationally renowned British artist Tacita Dean. The granddaughter of Basil Dean, who founded Ealing Studios, she is celebrated for her works on analogue film which include beguiling portraits of figures she admires, enigmatic stories and painterly meditations on light. Alan Yentob joins Tacita Dean in her studio in Berlin to discover how the city has infused her work, and visits her in LA where she is completing an hour-long film inspired by her older sister Antigone and the Greek myth which bears her name. Her work is poetic, elegiac, and thought-provoking. It is also the story of her crusade to preserve the medium which inspires her - film.
It has been the site of royal weddings, funerals and nearly every British coronation since 1066, Westminster Abbey is also known as a Royal Peculiar - a church controlled not by a bishop but by the monarch herself. Crowned there 65 years ago, Queen Elizabeth II is now the world's longest-reigning monarch and to celebrate, Westminster Abbey has commissioned an historic new work - a towering stained-glass window. The artist behind it is David Hockney - who famously refused a knighthood and declined an invitation to paint the Queen's portrait because he was too busy painting landscapes in Yorkshire. Adopting an art form which is over 1,000 years old is yet another surprising move from an artist whose career has continually defied expectation. With unique access, imagine... follows the whole process from design to installation.
He has been crowned with every laurel in contemporary classical music, composed operas which play on the world's most illustrious stages and been knighted for his services to music. Yet Sir George Benjamin is still relatively little known outside the classical world. Imagine... sets that straight. Intimate and humorous, this film tracks the creation of the British composer's latest opera Lessons in Love and Violence, which premiered at the Royal Opera House this year. The film follows his journey from composing songs aged three and being transfixed by Fantasia and 2001: Space Odyssey to his golden days as the youngest ever pupil of the legendary composer Olivier Messiaen in Paris. Early experiments with computers, a passion for folk instruments and virtuosity on the piano combined to produce the startling, moving music heard today.
This year has been an extraordinary year for British artist Tracey Emin. With large-scale commissions catapulting her from London's St Pancras station to the streets of downtown Sydney - only pausing for breath with exhibitions in Hong Kong and Brussels along the way - she has proven yet again that she packs a punch like no other. But as she turns 55 and enters what she likes to call the "last stage" of her life, is it time for a more mature, reflective Tracey? Following the death of her mother in 2016, she has decided to return to her home town of Margate and convert a derelict print works there into a new studio where she can live and create. imagine... has spent the past year following Tracey across the world in a bid to chart her creative process at work. Throughout the film, she tells Alan Yentob about her life to date, from her troubled early years in Margate to a series of breakthroughs in the 1990s as a leading light of the Young British Artists, featuring career-defining work like My Bed and her embroidered tent Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995. With contributors including Sir Nicholas Serota, Jay Jopling, Maria Balshaw and David Dawson, this is the definitive account of one of Britain's most infamous artists.
Cary Grant was one of Hollywood's greatest leading men - suave, sophisticated and as comfortable in romantic comedies as he was in iconic Hitchcock thrillers. imagine...Becoming Cary Grant tells the unexpected story of this Hollywood icon who was not all he seemed on screen. With readings from his unpublished autobiography spoken by actor Jonathan Pryce and newly discovered footage shot by Grant himself this is a revealing and fascinating insight into this troubled legend of cinema.
Andrea Levy's novel Small Island about the Windrush generation captured imaginations. imagine... finds out if the new adaptation of her book The Long Song follows suit.
Alan Yentob follows celebrated young British playwright James Graham, whose award-winning works take audiences to the very heart of key political events.
Alan Yentob looks into the life of comedian Jo Brand. Brand burst on to the nation's largely male stand-up comedy scene in the 1980s. In doing so, she revolutionised what women could be - and say - on stage. From her working-class roots in south London, through her teenage tearaway years in Hastings to the decade that she spent as a psychiatric nurse, Jo's journey into comedy has not been an easy one. imagine... goes behind the scenes with Jo as she presents HIGNFY and The News Quiz on Radio 4 and accompanies her on the book tour circuit as she promotes her latest book. Brand has been a trailblazer for women on screen. Not only has she broken through into the tough world of stand-up comedy, but she has demonstrated enormous diversity, including acting, writing and performing, factual, drama and comedy. Contributors include Peter Capaldi; Alan Davies, Victoria Coren Mitchell, Mark Thomas, Mary Beard, Morwenna Banks and Ian Hislop.
Bill Viola is renowned the world over as a pioneer of video art. As the Royal Academy in London mounts a major exhibition of his vast and immersive installations, alongside works by Michelangelo, imagine... charts Viola's career over 12 years and follows him as he creates his most high-profile commission to date, Mary and Martyrs, a permanent installation for St Paul's Cathedral. Gerry Fox's film follows Viola on set as he films, with stunt gear and pyrotechnics, his striking visual tableaux in fields, salt lakes and studios. Viola talks candidly about his preoccupations with life, death and suffering, alongside his wife and collaborator Kira Perov.
Edna O’Brien is one of the greatest literary talents and rule breakers of her generation. In 1960, her revolutionary debut novel, The Country Girls, broke down social and sexual barriers for women and was subsequently banned in her native country of Ireland. The awrd-winning O’Brien continues to produce some of the most urgent work of her unparalleled career, with her eighteenth novel, Girl, a searing story inspired by the schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, to be published later this year. In this honest and engaging documentary, Edna O’Brien reflects on her remarkable and ongoing writing life, interwoven with actors who perform extracts from her novels and rare family archive footage.
Alan Yentob meets Harlem-born artist, author and activist Faith Ringgold as she prepares for her London show at the Serpentine Gallery.
Olafur Eliasson has been pushing the limits of the sublime and the spectacular in his art for almost 30 years. From his monumental installation, The Weather Project, in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in 2003 to his recent interventions in climate change and global migration, his is an art which strives to change the world every step of the way. In 2019, the Danish-Icelandic artist returns to Tate Modern with his landmark exhibition, In Real Life, surveying the breadth of his career from his beginnings as an art student in Copenhagen through to the latest pieces created in his vast studio laboratory in Berlin. Much of his work is shaped by his response to his parents' home country of Iceland and the interplay of water and light showcased in its natural phenomena.
Filmed over several months in Waltham Forest, London Borough of Culture 2019, imagine… follows a group of young people from two local estates in as they take part in a ground-breaking arts intervention programme designed to change the course of their lives for good. Working with youth and performances coaches and guided by mentors from the arts world, including the artistic director of the Young Vic Kwame Kwei-Armah, 22-year-old Leytonstone-born actor, writer and director Harris Dickinson, EastEnders actress and comedian Tameka Empson and producer and composer Talvin Singh, the participants will write and perform a musical based on their lives.
Alan Yentob follows one of our best loved performers as he releases his first autobiography charting his early years in show business. In this revealing and poignant film Sir Lenny Henry meets up with his closest friends, family and colleagues to remember his sudden rise to fame aged 16 on TV talent show, New Faces, which catapulted him from working-class kid from Dudley to one of Britain’s most celebrated black performers. imagine... also explores Lenny’s other early television breakthrough roles on Tiswas and Three Of A Kind as well as five troubling years as the only black performer in The Black & White Minstrel Show. Alongside his early achievements, Lenny Henry also discusses his recent career reinvention as a serious actor of stage and screen and his work as a political activist campaigning for greater diversity in the entertainment and broadcasting industry
A portrait of the Kanneh-Masons, exploring the music-making of Stuart and Kadiatu's seven gifted children as well as family life at home in lockdown, culminating in a concert.
Following the publication of his new memoir My Name Is Why, writer Lemn Sissay tells Alan Yentob what it was like to grow up as the only black child in a sleepy market town outside Wigan in the 1970s.
Alan Yentob meets choreographer and director Kate Prince as her ZooNation dance company embarks on a new West End production, Message in a Bottle.
Kwame Kwei-Armah is one of British theatre's most exciting creative leaders. Currently the artistic director of London's Young Vic, he has had a successful career as an actor, writer and director on both sides of the Atlantic. He came to fame playing paramedic Finlay Newton in the BBC drama Casualty, and his groundbreaking play Elmina's Kitchen was one of the first by a black British writer to be staged at the National Theatre and in the West End. In his first two years at the Young Vic, he has programmed a run of sell-out shows, including Death of a Salesman, Twelfth Night, Tree and the controversial Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview. As the Young Vic celebrates its 50th anniversary, Alan Yentob hears how a young Southall boy called Ian Roberts became the artist Kwame Kwei-Armah.
Marina Abramovic is the reigning queen of performance art. She invites Alan Yentob into her home, opens up her enormous personal archive and travels back to her birthplace, Belgrade. Her early, provocative work was once dismissed, but today thousands go to see her perform pieces that can last for weeks, even months at a time. By using just her own body and pushing her physical and psychological boundaries, she has become an international artistic superstar. Abramovic talks about her family and growing up in communist Yugoslavia, where she fell in love with performance art and became one of its most outrageous and celebrated practitioners. She remembers her former partner Ulay, with whom she made a series of pieces that broke boundaries – including walking the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 1988. In 2010, 750,000 people went to see The Artist is Present, her solo performance lasting 736 hours at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This September she premiered her opera, 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Abramovic was about to become the first female artist in its entire 250-year history to be given a solo exhibition in the main galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her show has now been delayed until autumn 2021, but in its place imagine... is proud to present this intimate portrait
Alan Yentob explores the huge ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK's pioneering and world-renowned performing arts industry. Drawing on footage captured throughout 2020, he looks at the huge challenges in both the short and long term, and the creative ways in which people are keeping the industry alive until it can re-emerge more fully. From the world’s first drive-in opera and innovative live-streamed theatre performances on our most iconic stages, to urgent new work inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and debut performances of world premiere dance pieces, there is much to admire in spite of the enormous challenges involved in staging any kind of performance at all in the current climate.
Filmed during lockdown, Alan Yentob invites us into the intriguing world of award-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. The only living British author to hold the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ishiguro’s novels and short stories have been translated into more than fifty languages. Two of his most popular novels, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, have also enjoyed success as star-studded film adaptations. In this revealing profile, Ishiguro explores the significance of his early life in Nagasaki and the experience of growing up in the aftermath of the atomic bomb. He shares memories of feeling like the only Japanese boy in the home counties of England in the early 1960s, and how this helped to shape his viewpoint as a writer. As a young man, he harboured ambitions to be a singer-songwriter, and he shares his lifelong emotional connection to music and lyrics, and the impact that particular songs have had on his writing.
Alan Yentob explores the remarkable life and work of the trailblazing Anglo-Nigerian writer Bernardine Evaristo, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other.
Playwright Tom Stoppard tells Alan Yentob the extraordinary story of his life and his latest play, Leopoldstadt, in which he faces up to the pain and loss in his past.
Author Marian Keyes is loved and admired the world over for her darkly comic and confessional writing. Her novels, which are often described as comedy romance or chick lit, draw on her own experience of growing up in a rowdy Irish Catholic family, her struggles with alcohol addiction and depression and the quest to find her very own Mr Right in the shape of her husband, Tony. Alan Yentob meets Marian to explore her incredible journey from hard-partying waitress to internationally best-selling author and everything that she's learnt about life, love and story-telling along the way.
Alan Yentob presents a film exploring the life and work of the Ivor Novello Award-winning black British singer-songwriter Labi Siffre.
Alan Yentob profiles dance pioneer Wayne McGregor, the resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet, charting his ascent from childhood in 1970s Stockport.
Following the release of her autobiography, This Much Is True, actress Miriam Margolyes opens up to Alan Yentob about her career highs and her most vulnerable moments. Across her eclectic career, she has played scene-stealing turns in Blackadder, voiced some of our most well-known adverts and found fame internationally as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films.
Twenty-something virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, singer and arranger Jacob Collier has managed to outdo the Beatles by winning Grammy Awards for each of his first four albums. Alan Yentob meets Jacob and musicians he has collaborated with, including Stormzy, Chris Martin and film composer Hans Zimmer.
As she prepares to publish her long-awaited autobiography, former children's laureate Malorie Blackman discusses the key moments in her life that made her a writer. Bold, provocative and challenging, Blackman's books have plunged children's literature into previously uncharted waters: her tragic reverse-racism novel Noughts and Crosses challenged assumptions and declared her a writer like no other.
Alan Yentob follows acclaimed artist Sonia Boyce as she prepares to make history as the first black woman to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale. Why does that matter? Because this historic, sprawling exhibition is widely seen as the most prestigious and influential showcase of contemporary art in the world. The pressure is on for Sonia to pull off the biggest exhibition of her career.
Alan Yentob meets Douglas Stuart, the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain, which was based on Stuart’s own troubled upbringing amid poverty and addiction in 1980s Glasgow.
imagine… profiles acclaimed British director Stephen Frears. Despite decades of success across both cinema and television, Frears likes to fly under the radar, subscribing to Billy Wilder's maxim, ‘The best director is the one you don't see'. He has helmed an array of critically acclaimed films - My Beautiful Laundrette, The Grifters, Dangerous Liaisons, The Queen and Philomena, to name just a few. Some say he's notoriously grumpy, others that he's mischievous and misunderstood. Now for the first time, Frears opens up about his life and career. What drives this 81-year-old, who has over 70 productions to his name across cinema and television?
imagine... tells the story of Aviva Studios, Manchester’s colossal new cultural venue, and goes behind the scenes at the world premiere of its opening production, Free Your Mind.
imagine... follows celebrated British TV writer Russell T Davies as he prepares to return as the showrunner of Doctor Who – with two Doctors and bigger ambitions.
imagine... profiles the UK’s most successful double act of the last 40 years, French & Saunders, exploring a brand of comedy based on satire, silliness and, above all, friendship.
Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, are the most successful duo in the history of British pop. They have sold more than 50 million records, produced over forty Top 40 singles, four UK number ones, performed in several world tours, and they are still making new music together.
In 2005, an extraordinary sculpture by leading Brit artist Marc Quinn of a naked, heavily pregnant, disabled Alison Lapper was unveiled on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. It's a project that's been dogged with controversy. Following the creation of Alison Lapper Pregnant over five years, this film tells the compelling story of how two very different people came together to challenge preconceptions about beauty and what is considered normal.
Film documenting the creation of Love, a spectacular collaboration bringing together the magic of The Beatles' music with the imagination of Cirque Du Soleil. The project was initially the idea of George Harrison, two years before his death from cancer in 2001. Sir George Martin, along with his son/co-producer Giles Martin demonstrate the process by which the soundtrack was created. Also features interviews with Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison.
Alan Yentob presents a documentary about cartoon pop group Gorillaz' foray into the world of Chinese opera, with Damon Albarn composing his first full length score and Jamie Hewlett designing a myriad of gigantic sets and elaborate costumes. Drawing on the 1970s cult television series, Monkey - Journey to the West has a cast that includes the cloud-hopping, mountain-somersaulting Monkey, his mates Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka, plus acrobats, martial artists, umbrella-twirling girls, a horse-eating dragon, a skeleton demon and a giant Buddha. Produced by Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), in co-production with Manchester International Festival and the State Opera House in Berlin, they present a new contemporary opera entirely in Mandarin directed by Chen Shi-Zheng. This film follows Albarn and Hewlett on a journey from Beijing to Paris, working with martial artists and acrobats; leading up to its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival.
The remarkable election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States has been propelled as much by his exceptional skill as an orator as by any other factor. From the silver-tongued to the tongue-tied, the sublime to the ridiculous, this programme takes a fond look at the art and history of the political speech. Alan Yentob joins the crowds at the inauguration in Washington, and traces the awesome power of orators from Cicero onwards, via Cromwell, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, Martin Luther King and many others. Among the contributors are Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Bob Geldof, Neil Kinnock, Ted Sorensen, Tony Benn, William Hague, Geoffrey Howe, Diane Abbott, Charlotte Higgins, Alastair Campbell and Germaine Greer. What makes a good speech great? How much is content, how much is presentation? And has Obama brought eloquence back to 21st-century politics for good?
Drama-documentary presented by Alan Yentob, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role as Van Gogh. Every word spoken by the actors in this film is sourced from the letters that Van Gogh sent to his younger brother Theo, and of those around him. What emerges is a complex portrait of a sophisticated, civilised and yet tormented man. The film won a Rockie for Best Arts Documentary at the Banff World Media Festival in 2011, receiving critical acclaim for its fascinating insight into the life of the artist and its unique approach to storytelling.
Alan Yentob introduces a revealing documentary which tells the story of the making of The Rolling Stones' acclaimed 1972 album, Exile on Main Street. Facing huge unpaid tax bills in Britain, the band fled to the French Riviera. Life was crazy and chaotic there, yet the band still managed to make one of the seminal albums of rock and roll history.
Imagine presents a feature-length documentary about the making of U2's seminal album Achtung Baby. Early in 2011, U2 returned to Hansa Studio in Berlin to discuss the making of Achtung Baby in this film directed by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim (It Might Get Loud, Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth). From The Sky Down was then selected to open the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September, the first ever documentary to open the festival in its 36-year history. Twenty years after the 1991 release of Achtung Baby, Davis Guggenheim traces the album's genesis using animation and previously unseen footage from Berlin and Dublin alongside interviews with the band as they reflect on what was a key chapter in their career. 'In the terrain of rock bands - implosion or explosion is seemingly inevitable. U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction... this band has endured and thrived. From The Sky Down asks the question why.'
Renowned as the bravura front man of one of Britain's greatest rock bands, Freddie Mercury's life outside Queen is rarely celebrated or explored. In a touching portrait, imagine... charts Mercury's solo projects and interests, including a previously unheard collaboration with Michael Jackson and the triumphant Barcelona project with Dame Montserrat Caballe, as well as the life of a gay man who was not yet publicly out. Rare interviews reveal a shy man in search of love, and a driven artist living behind the protection of his stage persona.
Following in the footsteps of Alan Yentob's 2008 profile of Jay-Z, imagine... presents the much-heralded Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream. With Beyoncé herself in the director's chair, this unique and confessional film combines spectacular showpieces and video diary footage, giving a revealing insight into the life of the 16-time Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, actress, entrepreneur, wife and mother. This is Beyoncé, by Beyoncé.
