Salman Rushdie: Through a Glass Darkly (2024)
Salman Rushdie speaks to Alan Yentob about the devastating knife attack he was subjected to in 2022, losing his right eye and almost his ability to write. ...
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Alan Yentob is associated with: Salman Rushdie: Through a Glass Darkly
Salman Rushdie speaks to Alan Yentob about the devastating knife attack he was subjected to in 2022, losing his right eye and almost his ability to write. ...
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Featuring exclusive access to their recent tour and their new album, this documentary reveals the fascinating world of Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. ...
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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. ...
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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. ...
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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. ...
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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 Stormz ...
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Miriam Margolyes is one of Britain's best loved and most provocative actresses. 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 ...
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Alan Yentob presents a film exploring the life and work of the Ivor Novello Award-winning black British singer-songwriter Labi Siffre. An enigmatic and reclusive talent, Siffre wrote the song It Must Be Love, later covered by Madness, alongside songs of de ...
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Tom Stoppard is perhaps the world's leading, funniest and cleverest playwright. Ever since he hit the ground running in the 1960s with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, there has always been a streak of melancholy beneath the sparkling surface of his ...
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A revealing profile of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, as he publishes his much-anticipated new book, Klara and the Sun. ...
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Performance artist Marina Abramovic invites Alan Yentob into her home, opens her archive, travels to her birthplace in Belgrade and talks about turning her life into art. ...
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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 gl ...
Watch NowAlan Yentob meets Harlem-born artist, author and activist Faith Ringgold as she prepares for her London show at the Serpentine Gallery. ...
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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 Irelan ...
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Alan Yentob looks into the life of comedian Jo Brand, marking a diverse career which began in 1980s stand-up comedy and has moved through writing, performing and presenting. ...
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David Hockney undertakes a commission to design and install a stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the sixty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. ...
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Alan Yentob spends time with Philip Pullman in Oxford, discovering how the ex-teacher became an acclaimed author of fantasy fiction and an outspoken critic of organised religion. ...
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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. ...
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An intimate portrait of British sculptor Rachel Whiteread as she unpacks her life's work for a major retrospective at Tate Britain in London. Her work explores themes of memory and absence, casting sculptural forms from familiar domestic objects small and ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 the ...
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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 ...
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Co-produced by Rogan Productions and BBC Studios. London. The Summer of 2012. As rehearsals take place in a rainy Dagenham car park, Director Danny Boyle reveals a glimpse of his Opening Ceremony to the press. Some denounce it as the "Tellytubby Olympics" ...
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Alan Yentob talks to British architect David Chipperfield about his breakthrough in Berlin, his love of the city and the 11 years spent on the transformation of the Neues Museum. ...
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Alan Yentob meets 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 40 years, Gormley has used sculpture as a means to examine the human co ...
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As Man Booker Prize-winning writer Howard Jacobson retells The Merchant of Venice, 400 years after Shakespeare's death, he travels with Alan Yentob to the ghetto in Venice to explore Shakespeare's most performed play - and in particular the character of th ...
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A fascinating look at the colorful 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 ...
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Eccentric aliens give a man the power to do anything he wants to determine if Earth is worth saving. ...
Watch NowIn 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 fi ...
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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 th ...
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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 and t ...
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A look at Rio's cultural, political and technical revolutions since the 1970s to 2011 ...
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Alan Yentob meets the five surviving members of Monty Python - John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle - as they prepare to reunite on stage. ...
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Famous for lines like 'It is better to be feared than loved', Machiavelli's notorious book, 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? ...
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Beautiful story about effervescent ninety-year-old children's book author and illustrator Judith Kerr - (a true delight) - recounting her childhood escape from Hitler and eventual return to Berlin. ...
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After the 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 luminaries? Alan Yentob explores this alternative art universe. ...
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1975 documentary about 11-year-old serial arsonist Michael 'Mini' Cooper, followed by Cooper and the film's director Franc Roddam in conversation with Alan Yentob in 2013. ...
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Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, the late Zaha Hadid, who designed buildings around the globe from Austria to Azerbaijan. ...
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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 ha ...
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After 53 years Television Centre, the BBC's TV headquarters, is closing its doors and Michael Grade gathers together many of its best-loved faces to stroll down memory lane. ...
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Mel Brooks appears on stage with Alan Yentob, the creative director for the BBC, at the Geffen Theatre in California to review his extensive career as a writer, director, actor, producer, composer comedian, as well as his failed ballet dancing career. This ...
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Crime writer Ian Rankin invites BBC to follow him as he writes his next novel, and as he ponders what to write about after retiring his most famous creation, Rebus. ...
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Following the recent death of Ken Russell, Alan Yentob looks back over the career of the flamboyant film director responsible for Women In Love, Tommy and The Devils. Friends and admirers - including Glenda Jackson, Terry Gilliam, Twiggy, Melvyn Bragg, Rob ...
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Will the rise of electronic books mark the final chapter in the love story between traditional books and their readers? Alan Yentob discusses the subject with a host of writers. ...
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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 s ...
Watch NowThe Life of Tolstoy, from his gambling and youthful escapades, to his powerful religious conversion and finally death. ...
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Alan Yentob meets Ray Davies, the creative powerhouse behind The Kinks and author of some of the best-loved songs of the 60s, who candidly discusses the vicissitudes of his career. ...
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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 fi ...
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This documentary looks at executive producer Philip Segal's seven-year quest to return Doctor Who to the screen, from his initial contact with the BBC shortly before its cancellation in 1989, through to the production and transmission of the movie in 1996. ...
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A drama-documentary presented by Alan Yentob, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role. 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 co ...
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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. Alan Yentob sets out to discover why the word game leaves us s ...
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Alan Yentob meets one of Britain's most accomplished and popular sculptors, Anish Kapoor, known for his audacious works of staggering complexity and scale. ...
Watch NowSculptor 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 themselve ...
Watch NowA 2008 documentary about Japanese author Haruki Murakami ...
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Alan Yentob talks to Dr. Oliver Sacks about his latest book 'Musicophila: Tales of Music and the Brain' which deals with the power of music and how it helps those with extreme neurological conditions, and meets some extraordinary people overcame their cond ...
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Alan Yentob immerses himself in the Art World visiting the 5th London Frieze Art Fair in October 2007, the centre of the British contemporary art calendar. ...
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Alan Yentob takes the artist Howard Hodgkin away from his Bloomsbury studio to India to discover more about his works and what inspires him. ...
Watch NowCould 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 caus ...
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Documentary about author Roald Dahl, produced for the British television series Imagine. ...
Watch NowRenowned American playwright Arthur Miller discusses his life and work with Alan Yentob. ...
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Alan Yentob explores the work of Martin Parr, considered to be the most influential photographer of his generation ...
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Writer and Director Mike Leigh discusses the techniques used to create his plays. ...
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Twins Alfie and Elise find a magical Wish Watch on Christmas Eve and are swept by the Wish Collector into the musical Land of Sometimes, where they learn that wishes have consequences. ...
Watch NowSalman Rushdie speaks to Alan Yentob about the devastating knife attack he was subjected to in 2022, losing his right eye and almost his ability to write. ...
Watch NowFeaturing exclusive access to their recent tour and their new album, this documentary reveals the fascinating world of Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. ...
Watch NowTwenty-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 Stormz ...
Watch NowMiriam Margolyes is one of Britain's best loved and most provocative actresses. 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 ...
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The Man Who Saw Too Much tells the story of 106-year-old Boris Pahor, believed to be the oldest known survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. He was sent to Dachau, Dora, Harzungen, Bergen-Belsen and Natzweiler – one of the Nazis' least known but most ...
Watch NowAt 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. ...
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A brief history of the Cuban capital of Havana, backed by a vibrant soundtrack of son cubano, salsa, jazz, rumba, mambo and hip hop. Drawing on archive footage, animations, movie excerpts and interviews with Havana residents, eyewitnesses and experts, Haba ...
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After a break of nine years, David Gilmour steps back into the spotlight with a number one album and world tour. This film is an intimate portrait of one of the greatest guitarists and singers of all time, exploring his past and present. With unprecedente ...
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London: The Modern Babylon is legendary director Julien Temple's epic time-traveling voyage to the heart of his hometown. ...
Watch NowAlan Yentob meets Ray Davies, the creative powerhouse behind The Kinks and author of some of the best-loved songs of the 60s, who candidly discusses the vicissitudes of his career. ...
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Arts documentary, first broadcast before Ai Weiwei's arrest by the Chinese authorities in April 2011, and his subsequent release after being detained for 11 weeks. Architect, photographer, curator and blogger, Ai Weiwei is China's most famous and politica ...
Watch NowA drama-documentary presented by Alan Yentob, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role. 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 co ...
Watch NowSculptor 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 themselve ...
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Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic a ...
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This insightful biography tells the story of legendary singer/songwriter Yusuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens, as he celebrates his return to the music industry and the release of his first album in almost 30 years. ...
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This is the definitive video biography of rock 'n roll legend Buddy Holly. Produced and hosted by former Beatle, Paul McCartney, includes interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison, Holly's family, and McCartney himsel ...
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This documentary features acclaimed Chicagoan broadcaster and Pulitzer Prize winner Studs Terkel talking about the value of oral history and the voice of ordinary working Americans. ...
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Drama documentary which takes the form of an up-dated version of Pygmalion. With a special music score by jazz group Working Week, with real "society" characters and locations from 1984. ...
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Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti performs at the 1984 Glastonbury Festival. Originally produced for Arena. ...
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The Everly Brothers were among the most successful and revered of all the giants of early rock 'n' roll. A determining influence on the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel and the Beach Boys, they brought the ethereal harmonies of the Appalachian Mountains to the ...
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Sunset Boulevard stretches 27 miles from Los Angeles' Chinatown all the way to the ocean – a ride made famous by Philip Marlowe in the Chandler books. Film star mansions give way to tatty motels; exclusive offices stand alongside nightclubs with aspiring ...
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Made a year after Luis Buñuel's death in 1983 this is an illuminating portrait of the surreal and visionary director, featuring clips, archival interviews, and commentary from scholars and contemporaries including Catherine Deneuve, Fernando Rey, and Jean ...
Watch NowThis acclaimed documentary depicts the sad life of the greatest of all jazz singers, Billie Holiday, a life engraved with personal tragedy and ultimately shortened by drug abuse and alcoholism. Her story and career are portrayed through rare archival film ...
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After years of separation, the two voices and acoustic guitars that laid the foundation for pop music were united again to harmonize in London's Royal Albert Hall as thousands of fans who flocked to the scene were joined by generations of musicians they in ...
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Documentary which examines the work of the GPO Film Unit in its fiftieth year. Co-produced by The Post Office and Arena. ...
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A documentary about and an interview with Hollywood actress Bette Davis about her life and career from the late 1920s to the 1980s on stage and mostly before the camera. ...
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A documentary featured on BBC's Arena series in 1983. The author discusses his life, his work and his thoughts and opinions. ...
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Documentary portrait of the life of playwright Joe Orton, who was murdered by his lover Kenneth Halliwell in April 1967. ...
Watch NowWriter and Director Mike Leigh discusses the techniques used to create his plays. ...
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Arena celebrates Roy Plomley's Desert Island Discs with the help of many celebrity castaways, including Frankie Howerd, Russell Harty, Trevor Brooking, the Lord Mayor of London, Professor JK Galbraith and Arthur Askey. The special guest for the 40th annive ...
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A ski run in Italy, a supermarket manager in Luton, a sandwich bar in London EC2, Arena opens the bonnet of the Ford Cortina, Britain's most popular, most stolen, and most misunderstood car. 'Dagenham dustbin'? 'Poor man's Rolls-Royce'? In the year that m ...
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Seamlessly blending elements of movement and music, Twyla Tharp choreographs a rock 'n' roll dance spectacular, set to a score by former Talking Heads front man David Byrne. Adapted for television by Tharp from the original Broadway production, this memora ...
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Arena looks behind the Gioconda smile. The Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre behind plate glass - an unsigned, undated portrait of a smiling woman. She is the most idolised and abused woman in the history of art. ...
Watch NowGetting Away From Sidney - BBC TV documentary about Graeae, a touring theatre company of disabled actors (1981) The Arena arts TV programme which put Graeae Theatre Company on the map in 1981. In this documentary are scenes from Graeae's first show "SIDE ...
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Arena cameras were on hand to film the return of Dire Straits from their triumphant 1980 Brothers in Arms world tour. The film features a superb concert they played at The Rainbow, and band members talk about their music and the pressures and the consequen ...
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Adrian Thrills investigates a new and exhilarating musical blend which is taking the country by storm. 2-tone is a unique mix of music, fusing together reggae, rock, soul, ska, blue beat and punk. With its home in Coventry and its roots in reggae, it deriv ...
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Arena documentary investigating the history and influence of iconic song 'My Way' ...
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George Melly explores his lifelong relationship with surrealism in all its forms and prominent personalities. ...
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The documentary depicts Bowie on tour in Los Angeles, using a mixture of vérité sequences filmed in limousines and hotels, and concert footage. Most of the concert footage was taken from a show at the Los Angeles Universal Amphitheatre on 2 September 197 ...
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Ella Fitzgerald in performance at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club. This second show confirms yet again all the superlatives which critics have lavished on her in recent performances. ...
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Recorded at Ronnie Scott's in London in 1974 and backed by the Tommy Flanagan Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald performs some of her most famous songs, including George Gershwin's The Man I Love. ...
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