Premiere. Ronald Eyre reviews what's going on in the theatre, Kenneth Tynan talks to Laurence Olivier about Lilian Baylis and The Old Vic, and a film about David Hockney's sets for The Rake's Progress.

George Melly looks at how they sold the 70's and a report on the opening of the Space Studios.

An interview with Howard Barker, author of 'Stripwell', and an extract from same; commentary by Kenneth Tynan; and an investigation of 'Birds of Paradise'.

Cartoonist Mel Caiman on the New Yorker magazine and its artists, Richard Hamilton at the Serpentine Gallery, and a new documentary exhibition from Jarrow.

Peter Hall talks about the history and new South Band location of the National Theater, where he is artistic director.

Features Observer critic William Feaver on Painting the End of the World, Bill Brandt's selection of landscape photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the best of science fiction illustration.

Extract from a contemporary play and Kenneth Tynan opines.

Shirley Conran is the guest columnist; fashion photographer Barry Lategan is filmed working; and Victorian painter Edward Burne-Jones' London exhibition.

Deborah Norton reviews British stage events, a play extract, and Kenneth Tynan opines about the theatre.

Guest columnist Terry Measham; a look into the work of painter and poet Charles Tomlinson.

Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova rehearse for a BBC New Year Gala Performance; Kenneth Tynan draws a portrait of Albert Finney.

Filmmaker Roger Graef and journalist Simon Jenkins discuss the destruction of historical buildings, in light of a recent SAVE campaign report and the conclusion of the European Architectural Heritage Year.

Deborah Norton returns with reports, interviews and extracts from what is liveliest and best in the British theatrical scene.

Jonathan Miller introduces this week's look at what is most stimulating and enjoyable on the theatrical scene.

A look at American photographer Paul Strand and recent trends in British photography.

Arena goes to Scarborough for the British premiere of a new Alan Ayckbourn play "Just Between Ourselves".

Arena looks at aspects of community art and the work of painter Keith Grant, artist-in-residence at the New Charing Cross Hospital.

Claire Bloom and Kenneth Tynan discuss extracts from Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days', George Bernard Shaw's 'Too True to be Good', and Tennessee Williams' 'Sweet Bird of Youth'.

Arena talks with Robert Janz and Dante Leonelli about incorporating time into sculpture.

Arena brings extracts from Paris' contemporary theatre season, including Frank Wedekind's 'Lulu' and Marguerite Duras' 'Days in the Tree', and an interview with Delphine Seyrig.

Arena presents the work of British and American video artists.

Barbara Jefford, Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Kenneth Tynan Billie Whitelaw and many of the people behind the scenes say goodbye to the Old Vic building.

Liverpool poet and painter Adrian Henry visits 'The Face of Merseyside'; Boyd and Evans use photographs as the basis of their explorations of everyday life.

Alumni of the Royal Court celebrate its 20th anniversary.

Barrie Penrose investigates a multi-national art empire and the artists and methods that created it.

Features Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Galina Visnevskaya in the Scottish Opera's production of Macbeth, The Kantor Theatre Company from Poland, and Fenella Fielding in a late-night revue.

Features the La Mama Theatre Company from New York; Bunraku, traditional Japanese Puppet Theatre; a recital by Frederica Von Stade; and Judith Blegen as Susanna in 'The Marriage of Figaro'.

Writer Germaine Greer and her god-daughter Ruby take a look at a child's Edinburgh Festival and some of the fringe activities, including Gruppo Teatro Libero from Rome and Quentin Crisp.

A look at the opening of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

Gavin Miller interviews the director Robert Altman on "M*A*S*H", "Nashville", "Buffalo Bill and the Indians" and more.

David Gould, the expert who discovered Tom Keating's Samuel Palmer imitations, shows the process of identifying and analyzing suspected pictures.

Gavin Millar talks with Frank Westmore, whose family has dominated the make-up departments of American cinema for decades.

Peter Shaffer, writer of 'Equus', talks about his plays, his life and the theatre with an excerpt from the 1976 stage production of 'Equus'.

Gavin Millar interviews director Eric Rohmer about 'Die Marquise von O', 'Claire's Knee' and 'Love in the Afternoon'.

British illustrators Mick Brownfield and Allan Manham are documented working on their current projects; Artist Chris Orr probes the dreadful truth behind the net curtains of suburbia.

Don Siegel, director of 'The Shootist', 'Charley Varrick', 'Coogan's Bluff', 'Dirty Harry' and many other violent thrillers talks about the problems of the director who is typecast by his success in one specialized genre.

A look at Theatre National Populaire, one of France's leading theaters, and Patrice Chéreau's 'La Dispute' by Marivaux and Roger Planchon's 'Tartuffe', as well as scene's from Planchon's scenes from his Blues, Whites and Reds.

In light of the low proportion of British films in the 20th London Film Festival, Gavin Millar looks at what's wrong with the British film industry and distribution system.

Sculpture for the Blind - a special Tate Gallery exhibition; Linda Benedict-Jones, photographer; James Boswell - a revival of his war pictures.

Arena speaks with Spanish directors at the Madrid premiere of 'The Long Vacation of 36'.

20th anniversary tribute to Bertolt Brecht at Newcastle's University Theatre with scenes from 'The Good Woman of Setzuan' and prose, poetry and music.

A look at the Disney exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum; an interview with 'The Ritz' director Dick Lester and actress Rita Moreno; an excerpt from Buster Keaton's 'Spite Marriage'; and the results of the Titles Competition.

Gavin Millar talks to Mel Brooks just before the London release of 'Silent Movie'.

An introduction to the magical world of wood-sculptor Sam Smith, plus a look at one of this month's major exhibitions.

Gavin Miller talks to director Martin Ritt, writer Walter Bernstein, and actors Woody Allen and Zero Mostel about 'The Front'

An interview with Stewart Parker about his new musical 'Spokesong' with excerpt; a profile of 81 year old actor Richard Goolden with scenes from 'Toad of Toad Hall' and Tom Stoppard's 'Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land'.

A fortnightly look at the big screen at home and abroad. News, views and interviews presented by Gavin Millar.

Ralph Steadman illustrates a children's anti-war story, caricatures at his local pub, and speaks about his drawing techniques and his work, including Alice, and impressions of the Patty Hearst trial and the Watergate hearings.

Gavin Miller discusses 'Network' with director Sidney Lumet and Robert Kee; Alberto Cavalcanti talks about his film career on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

Peter Stein, director of Die Schaubuhne theatre co-operative, comes to London with his Shakespeare Project. Includes extracts from 'Summerfolk' and 'Shakespeare's Memory'.

Gavin Millar talks to New Yorker critic Pauline Kael about Costa-Gavras' 'Z' and 'Section Speciale', along with her passion for the movies and how she wields her power.

Arena investigates holograms and their potential in the arts; artist Kit Williams' vivid folklore paintings.

On the occasion of the release of the third film version of 'A Star is Born', James Mason talks about the curious business of stardom and how it has changed.

Arena visits three theatres - the Mercury Theater in Colchester, the Humberside Theatre in Hull, and the Duke's Playhouse in Lancaster - to find out what they are doing, how they are doing it and why they think they should go on doing it.

A look at Ealing Studios, including excerpts of many of their popular films.

Portrait painter Philip Sutton; Helmut Weissenborn, a German WWI soldier who illustrated with wood engravings the war diary of Edward Thomas, an English poet who died in WWI; and Gothic art in Cologne.

In a special edition from Rome, Gavin Millar interviews Bernardo Bertolucci, director of 'Last Tango in Paris' and '1900', and Gore Vidal on Hollywood and 'Cinecitta'.

Prospect Theatre Company reopens the Old Vic. Includes rehearsal footage from 'St Joan', 'Hamlet', 'Antony and Cleopatra', and 'War Music', a new musical adaptation of 'The Iliad' by Christopher Logue.

Gavin Millar talks to director Bernardo Berolucci in Rome about '1900', his new five and a half hour film, as well as his earlier work.

The artist Ian Breakwall gave up painting for the art of a daily diary; Jim Dine explains why he returned from pop art to drawing the human figure.

Arena looks at erotic films, including 'Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus', 'Hardcore', and 'Come Play With Me'.

An interview with Sophia Loren on the occasion of the opening of 'The Cassandra Crossing'.

Mr Universe, the Crazy Horse Girls de Paris, Yum Yum Shaw, superstars with police escorts, topless bathing beauties-the Cannes Film Festival still sometimes seems more like a circus than a trade fair. But for all that, film people find it a…

In the last ten years an astonishing number of new writers have emerged. Plays by Barrie Keeffe, John McGrath, David Hare, Howard Barker, Howard Brenton, Trevor Griffiths and Stephen Poli akoff have been performed at the Royal Court, the Al…

Features the 1977 Edinburgh International Festival with a new production of Carmen, the experimental shows, Film Festival, Television Festival, and art galleries.

with Gavin Millar returns for a new season after a visit to Hollywood, which despite rumours of slump and panic is still the unquestioned capital of the cinema world. We talked to one of its ruling princes, John Franken heimer, director of …

Diane Keaton and Woody Allen talk about the filming of 'Annie Hall' and their long friendship.

In the 17th century Troilus and Cressida was censored and in the 18th century Tate gave King Lear a happy ending. The programme debates the line between interpretation and vandalism.

Star Wars - the biggest and fastest money-maker in the history of the movies - has opened in Britain at last. What on earth - or in heaven - has caused the phenomenal success of this galactic romp-cum-morality tale? Gavin Millar talks to t…

George Melly explores his lifelong relationship with surrealism in all its forms and prominent personalities; Henry Moore discusses Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings.

The Force is with us? Star Wars - the biggest and fastest money-maker in the history of the movies - has opened in Britain at last. What on earth - or in heaven - has caused the phenomenal success of this galactic romp-cum-morality tale? …

But please, this is a farce! ' The story of The Cherry Orchard CHEKHOV: '... It hasn't turned out a drama but as a comedy, in places even a farce.' STANISLAVSKY: ' ... I wept like a woman, I tried to control myself but I could not. I hear…

A British film The Duellists starring Keith Carradine , Harvey Keitel and Albert Finney won the Special Jury Award at Cannes last year and it opened in London last week. It is a finely photographed period film set in the beautiful Dordogne …

A tribute to the British filmmaker Alan Clarke (1935-1990).

Last Saturday in the Francois Truffaut Season now running on BBC2, "L'Enfant Sauvage", one of his masterpieces, was shown. Set in 18th-century France it is about the attempts of a man of science to civilise a young boy brought up without pa…

'She is a creature of fire and light, her voice a golden gate opening on lapis lazuli hinges, her body a supple reed rippling in the breeze of her love. This is not acting at all but living, breathing, loving.' (Bernard Levin, Daily Expres…

Hooray for Hollywood? Gavin Millar talks to: Christopher Isherwood has been a Hollywood immigrant for 40 years and loved every minute of bis screenwriting career there. 'Thank goodness I had the sense to realise I wasn't the great genius p…

A new British film has its Royal Premiere tomorrow. It is an English period film and vividly demonstrates the high production values, quality and talent available in this country but which so rarely get the chance to reach our screens. The…

This year's London Film Festival contained five entries from India. It's a reminder that we hardly see any of the output of the biggest film industry in the world. Gavin Millar reports from Bombay, including interviews with Satyajtt Ray , …

Arena takes you on a guided tour of the smallest museum in the world - its 'curator', Swiss artist Herbert Distel, has transformed a small chest-of-drawers into a miniature museum. Originally used to store cotton reels, the Museum of Drawer…

Featuring two of the greatest photographers of the 20th century Jacques Henri Lartigue began taking photographs at the age of seven in 1902. His celebrated Diary of a Century is a photographic record of his life from that time until the pre…

Gavin Millar presents another edition in his regular series about the cinema today.

Gavin Millar talks to Robert Alt man about his new film A Wedding; plus Karel Reisz 's Dog Soldiers and other turn-of-the-year news. (Postponed from 20 December)

wo years ago Marion Elliott , a 20-year-old from Brixton, gave up working in Woolworths and became punk singer Poly Styrene. Having created her own plastic image, she formed a band, X-Ray Spex, and set about reflecting life in the syntheti…

Aloe: a genus of plant indigenous to South Africa, noted for its ability to survive under the most adverse conditions. Athol Fugard is the author of such celebrated plays as The Blood Knot, The Island, and Sizwe Bansi is Dead. He is known…

Assault on Precinct 13 and Dark Star were two of the ' sleepers ' of the last two years - small-budget films from the USA that struck a chord right round the world. Their young writer/director John Car penter's third feature film Hal loween…

Fibreglass carcasses, a flaming typewriter, and a troop of girl guides - each has been a -key ingredient in a work of art by Leopoldo Maler. Deliberately provocative, surprise and spectacle are key elements in Maler's work. How do the verb…

The sell-out success of this year's Royal Shakespeare season at Stratford is the musical play, Piaf. Jane Lapotaire, television's Marie Curie, has won universal critical acclaim for her performance as the great French singer. Tonight Jane L…

John Barry (designer Star Wars and Superman) is now directing Saturn 3. Ridley Scott (The Duellists) is shooting The Alien. Gavin Millar reports on these two new British SF films.

Other Writers Will Tell You Different.... Lifers in prison cages, comedians in Hollywood, adolescents in the East End and female androids on the edge of the galaxy have all been subjects for Glasgow play-wright Tom McGrath in a career whic…

Isabelle Huppert is 23 - ' a stunning actress ', says Claude Chabrol ; 'Best Actress ' at Cannes in 1978 for Violette Noziere , the new Chabrol thriller. We talk to her in Paris. Alberta Hunter is 83, a classic blues singer who performs th…

The television premiere of GEOFF DUNBAR'S brilliant animation film. Based on ALFRED JARRY's notorious surrealist hero, Pere Ubu , it chronicles the rise to power of a kind of punk Macbeth, a lewd and unscrupulous despot with the mentality o…

Q. What do the following have in common? Frank Sinatra, Sid Vicious, Dorothy Squires, Barry John, Paul Anka, Lord George-Brown, Elvis Presley, Prof Wilfrid Mellers, Shirley Bassey, The Disapointer Sisters, The St Paul's School Choir, David…

Twenty-three years ago Don Siegel made his famous horrorpic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Now there is a new Invasion, even more chilling than the original; make-up effects by the man who dreamed up the aliens in Close Encounters, special…

Arena presents The Agony and the Ecstasy of Edna Everage In this, the first-ever exclusive Arts Documentary about a living legend, our cameras probe and etch the enigma which is Dame Edna. Meet her in the privacy of her fabulously appointe…

At the height of the American depression in the summer of 1936, t writer JAMES AGEE and photographer WALKER EVANS travelled south to Alabama. There they lived with a family of poor-white farmers recording their daily lives in intimate detai…

with Gavin Millar. Everybody knows about Kung Fu, Run Run Shaw and Bruce Lee. They probably know less about the young film-makers who are trying to get a few of Hong Kong's more pressing problems on to the screen: over-crowding, poverty, r…

Rock band Sham 69 have a large and loyal following of working-class kids, who call themselves 'The Sham Army'. They have a reputation for causing trouble and Sham concerts have often been disrupted and brought to an end by fighting. Jimmy …

The King and I For David Oxtoby, Elvis is king. He's been painting rock 'n' roll stars since the 50s, much to the bemusement of the art establishment. Most of the paintings in this film-of Presley, Haley, Gene Vincent etc - were stolen and…

Arena presents a film about the strange art of ventriloquism with Tattersall and his amazing life-size doll.

A film about the popular reggae band Steel Pulse, Whose highly successful debut album ' Handsworth Revolution' launched them last summer on the road to fame. Although their roots are in Jamaica STEEL PULSE is very much an indigenous Britis…

The Paintings of Kit Williams Inspired by the landscape, the wildlife and by his village neighbours, artist Kit Williams conjures up in his paintings a vivid folk-lore of his own. In tonight's Arena, this magical world comes alive in a Gl…

One in six people in Britain will spend some time in a mental hospital. For 50 years, painting or drawing have provided an important key to the problems of the mentally ill. This Arena film presents some of the extraordinary and moving pic…

John Hoyland is reckoned by many both here and abroad to be this country's finest abstract painter. A key figure for younger artists and critics, he has been both loved and hated to excess. As a major retrospective of his work opens in Lond…

Arena presents a profile of Richard Rogers, one of the most original and controversial talents in architecture today. It was Rogers, together with his Italian partner RENZO PIANO , who created the spectacular Beaubourg Arts Centre in Paris…

Athol Fugard is the author of such celebrated plays as The Blood-knot, The Island and Sizwe Bansi is Dead. He is known throughout the world for his opposition to apartheid and for his determination to express these views through the theatre…

Formerly a professional screamer in horror films, a belly-dancer in the Middle East, Lene Lovich has now emerged as one of the most original performers in rock music -aided and abetted by a bizarre appearance and an extraordinary vocal rang…

Arena presents the extraordinary story of Tim Page, war photographer and Vietnam legend-a tale first told in MICHAEL HERR'S celebrated book about Vietnam, Dispatches. 'People made Page sound crazy and ambitious, like the Sixties Kid, a sto…

Arena presents a hilarious and touching portrait of the great Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, filmed on location in Brooklyn, New York, and featuring friends, relatives and other ' odd-balls '. 'I wouldn't say that Yiddish is dead, n…

This week Arena features two highly-individual women artists. Peggy Taub has always wanted to sculpt like the classic Greeks. But whenever she leans over the clay bin an animal head appears. An American writer and artist who now lives in L…

Irish folk music is one of the oldest unbroken cultural traditions in Europe. As the Sense of Ireland festival of arts comes to London, Arena presents some of the finest Irish musicians of today. In tonight's programme the Bothy Band and Pl…

The growth of black consciousness through the 1970s has produced an explosion of original new theatre in black South Africa. At a secret performance in the backyard of a Soweto shop, a radical poet recites his banned work accompanied by dru…

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…

A profile of Liverpool playwright Alan Bleasdale With two new productions packing them in, in the North of England, ALAN BLEASDALE continues to build on the popular success of his TV plays The Black Stuff and Scully's New Year's Eve. Arena…

As prizewinning writer/performer Victoria Wood opens in her latest play, Good Fun, Arena looks at her talent to amuse through her witty and engaging songs. And we profile teenage playwright Andrea Dunbar, whose remarkable first play, The A…

"Failure can be fun' is the motto of self-confessed failures David McGillivray and Stephen Pile (above-if RADIO TIMES had only been able to take a picture of him). McGillivray was commissioned to write a book about failure but failed to wr…

The story of an unusual collaboration between rock musician Brian Eno and artist illustrator Russell Mills. The 65 works in Russell Mills' new series of paintings provide a remarkable visual counterpoint for 38 of Brian Eno's songs. It's a …

featuring "Where Did You Get That Hat?" The outrageous hats of designer David Shilling, modelled by his mother Gertrude - doyenne of Ascot Day... "One Ascot I wore a Christmas tree hat with lots of glass balls on - the same one I wore whe…

One after another mighty politicians have fallen victim to the savage caricatures of Peter Fluck and Roger Law , better known as Luck and Flaw. Among their most memorable targets are Henry Kissinger as the Statue of Liberty, Jeremy Thorpe a…

In Their Own Image Two women photographers turn the camera on themselves ... Time Release For over a year Linda Benedict -Jones photographed herself, by using the time release on her Pentax camera. The results-studies in and out of doors,…

Stanley Kubrick's long-awaited film The Shining opens in London this week and throughout the country from tomorrow. To mark the event Arena offers a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on the set of the legendary but elusive film director. Kubr…

Not so long ago they were playing in London pubs. This week - 16 platinum discs, 21 gold and a triumphant world tour later, Dire Straits return to the London stage. Tonight's Arena film features the superb concert they played on their last …

It was in the Chelsea Hotel, New York, that Bob Dylan wrote 'Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands', Andy Warhol filmed Chelsea Girls and Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. For 100 years the Chelsea has been a legendary haven for artists and perf…

Arena eavesdrops on the writing of a new adventure for James Hazell , popular cockney private eye. He is the creation of Terry Venables , manager of Queen's Park Rangers, and Gordon Wil liams, author of Straw Dogs. Now the TV series has en…

' Uncle Sidney' is the kindly old soul in charge of an institute for the disabled: he tucks them up at night and keeps them supplied with back numbers of the Reader's Digest. But, his crippled charges have had enough of him, and Side-show, …

This week two genuinely, original English artists introduce you to their work: Sam Smith , whose impeccably carved and printed wooden models evoke an Edwardian childhood - obsessed with the sea, the circus and the fairground; and Chris Orr …

Arena investigates the grass-roots of rock today with John Peel and John Walters ' When the punk thing started, the whole process of making records, and music as well, was demystified ... Now everybody seems to have a home tape-recorder an…

Arena marks a major retrospective exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery with a film about the great American realist painter EDWARD HOPPER. His subject is the face of America - haunting, unforgettable images of late-night bars, lonely hote…

For the past ten years Peter Brook and his unique company of actors have travelled the world with a series of extraordinary theatrical ventures. The last stage of their journey was Australia. Here, in a disused quarry in the hills above Ad…

Tonight, from a converted cowshed in the wilds of Scotland, Arena presents The Smallest Theatre in Great Britain. Immortalised in the Guinness Book of Records, Barrie and Marianne Hesketh have for the past 17 years been the sole designers,…

There were these five guys round the table: the Lightweight Boxing Champion of California; an expert on Pre-Columbian art; an honorary lieutenant in the Mexican army; an architect admired by Frank Lloyd Wright ; and a man of whom Marilyn Mo…

' Marching the streets of Jerusalem in 67, carrying a sub-machine-gun, I was in an absurd way acting out the role reserved* for the Arabs in my childhood nightmares. For the life of me, I don't want the Palestinian Arabs to become the Jews …

"I don't go out much these days, and when I do I find life infinitely dreary compared to my books..." William Gerhardie, who died at the age of 82 in 1977, was a legend in the world of letters. Born of English parents in Imperial Russia, he…

' It suddenly dawned on me that I was absolutely broke, completely and utterly. I didn't have a penny in the world ... this was where fame was cruel.' (GARY GLITTER) Five years ago Gary Glitter announced his retirement - unfortunately the w…

Lupino Lane , the man who made ' The Lambeth Walk ' famous, was a comic who once rivalled Chaplin and Keaton. With the advent of the talkies, his small studio folded and all the negatives of over 40 films were destroyed. After years of pain…

This week Arena patrols the skies above Metropolis in search of the legend that is SUPERMAN ... Meet Kirk Alyn , the first celluloid-Superman and Christopher Reeve the latest; Dr Fredric Wertham , Superman's greatest living adversary; Joan…

Clair thought of himself as a screenwriter as well as a director. He put his stamp on French screen comedy in the 20s and 30s with such classics as The Italian Straw Hat , Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million and Le quatorze juillet, all of …

As a child, trapped in a crazy Jewish household in a poor Chicago tenement, the American artist Robert Natkin had to find a way to change his life. His imagination was engulfed by movies from Fred Astaire to The Wizard of Oz, and by the vas…

Britain's musical reputation is second to none, and depends ultimately on an exceptional tradition of youth orchestras. The educational ideals which underlie this tradition are exemplified in Leicestershire. Here, for the past 30 years, mu…

Derek Jacobi, Helen Mirren, Martin Jarvis, playwrights Peter Terson and Barrie Keefe - all products of the National Youth theatre, a unique organisation, which every summer brings 600 Young amateurs to London to work on new productions and …

For 25 years the Polish film director ADRZEJ WAJDA has been making some of the most exciting and boldly critical films in Eastern Europe. He was filmed in Warsaw and Cracow shortly after he had returned from the Cannes Film Festival, where …

From Brooklyn to Beverly Hills - the life and times of a great comic film director. Tonight on BBC2 Mel Brooks , creator of Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein , and The Producers, reveals practically everything. Filmed on location in Holl…

She is two-and-a-half feet tall and nearly 500 years old. She hangs in The Louvre behind plate-glass - an unsigned, undated portrait of a smiling woman, the most idolised and abused woman in the history of art. She can be found in The Louvr…

When JOINT STOCK began their latest project four months ago, they had a writer but no script, actors but no roles. Borderline, by award-winning young play-wright Hanif Kureishi, finally emerged out of the remarkable working process unique t…

Only a short while ago Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were forgotten names in cinema history. Now, some of the greatest film-makers in the world are their ardent fans. Arena tells the story of two men who confronted the complacency a…

This week, a total contrast in visual style-the art of RADIO TIMES and the jaundiced eye of Private Eye. The Art of Radio Times: Since 1923, the 'official organ' of the BBC has been a leader in design and illustration. Among its contributo…

Arena profiles one of the most dazzling literary talents of recent years - Saiman Rushdie , a storyteller extraordinary and winner of this year's Booker prize. Midnight's Children, his fantastic epic novel about life in 20th-century India, …

Reggae has its roots in Jamaica, and has found a home in Britain. But there are over 60 countries in the Caribbean, each with its own distinctive culture. Arena invited Linton Kwesi Johnson , Britain's foremost reggae poet, to investigate t…

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…

John Updike 's new book, Rabbit is Rich, is the third in the Rabbit series from the author of Rabbit, Run, Couples and The Coup. At 50, Updike is at the height of h s powers and reputation. His novels amount to a chronicle of Middle Amer…

Osip Mandelstam, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, died in a prison camp somewhere in Siberia in the 1930s: no one knows precisely how or when. He was imprisoned not for his political activity but for writing a poem. All we kno…

In a month of continuing controversy about the aims and methods of the ' documentary', Arena presents a classic film by one of the pioneers of the movement-Humphrey Jennings 's Listen to Britain. Made in 1941, it will be seen here, complete…

' I love its homeliness. It conjures up the best in traditional British pleasure, like the great British breakfast. It's an honour to be asked ' (PAUL MCCARTNEY ) For the past 40 years everyone who is anyone has been cast adrift and washed …

Presents two classic films from the early days of documentary. Featured in last month's True to Life? edition, they're shown complete for the first time on British television. Listen to Britain made in 1941 by HUMPHREY JENNINGS, is a poetic…

Arena presents an exclusive film profile in two parts of one of the great legends of the cinema. With unprecedented frankness and detail. Orson Welles talks about his long and turbulent career - from the heady days of the Mercury Theatre an…

'I should never have stayed in movies. But it's a mistake I can't regret because it's like saying I shouldn't have stayed married to that woman and I did because I loved her. I'm in love with making movies.' Part 2: in which Orson Welles le…

Mike Leigh is a dramatist in a tradition of his own, a fiercely original talent whose work and working methods have always provoked curiosity and contention as well as praise. He is a social caricaturist in the graphic manner of Rowlandson …

In April 1967 at the peak of his career as a dramatist, Joe Orton was murdered by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell... Arena presents a documentary portrait of the author of Loot and Entertaining Mr Sloane, whose daring and sense of style added …

One of the most spectacular and unlikely theatre events of last year took place a long way from the West End of London in the small Dorset town of Bridport. The Poor Man's Friend, written by playwright Howard Barker and performed by hundred…

It is commonly thought that poets are university-trained intellectuals who occasionally produce slim volumes about their personal feelings. This is not so with Michael Smith. Smith, an electrifying performer, is an exponent of 'dub' poetry …

Classics like ' Summertime blues , 'C'mon everybody' and Three steps to heaven' made Eddie Cochran one of the all-time greats of rock 'n' roll. But for his tragic death, many think he could have become as successful as Elvis. In 1960, in t…

For nearly 50 years everybody who was anybody in the British theatre passed before the lens of Angus McBean - Gielgud, Olivier, Thorndike, Coward ... He was known as the photographer who resolutely flattered his sitters. Tonight, after a t…

by Samuel Beckett Starring Billie Whitelaw With Leonard Fenton Arena presents the first programme in a Samuel Beckett Season providing a unique opportunity to see famous interpretations of his work. The playwright himself directed this p…

Continues the Samuel Beckett season. Starring Jack MacGowran A rare opportunity to see an early television premiere. Recorded in 1966, tonight's presentation has only one visible actor, the late Jack MacGowran who, with Patrick Magee, was…

Arena continues the Samuel Beckett Season with a unique record of his new play Rockaby which has just opened at the National Theatre. Premiered in America, it was filmed in rehearsal and performance by the celebrated film maker D.A. Penneba…

Continues the Samuel Beckett Season. In one of the most extraordinary pieces of modern drama Billie Whitelaw, Beckett's foremost interpreter, performs this astonishing tour de force. Not I - the mouth suspended in space, caused a sensation…

Continues the Samuel Beckett Season with a premiere. A play without words. Quad has a musical structure. It is a kind of canon or catch-a mysterious square-dance. Four hooded figures move along the sides of the square. Each has his own par…

Concludes the Samuel Beckett Season. One of the best-known Beckett monologues starring its creator, the late Patrick Magee. Krapp, an old man, is alone with his memories and the reels of tape he has recorded during his life. As he reviews…

Last year a £13-million painting travelled in top secret from America to Spain. Next day it was headline news that Picasso's masterpiece ' Guernica ' had come home at last, after 40 years in exile. This Arena special tells the story of an e…

Today, in post-revolutionary Cuba, under the benign patronage of Fidel Castro, classical ballet thrives. This unlikely success story is mainly due to the legendary figure of Alicia Alonso. After almost 20 years as an internationally acclaim…

Tonight Arena takes you on a tour of contemporary British heads, from the exotic to the mundane, from hot wax to Brylcreem. Blue rinse, quiff, mohican, short back and sides, dreadlocks or just shaved off altogether. By your choice of hairst…

Pierre Boulez, leading composer of the post-war generation, later a powerful and innovative conductor, is now the head of an extraordinary experimental studio in Paris. This huge underground music laboratory was built especially for Boulez …

George Melly presents films of the greatest names of swing jazz - but with a difference. Some were made for visual juke boxes which flourished in the early 40s, others are promotional shorts from the major Hollywood companies. The forerunne…

Widely regarded as one of the greatest literary figures of the century, William Burroughs has perfected a unique and terrifying vision of the world. He is, most notably, a savage satirist and a revolutionary stylist and his ideas and experi…

Tonight Arena presents one of the most ambitious dance projects ever seen on television. The Catherine Wheel combines the talents of Twyla Tharp , one of America's most imaginative choreographers, and David Byrne , leader of the rock band …

Writing about his experiences as a war prisoner in Dresden in the novel Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut achieved a unique blend of dead-pan humour and shrewd observation of human folly. For Vonnegut, disaster is an everyday experience. Toda…

Tonight Arena takes an extraordinary journey through the video age. Video pirates, video trials, video weddings, video graves.... Fifty years ago it was just the dream of a science fiction future - now It's All True. With Sir Michael Horde…

The great Luis Bunuel died last month. Born in 1900, he was undisputably one of the outstanding creative figures of the 20th century. Tonight Gavin Millar introduces a ten-week season of his films, beginning tonight at 9.25, which will culm…

Dear boy, you are out of your mind, this woman will annihilate you, she will grind you to a fine powder and blow you away ... Director Joseph Mankiewicz recalls the warning he was given by a colleague when he offered Bette Davis the lead r…

Anthony Powell's 12-volume epic, A Dance to the Music of Time, is widely regarded as the most formidable single work of British fiction since the war. It is also largely entertaining: its cast of 400 characters ranges from upper-class drawi…

Starring Claire Bloom, Sam Wanamaker from the novel by Philip Roth with Mark Linn Baker, Paulette Smit 'You're not so nice and polite in your fiction. You're a different person.' Philip Roth's masterly novel about writers and writing, c…

Following the success of Jazz Juke-Box I, George Melly presents another selection of jazz shorts and ' soundies ' - the delightful films made for visual juke-boxes in the early 40s. He is joined by great jazzman Slim Gaillard, famous for su…

Roman Vishniac is a Russian Jew born in St Petersburg in 1897. His striking images of life in the Jewish ghettos - taken with a concealed camera just before the last war - are extraordinary documents of a lost epoch and a lost people. ' I r…

Arena shows three film classics from the early years of British documentary, which began 50 years ago.

The GPO Film Unit-50 years old this year-went where no Hollywood film studio would dare to go in 1933. Down the mines, across the Alps, through the storms of the North Sea ... they really were a dedicated and intrepid group ot film makers. …

An Arena special Last September at the Royal Albert Hall Don and Phil Everly performed together for the first time in ten years. The concert was the popular music event of the year. With a fine band, including lead guitarist Albert Lee and…

George Orwell is one of the greatest writers England has produced. Tonight and for the next four nights Arena presents a unique full-scale portrait of this remarkable man, filmed in the places where he lived and worked and told in his own w…

Tonight's episode of the five-part Arena biography tells the story of Orwell's marriage to Eileen O'Shaughnessy , his growing political awareness and retraces what was to be the most important journey of his life-the trip he made to Wigan a…

Orwell, like many of his generation, enlisted to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Filmed in Barcelona and on the Huesca front, where he fought, tonight's film tells the story of Orwell's war. It begins as a heroic crus…

For a brief period after the Spanish Civil War, Orwell was a revolutionary socialist, violently opposed to the coming war with Germany. Tonight's film shows his sudden emergence as a patriot in 1940, his ill-starred career as a producer at …

The last in this series of Arena films about the life and work of George Orwell begins with the tragic death of his wife Eileen in March 1945. Overcome with grief at his bereavement and despair at the future of Britain under the post-war La…

Tonight's Arena Special tells the extraordinary story of two of the legendary figures of American 'gospel' -the music whose emotional impact and burning conviction lie at the heart of much of today's popular music, Tomas A Dorsey and Willie…

ANTHONY CARO: 'I wanted to play games with our sense of space ... you experience this room with the eyes and the body too.' HOWARD HODGKIN: 'I tried to evoke a sense of romantic luxury. Sadly in a public place nothing very exciting is mean…

Dario Fo is unique in world theatre. Playwright, actor, clown, teacher and philosopher, he is an international celebrity with two West-End smash hits to his credit - Can Pay? Won't Pay! and Accidental Death of an Anarchist. He is also a pas…

Tonight Arena takes a journey down one of the best known streets in the world. Sunset Boulevard stretches 27 miles from Los Angeles' Chinatown all the way to the ocean, a ride made famous by Philip Marlowe in the Chandler books. Film star m…

On 29 June 1982 a man called John Blake appeared mysteriously bidding in the major auction houses of London and New York. He was in reality the Sunday Times journalist, Peter Watson. The Caravaggio Conspiracy is a true story of a remarkable…

David Inshaw belongs to a great tradition of English Romantic Painting - the tradition of Stanley Spencer, Samuel Palmer and the Pre-Raphelites. His most famous painting 'The Badminton Game' now hangs in the Tate Gallery. For years he was a…

Tonight, in the anniversary year of Edward Elgar 's death, Arena plays host to KEN RUSSELL 'S classic music documentary. Made in 1962 for the 100th edition of the arts magazine Monitor, it marked the arrival of the dramatised arts documenta…

For the first time on British television, Arena presents a concert by this great legend of rock n roll. Jerry Lee Lewis doesn't sound like anybody else - the voice, the piano and the on-stage antics make an unforgettable combination. He pla…

Breyten Breytenbach writes about being an Afrikaner. His poetry was taught in schools and his paintings greatly admired. But in 1975 Breytenbach, living in self-imposed exile in Paris with his Vietnamese wife Yolande - their marriage was re…

Tonight Arena profiles the French film director Louis Malle. Malle is a director who has never let himself be tied down to one style of film making. The Lovers, with Jeanne Moreau , shocked the conservative public in 1958 and his Indian doc…

From the vantage point of his Paris flat, the Czech writer Milan Kundera still obsessively contemplates Prague, the city he was forced to leave nine years ago when, silenced by the pro-Soviet government, his continued life there finally bec…

American-born writer and director Joseph Losey died last month in London. He made his home in England in 1952 when he was hounded out of America after the Communist witch-hunt. Tonight Dirk Bogarde, star of The Servant, who first worked wi…

Tonight Arena presents a musical entertainment set in the streets of New York City, an epic rap which will tap the roots of Hip Hop.... the true story of the most influential popular music culture since punk. Gary 'The Crown' Byrd raps us t…

Taught to sing from their earliest years, the brothers were raised in a unique cross-current of musical influences, from Appalachian harmony duos to black country blues singers. Their father Ike was an influential guitar picker and hosted t…

Tonight Arena presents the first film portrait of the greatest of all the jazz singers. Billie Holiday's tragic story, from her traumatic childhood in Baltimore to her premature death in a New York hospital at the age of 44, is told in the …

The legendary Eubie Blake 's career as a ragtime pianist and composer began in 1883. Sadly last year, five days after his 100th birthday he died. This short tribute includes one of the earliest talkies, Eubie's classic 'I'm just wild about …

To mark his 75th birthday, Arena presents this exclusive film portrait of the great British painter, Francis Bacon. Despite his world-wide fame, Bacon remains one of the most contentious painters working today, and he still paints the huma…

This week: a portrait of one of the most individual architectural talents America has produced. Bruce Goff discovered his vocation as a child in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drawing cathedrals and palaces on scraps of paper, and the innocence of those …

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti is the most popular and controversial musician ever to come out of Africa. Born in Nigeria 47 years ago, he has dominated the African musical scene since the early 70s with his unique fusion of traditional rhythm and jaz…

Arena presents the British premiere of Ingmar Bergman 's new film After the Rehearsal. Written and directed by Bergman last year soon after completing Fanny and Alexander, it continues the autobiographical theme. As theatre director Henrik …

In the 25th anniversary year of the Revolution, Arena traces the Afro-Spanish roots of Cuba's rich musical history. If, for you, the rumba still means Come Dancing, then it's time you saw the real thing. Meet Enrique Jorrin , creator of the…

Every November musicians from all over Latin America come to take part in the international music festival at Varadero in Cuba. For five days bands from all the 'other' Americas vie with each other in a virtuoso display of music - music whi…

For many Luciano Pavarotti is the world's greatest tenor - certainly his place is assured among the legends of Grand Opera. In New York on 16 August, he Performed before 20,000 People at Madison Square Garden; it was an unprecedented step …

Howard Jacobson the eldest son of MAX JACOBSON the Manchester conjuror, made a late but successful start in the world of fiction. At the age of 41 he published Coming from Behind a scabrous satire of polytechnic life; and now, with his sexu…

The artists Julian Schnabel , Markus Lupertz , Sandro Chia , Francesco Clemente and Georg Baselitz command some of the highest prices on today's booming art market. Their paintings, monumental in scale and mainly figurative in style, have …

Arena this week presents a profile of the man many would consider the greatest living French film director. It introduces a BBC2 season of five of the masterpieces he made with the poet and scriptwriter Jacques Prevert during a decade of co…

Karen Blixen's voyage to Africa in 1913 was a journey away from the 20th century. Kenya was then a semi-feudal society, a land of Masai and Kikuyu, teeming with game. In 1931 she returned to Denmark having lost her farm, her health and her…

Tonight Arena and Newsnight join forces to mount a major studio debate between the embattled factions of the arts world. 'The Glory of the Garden' was the Arts Council's blueprint for a redistribution of its grants favouring regional centre…

From Chaucer's pilgrims to inter-continental juggernauts, generations of travellers have taken this historical route from Dover to the old City of London. It has become part of London's folklore, living up to its reputation as a place for a…

A Musical for the 80s starring Tim Curry, Sting, Alexei Sayle, Gary Glitter and introducing Jason Carter To lig. verb. To gain something for nothing by wit and ingenuity. Young Gordon Shilling arrives in London in search of fame and fortu…

Tony Harrison is the son of a baker, and his poetry relishes, and mourns for the class he comes from. His subjects are sex, love, politics, class warfare, death, all the rituals and performances of our lives. His work is direct, witty, ofte…

One of the greatest masters of 20th-century painting died last month at the age of 97. This filmed tribute contains the last interview given by Chagall and charts his life and work from the earliest years in Vitebsk, Russia, through two wor…

'America gave to the world two original art forms: one was jazz, the other was full character animation' (Chuck Jones) In 1908, the comic strip artist Winsor McCay brought to life, on film, his celebrated 'little Nemo' characters. The firs…

Hugh Masekela 's career as a musician has been dominated by his determination to take the music of black South Africans to the rest of the world. His music is a fusion of sophisticated jazz and the raw but melodic Mbkanga which is to the to…

Robert Wilson is one of the most revered and controversial talents in contemporary theatre. He first came to prominence in the New York avant garde of the 60s and 70s with a series of huge stage works which astonished and often infuriated a…

Tonight Arena presents a cornucopia of the blues from the raw sounds of the Mississippi Delta to the jazz and rock 'n' roll that blues gave birth to. As a crowning delight, the evening is presented from the studio by the most famous exponen…

Blues Night presents rare footage of the harmonica blues player Sonny Boy Williamson, who gave B.B. King his big break in 1948. ‘He was on the radio doing live performances when I first came to Memphis. He put me on his show to do this one …

John Walters talks to B.B. King - aided by his guitar Lucille - about his extraordinary life, from a childhood picking cotton in Mississippi to worldwide stardom.

Harley Cokliss’ classic blues documentary includes performances by Muddy Waters, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, and shows how the tough urban music of Chicago developed out of the original rural blues.

The great Chicago broadcaster and journalist Studs Terkel and pianist Blind John Davis meet in a downtown bar to discuss and play the blues. This interview was shot for "Omnibus: Studs Terkel's Chicago" but not shown in the final programme.

This medley of the blues features Fred McDowell, Thomas 'Georgia Tom' Dorsey, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Huddie Ledbetter - better known as 'Lead Belly' - performs 'Pick a Bale of Cotton', and Billie Holiday accompanied by Lester Youn…

Hard blues meets film noir as Big Bill Broonzy sings and plays in a Belgian nightclub back in the 1950s.

An Arena Special. Lubbock is a small town lost in the great plains of west Texas. Her most famous son, Buddy Holly , changed the face of popular music. Tonight Holly is remembered by the Crickets, The Everly Brothers, Keith Richards , and…

Tonight Arena presents a unique interview with one of the great figures of 20th-century literature, Jean Genet. His first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, written in prison, moved Jean-Paul Sartre to declare him a saint and martyr. Genet's …

What do Charles Dickens , Count Leo Tolstoy , Barry Manilow and James Anderton , Chief Constable of Manchester, have in common? A love of the accordion. Tonight Arena investigates the appeal of a much-maligned instrument from its roots in …

Francesco Rosi is one of the foremost figures in post-war Italian cinema. His films have an epic sweep covering Mafia crime, political corruption and economic mismanagement in Italy since the liberation of the country from Fascism by the Am…

Yukio Mishima was one of the outstanding writers of his generation. Nominated three times for the Nobel Prize, he was the author of 40 novels and 18 plays. But his legend rests less on his literary output than on his bizarre suicide 15 year…

The list of artists who have performed at Harlem's Apollo Theater reads like a Who's Who of black American entertainment. No black performer, from Sammy Davis Jr to Charlie Parker, could be considered a star without conquering the Apollo's …

Harlem's Apollo Theater has been the ultimate testing ground for every black American performer from Duke Ellington to Michael Jackson. Tonight Arena continues its celebration of the Apollo's 50th anniversary. With uncharacteristic modes…

Casa Verdi is a rambling mansion in the city of Milan, inhabited by an extraordinary and captivating group of people. Once it belonged to the composer Giuseppe Verdi : now it has become a home tor retired musicians. Once famous divas, compo…

Arena presents the first television showing of a rare and extraordinary classic of the silent cinema, with an original music score by Dimitri Shostakovich. Directors GRIGORI KOZINTSEV and LEONID TRAUBERG. Introduced by Lindsay Anderson. …

That most erotic and mysterious of dances, the tango, came to life in the suburbs and backstreets of Buenos Aires. This Arena Special traces its colourful and bizarre life story, through the work of its greatest poets, dancers and musicians…

From its origins in ninth-century China to its modern incarnation as a Christmas pantomime, Cinderella has endured as one of the best-loved fairytales. But what has made this fable of domestic abuse so popular for so long? Marina Warner, au…

Behind the quiet, gentlemanly exterior of Norman Lewis lies the acute Perception of one of Britain's foremost travel writers and investigative journalists. His fascinating accounts of the cultures of the world cover the Brazilian jungle, th…

The home of the White House, the Pentagon and the President is also the home of the most exciting soul scene of the 1980s. The raw power of the go-go beat has emerged within a stones-throw of America's palaces of power. Washington DC is 70…

Novelist, poet, essayist and the first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise, Marguerite Youreenar lives and writes on her island refuge off the coast of Maine. Her work ranges from a series of celebrated historical novels, includin…

The American film actress Louise Brooks, who died last summer, was one of the most celebrated beauties in the history of the cinema. Her performance as unrepentant pleasure-seeker Lulu in G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box made her a legend. KENNE…

In 1950 the Grand Prix of the prestigious Venice Film Festival went quite unexpectedly to a Japanese film. It was called Rashomon and the director was Akira Kurosawa. In the years since then he has become celebrated as a unique stylist and …

Critical acclaim for a group of recent art school graduates has put Scottish art, and Glasgow in particular, firmly on the international map. Two people at the forefront of this unexpected renaissance are Stephen Campbell and Adrian Wiszni…

Don McCullin 's powerful pictures of the horrors of war and deprivation have made him one of the world's most celebrated photographers. Now, after more than 20 years working exclusively with the stills camera, he has been commissioned by A…

Linton Kwesi Johnson takes a trip home to Jamaica and files a personal report on the long-standing relationship between the Caribbean and the mother country.

Calypso from Trinidad's Mighty Bomber, dancing from Nicaragua, Jamaican Bob Marley's 'Could you be loved', Grenadian poet Abdul Malik, and the original 'Peanut vendor' by Rita Montener and Her All-Girl Orchestra.

The celebrated West Indian poet Derek Walcott joins Linton Kwesi Johnson and Guyanese prodigy Fred D'Aguiar to debate the range and impact of Caribbean poetry. With filmed readings from C.L.R. James, Edward Braithwaite, Michael Smith and M…

Out of the archives, a skanking delight from Kingston's Sombrero Club, 1964. Featuring Prince Buster, Toots and the Maytals and Jimmy Cliff.

Darcus Howe interviews leading Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes and Trinidadian historian John La Rose on the exotic and often bloody story of the Caribbean.

Despite the dangers and deprivations of war, the people of Bluefields, Nicaragua, still find time to do the Lambeth Walk and dance Maypole. Bluefields, on Nicaragua's east coast, is named after a notorious 17th-century pirate and its stormy…

Fuentes, La Rose and Howe are joined in the studio by this year's Calypso King David Rudder who tells the true story of the 'Trinidad Trinity' - calypso, steel pan music and carnival. With performances from The Mighty Bomber, Arrow The Rene…

From the BBC treasure chest, Alan Whicker explores the forgotten comers of the Caribbean, where he meets the Pocomaniacs of Jamaica, the Redlegs of Barbados, and the last of the Caribs.

Filmed on his recent visit to London, Panamanian salsa star and politician Ruben Blades talks to Linton Kwesi Johnson about Latin music today, ranging from established stars like Cuba's Celia Cruz to the latest contender Wilfredo Vargas, cu…

A bedtime treat from 1936: the GPO Film Unit present the Caribbean through the words of W.H. Auden and the music of Benjamin Britten.

A portrait of the man who made reggae known and appreciated all over the western world and who refused to abandon a message of personal and political liberation. Tonight's programme includes a wealth of his finest performances, from early …

Born in Trinidad in 1901, C.L.R. James came to England in the 1930s and was cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. In this programme the author of the now classic book Beyond the Boundary selects his definitive cricket team. Fro…

In an old church in Havana, the Urfe brothers play Danzones, the first popular Cuban music to emerge from the blend of African and European traditions at the turn of the century. The dance it inspired was considered shocking by colonial Cub…

According to reggae greats Bob Marley and Burning Spear, football and Rastafari are one and the same thing. In the last week of the World Cup Rasta and the Ball takes you to the Marcus Garvey Youth Club, the beaches and Kingston's back-stre…

Cuban jazz is rarely heard over here. Tonight Arena redresses the balance with a performance by virtuoso trumpeter, Arturo Sandoval. Much admired by Dizzy Gillespie , he returns the compliment with 'Blues homage'; he then takes to the piano…

'I dreamt there were 72 angels, 72 trumpets, 72 vases of flowers - all things were 72. And then I saw directly the face of God himself. I was summoned to be an artist.' Bishop of his own church, Kapo is also Jamaica's most famous artist. H…

Speaking from Henry Moore's own studio in Perry Green, Hertfordshire, John Read shares his personal memories of the artist he filmed six times over 28 years.

'The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.' So says Salvador Dali one of the most famous painters in the world. Dali now lives as a recluse and has been virtually unseen since his near death in a suspicious fire two…

Following last night's story of Salvador Dali, Arena continues it's Spanish trilogy with this highly-acclaimed profile of the great film-maker Luis Bufiuel. From his collaboration with Dali on Un Chien Andalou in 1928 to his last film That …

Federico Garcia Lorca, perhaps the best-known and loved Spanish poet and dramatist of this century, was brutally executed at the age of 38 during the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Tonight's Arena, in collaboration with the acclaimed …

When the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, they forced the entire population into the countryside where they were starved, beaten and worked to death on grandiose, impractical 'revolutionary' schemes. Among them was a …

In this week's Arena Gerald Scarfe takes a long, hard look at himself. In his paintings and drawings he mercilessly pillories the powerful and the famous and yet in public he presents an image of docile sociability. In this irreverent inves…

Fifty years ago Basil Wright and Harry Watts' classic documentary "Night Mail" celebrated the role of the railways as the nation's distributor of goods, mail, food, and other essentials. In 1986 Arena's 'Night Moves' celebrates the role of…

Arena presents Bob Dylan, concentrating on his classic songs and backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in his first concert on British television in over a decade.

Tonight Arena presents the moving story of the first lady of country music. At the age of 44 she's had 35 number one records, three Grammy awards, 50 albums, five husbands, four children, two grandchildren, continuing health problems and 15…

Night and Day is a 24-hour journey through the streets of London spent in the company of two different and unusual writers. The day is introduced by Spectator columnist Jeffrey Bernard who has turned the humdrum routine of daylight hours i…

'You can open your veins on television more easily than anywhere. It's the last stronghold for the individualist-writer.' Over the last 20 years Dennis Potter has established himself as not only television's most celebrated playwright, but …

Tonight Arena tells the story of one of the most extraordinary photographers of the 20th century. Martin Chambi , an Indian born into a peasant family in the remote Peruvian countryside, became a leading figure in the revolutionary artisti…

After Robert Crumb , comics could never be the same again. He came to fame in the mid 60s with characters such as Fritz the Cat and the archetypal guru Mr Natural , wicked satires on the excesses of the Love Generation. In a medium associat…

David Lynch , director of some of the strangest films in today's cinema, including Eraserhead and Elephant Man, guides us through the film works of a peerless group of artists - the Surrealists. Working in Paris from the mid-1920s, such le…

Abdullah Ibrahim formerly Dollar Brand, pianist, composer, arranger, was bom in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1934. When Duke Ellington heard him in 1965 he was so impressed that he arranged for Ibrahim to move to America where he quickly bec…

In 1986 Andrei Tarkovsky 's remarkable career in the cinema received the accolade of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It sealed his reputation in the west as Russia's greatest living artist. In Moscow, however, his work has been …

Jo Spence 's photography defies definition - her work appears in community spaces as well as grand galleries. It deals with social problems, sexuality, myth and power. Tonight's Arena looks at her life and work since 1982, when she was diag…

What do the following have in common? Maria von Trapp, whose story became "The Sound of Music"; Bob Guccione, the editor of Penthouse; Martin Scorsese, the director of "The Color of Money" and "Mean Streets"; and the popular singers Mary O'…

(Lino Brocka 's Philippines) Lino Brocka is the most influential film director in the Philippines, and a leading figure in the civil rights movement. Throughout the period of martial law, he opposed the Marcos regime. In 1985 he was jailed …

What is a chat show - a forum for stimulating conversation and the exchange of ideas or just an economical way of filling the airwaves? Gus Macdonald becomes host for an evening and invites his guests Russell Harty , David Frost and Kennet…

Twenty-one years after his death Evelyn Waugh looms larger than ever over the English literary scene. In the course of three programmes Arena uses the testimony of his friends and foes to explore the man and his work. The first programme co…

The second of three programmes looks at Evelyn Waugh 's most productive period as a novelist, journalist, travel-writer and man of action. His exotic journeys from the coronation of Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa to the deepest jungles of Br…

Last of three programmes. When Waugh died on Easter Sunday 21 years ago his friend Graham Greene felt 'as if one's commanding officer were dead'. During his last 20 years he retreated from the outside world, increasingly obsessed with mort…

Joseph Beuys was one of the most prominent and controversial German artists of the past 30 years. Sculptor, performance artist, teacher and maverick politician - when he died last year Beuys left behind him a unique and provocative inherita…

by Leslie Megahey A story of intrigue and romance in 16th-century Venice. Starring Paul McGann, Simon Callow, Michael Gough, Diana Quick When Cariani the painter falls in love with the beautiful girl who receives mysterious visitors in t…

The Arena season opens with a profile of Diego Rivera , considered to be the most famous painter in the history of Latin America, and also the most notorious. He was a Rabelaisian figure of far-flung proportions, who claimed to have been a…

For 200 years British writers have achieved great success with their accounts of life on the Indian subcontinent. Less well-known are the writings of those Indians who travelled to Britain and recorded their observations throughout the sam…

Art Spiegelman is one of America's leading comic-strip artists. Earlier this year he created a stir with Maus, a novel in strip form. Maus tells of a young Jewish couple who are arrested and transported to Auschwitz - where Spiegelman's pa…

he legend of Woody Guthrie - the rambling guitar player who discovered America from the roof of a freight train - was an inspiration to two decades of Americans, from the Weavers to Bob Dylan, from Jack Kerouac to Bruce Springsteen. If anyo…

Tonight Arena presents, on the occasion of their 50th anniversaries, a tribute to those great British institutions, the Beano and the Dandy. In their pages, the Softie has fought an unending losing battle against the likes of and the cow p…

Broadway is one of the most famous streets in the world. Legendary for bright lights, musical comedy, and the dreams of stardom, the myths and cliches of the theatre have influenced every mile of this great thoroughfare. From immigrants in …

The first of two programmes featuring the work of a major figure in contemporary literature and journalism. In three decades, reporting from Latin America, Africa and the Far East, Kapuscinski has witnessed 27 revolutions. His portraits of …

Arena presents JONATHAN MILLER 'S acclaimed production for the Royal Court Theatre of RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI's play. Adapted for the stage and television by MICHAEL HASTINGS and JONATHAN MILLERTranslated by WILLIAM R. BRAND and KATARZYNA MR…

The Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz has been the most adored and dynamic singer in Latin America for more than four decades. Since she left Cuba at the time of the Revolution with her band Sonora Matancera, she has lived in New York and risen to…

Today is Shrove Tuesday, in French, Mardi Gras , and tonight is the night before Lent. While the British celebrate with pancakes, the Latin world explodes in a riot of music and spectacle. Tonight, live for the first time, Arena presents t…

Continued from BBC2. From the Toulouse Cafe in the heart of downtown New Orleans where the day's t festivities climax with the cream of New Orleans rhythm and blues. One last burst of indulgence before forty days of abstinence.

The novelist and poet Jack Kerouac died in 1969, a chronic alcoholic, at the age of 47. He was already something of a legend, not simply for his style of writing but for the style of life that he chronicled. He travelled back and forth acro…

The flamenco of southern Spain is more than music and much more than an exhilarating dance for the tourists. It's the soul of a culture, and its roots go back to the 15th century when gypsy travellers made their way via Asia and North Afric…

The flamenco of southern Spain is more than music. It's the soul of a culture and its roots go back to the 15th century, when gypsies travelled to Spain via Asia and North Africa. Today the real flamenco is kept alive by the gypsy families …

This month the National Portrait Gallery opens its doors to the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. As the epitome of New York style he is less celebrated for his portraits than for the notorious photographs that chronicled the …

The English Thoroughbred In the late 17th century the fastest, most elegant racing machine known to man was developed by the English aristocracy. The English gentry crossed their hardy mares with three delicate Arab stallions and it is fro…

Each season Arena invites a distinguished figure in the arts to direct a film. This year's guest director is John Byrne, painter and author of Tutti Frutti. In this diverse and inventive autobiography, Byrne travels from his youth, through …

Randy Travis is the hottest new singer on the country music scene today. In June of this year he played his first British concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Arena filmed him and tonight Rhythms of the World presents the best in 'back to basi…

Arena's new season begins with a special anniversary edition and a chance to see again some classic moments from the past ten years. Dame Edna admits to keen enthusiasm for women in art, William Burroughs demonstrates his stainless steel c…

Dirty Harry and the other characters in the Eastwood repertory have dominated the box office for over 25 years. He has made over 40 films and directed 14 of them, invariably starring in them as well. With his new film. Bird, he stayed behin…

Born in Sri Lanka in 1943, educated in Dulwich and now living in Canada, Michael Ondaatje has criss-crossed the world in a search for what he calls the 'unofficial story'. Ondaatje takes mythical characters like the outlaw Billy the Kid and…

From Dundalk to Dungannon, Ballycastle to Belfast, Field Day, Ireland's foremost touring theatre company, journeys past checkpoints and critics with Brian Friel's controversial new play Making History. Arena follows the trail of actor Steph…

When Nat King Cole died in 1965, the world lost its greatest ballad singer. Last year, 22 years after his death, When I Fall in Love reached number 4 in the British charts. This portrait traces the singer's life from his birthplace in Alab…

Award-winning director Jana Bokova presents a typically idiosyncratic portrait of Europe's most fashionable city. An equally eccentric and fascinating collection of characters offer a personal view of Barcelona, where a new cosmopolitan awa…

With more visitors than the whole of Greece and more holiday beds than Portugal, Blackpool is Europe's most successful holiday resort. Growing to prominence in the Industrial Revolution it was a town 'built for fun'. Arena takes a look at t…

Breasts/bosoms/bust/boobs/bristols/knockers... we live in a breast-obsessed society and 'tits' are by no means the preserve of the tabloids; the symbolism of the breast is expressed in film, fashion and filth. From body beautiful to breast…

Arena presents two films by award-winning director Georg Troller , made for West German television's leading arts programme Personenbeschreibung. Sir Laurens van der Post is the subject of the first film. Known in the popular press as a fr…

eyond the familiar world of Wall Street and Madison Avenue, there is another New York, whose roots lie in West and Central Africa. Successive waves of newcomers of African descent have brought to the world's most glamorous city their own go…

The absurdity of life has been Eugene lonesco's theme and preoccupation since he wrote the first of his 33 plays and, alongside Beckett and Genet, created a revolution in the theatre. Ironically, that first play, The Bald Prima Donna has be…

Actor and director, John Cassavetes, who died earlier this month was one of the few truly independent movie-makers working out of Hollywood. In this tribute to an influential and innovative artist, friends, associates and fellow directors r…

Ten years ago, Vernon Oxford turned his back on the bright lights of Nashville and a life as a popular country singer, and gave himself to the Lord. Today, he is a gospel preacher in Franklin, Tennessee but his congregation extends beyond h…

Elton John's jukebox sold at Sotheby's for £16,000. It has come a long way since it left the Wurlitzer factory in 1942. It is the same with most jukeboxes; they once entertained bars, diners and roadstops throughout America, but are now hig…

Arena continues its centenary celebration of the jukebox with a special edition of one of the original pop music programmes. Juke Box Jury is 30 years old and was essential weekend viewing for every pop music fan throughout the 60s. David…

Born in Georgia in 1901, Berthold Lubetkin is one of the most outstanding and influential architects in Britain. His life has spanned the Russian Revolution and two World Wars. Finally, in 1982 he was awarded the highest honour the RIBA can…

Ever since its noisy birth out of the primitive fuzzboxes of the 1960s, heavy metal music has been maligned and misunderstood by public and critics alike. But, to its millions of fans worldwide, heavy metal is the only form of popular music…

For some 25 years the author Graham Greene found himself the victim of a bizarre masquerade. A man calling himself Graham Greene opened hotels in Jamaica, courted high society in the south of France and was entertained in India by tea plant…

'Look at the clocks - it doesn't matter if they're wrong. Somewhere in the world the time is right.' A typical line from Slim Gaillard. He became a jazz legend, collaborating with Charlie Parker ; he was a Second World War bomber pilot; Ma…

In 1938 jazz legend and international star Slim Gaillard went to Hollywood to appear in Hellzapoppin: and then war broke out. Gaillard became one of America's first black bomber pilots; this week he recalls that profound and traumatic exper…

This week Slim Gaillard cooks dinner for his old friend Dizzy Gillespie. They discuss the English language and their contributions to it — 'bebop' and 'Vout-o-reenee'. They also recall working with Charlie Parker and conjure up the ghosts …

Some people see the pig as representing dirt, sloth and obesity; others view it with affection. In this film we see them all: farmyard pigs, performing pigs, pigs as pets, piggy banks, pigs on film - in all its many rotund forms.

A film version of Heathcote Williams 's epic poem, an impassioned hymn of praise to one of nature's most magnificent creatures, and a lament at man's folly of hunting it to near extinction. The poem is read by its author, intercut with extr…

The animals in wildlife films have always been vying for attention with that eccentric breed - the animal presenter. This medley of classic clips of wildlife films from the last 50 years celebrates the naive enthusiasm of these rare creatur…

In the 1920s a middle-aged spinster went to buy a yard of ribbon and came out with a baby gorilla. He was the first gorilla to survive captivity. His uncanny intelligence and versatility became legendary, inspiring King Kong stories. But h…

What does Sam get up to when he's left on his own all day? This verite portrait looks at an ordinary day in the mysterious life of a very ordinary dog.

Novelist Julian Bames, philosopher Nicholas Humphrey and French historian Dr Michel Rousseau help to uncover one of the most bizarre chapters in criminal history: the judicial prosecution and capital punishment of animals throughout Europe …

Speciesism, vivisection, vegetarianism, farming, sport, zoos, circuses and pets will be some of the topics discussed in a live debate chaired by Donald MacCormick at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Writer Germaine Greer and philosop…

The phenomenal career of the Rolling Stones has taken them from being the bad boys of rock 'n' roll to becoming proteges of the establishment. They now tell their own story ... The programme includes previously unseen performances from the …

So says Gregory Chaitin, one of the world's three leading mathematicians, addressing the camera from the deep recesses of the IBM building in Yorktown Heights, New York State. He cheerfully proposes that he has proved nothing is fixed in a …

Oblomov is a slob. Even Gorbachev is said to have denounced him from the podium: 'We must stamp out the Oblomovs from our society.' The lazy aristocrat of Goncharov's 19th-century masterpiece has become a Russian folk-hero. After 100 years …

This is the story of 'the Killer', the ultimate wild man of rock, from his phenomenal success at the age of 20 with Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On to the present. After more than 30 years, Lewis remains unapologetic and unique. A product of t…

The great Italian film director, who died in 1977, was the founder of 'neo-realism'. Following the international success of his films dealing with the Second World War - Rome, Open City and Paisa - he turned in the 50s to psychological dr…

Traditional Jewish humour flourished in adversity. Religious persecution and life in the ghetto nurtured its own kind of bitter comedy which, in 20th-century America, has developed into a recognisable and acclaimed style of humour. Arena e…

Salif Keita - the golden voice of Mali - is one of the first African world superstars. He can trace his lineage directly back more than 700 years to its founder, the warrior king Sundiata Keita. Salif Keita's story is an exceptional one -…

Fred Zinnemann, best known for the classic western High Noon, has had a career in movies spanning 65 years. In an exclusive interview with Arena, Zinnemann talks about his life from his early training in Paris, via Berlin, to his arrival in…

Actor and director Spike Lee joins actress Debbie Allen on a journey in search of the perfect vocal performance. They travel through Brooklyn as different groups duel, jam and rehearse together, without the benefit of an instrument other th…

Now in her 80s, Peggy Ramsay is the most powerful and unconventional play agent in Britain. She started her agency in the mid-50s in a converted brothel in the West End and has been responsible for the careers of over 70 writers including …

The term 'English rose' conjures up a variety of images which fall somewhere between the delicate pink roses of high summer and the fair complexion of a young girl. Either way, the term is synonymous with beauty and innocence, and through t…

They call themselves the 'Children'. By day they are cycle-messengers, assistants in department stores, prostitutes or unemployed; by night they are members of clubs or houses with such exotic names as the House of Chanel, the House of St L…

On 4 July 1967, Private Raymond Griffiths was killed in Vietnam. He was 19 years old - the average age of US combat troops in the war. He was one of more than 30,000 American service personnel killed or wounded in eight years of vicious fig…

Cuba's legendary capital, once a playground for the rich, has an extraordinary faded beauty with its grand colonial palaces decaying into crumbling tenements. Since the popular revolution 30 years ago, Cuba has been viewed by the west as t…

Niccolo Machiavelli 's infamous The Prince is a short book about power - how to get it and how to hang on to it. But if 'he' were changed to 'she' throughout, would Machiavelli's masterpiece provide an insight into the remarkable success of…

Krzysztof Kieslowski is the foremost director to have emerged in Poland since Andrzej Wadja. His two most recent features, A Short Film about Killing and A Short Film about Love, shocked western audiences and critics with their pessimism an…

Paris's love affair with the black world stretches from the Cubists' discovery of African sculpture at the beginning of the century to the present day appreciation of rap and African popular music. This programme celebrates black culture an…

Tonight's programme looks at the Soviet cinema since perestroika and examines the work of some of its most important film directors who are working again after years of enforced silence. Through film clips and interviews, Arena discusses t…

When Lenin told the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain that its survival depended on having a daily paper, he could not have forseen that after 60 years of heroic struggle the Daily Worker, renamed in 1966 the Morning Star, would…

Considered by many to be our greatest living stand-up comedian, the incomparable Francis Alick Howerd holds a special place in the hearts of the British public. Born during a snowstorm, the shy young Howerd managed to construct a unique co…

This Arena Special celebrates the centenary of Dame Agatha Christie's birth with the first film biography of the world's most widely read author. Total sales of her crime novels are calculated in billions, but the creator of Miss Marple and…

A new musical, Township Fever, is about to open on Broadway. Written by Mbongeni Ngema , the co-author of Woza Albert , it is vibrant and funny, but also quite shocking and controversial - because it goes right into the heart of the violen…

Tonight Arena brings you an evening of short films and a debate devoted to that most universal of subjects, food. Spitting Image has created your hosts, Meat and Two Veg. From their kitchen/diner they talk to an a la carte menu of delicacie…

Today's hypermarket is an Aladdin's cave compared to the grocery store of 30 years ago. Food Night looks at the ever-increasing gulf between what appears on the supermarket shelf and the original ingredients.

A salute to four great thinkers. If Rossini had not preferred food to music there would have been no Tornados Rossini. If Nellie Melba had not become so fat through eating too many of the Peach Melbas created for her by Escoffier, he woul…

Food has had a part to play in religion, politics, science and war, and throughout history has underlined the social divide between prince and peasant. Today food remains as divisive as ever.

Some lessons in manners from the silver screen - Five Easy Pieces, Tampopo, Oliver Twist and more.

This film explores the application of kosher dietary laws which have helped to preserve the separate identity of the Jewish people.

Louisiana State Penitentiary recently released a list of the last meals ordered by prisoners about to be executed. One man, whose crime was shooting a grocery store attendant, requested Jalapeno peppers, two boxes of Frosties and a pint of …

With the help of potato experts from all over the world Food Night pays homage to this nutritious, delicious, maligned and sometimes despised vegetable - the paradoxical potato.

A chance to sample some favourites from the kitchens of such legends as Fanny Cradock, Zena Skinner and Delia Smith. Director Sarah Mortimer

Mealworms served in a cherry tomato, grasshoppers rolled in bacon - these are just a few of the nourishing dishes served up in this film which explores repulsion and revulsion in food taste.

Left to your own devices, what do you eat, when do you eat it and how much of it do you eat?

As Christmas approaches, time to contemplate self-denial.

As the evening's climax, Arena assembles a forum of distinguished politicians, economists, nutritionists, moralists and senders and receivers of aid to debate the international politics of food.

A spectacular musical celebration of life, capturing evolution in all its glorious diversity, and the rhythms of nature in all its beauty, delight, and horror. From the raging furnace of volcanoes to frozen glaciers, deserts and humid rain…

Nelson Mandela, since his release, has become one of the most famous people in the world. Everyone has heard of the leader, but Mandela the man remains an enigma. For the first time he talks about his life and times from a personal standpoi…

Derek Jarman is a uniquely British outsider: a painter, film-maker and a self-appointed enfant terrible with a paradoxical affection for tradition. He makes films as a painter or poet, rather than as a conventional film-maker; his subject m…

Kiefer is Germany's most controversial and reclusive artist. He is also its most successful. The millions his work commands in the auction houses and his popularity with collectors belies the sombreness of the subject matter - Germany's pas…

On 3 February 1967, Joe Meek, composer of Telstar and pioneer independent producer, shot his landlady and then himself. With Humphrey Lyttelton, Screaming Lord Sutch, Heinz, Jonathan King, John Leyton and Jess Conrad, Arena charts this Orto…

Rocky is the name of American artist Robert Rauschenberg's pet turtle. It is also the name of an epic and visionary project which in the last eight years has taken Rauschenberg around the world a dozen times: Roci - the Rauschenberg Oversea…

December 1990: a rusty ship drifts silently in the North Sea. As the Government and its Broadcasting Bill close in for the kill, Radio Caroline could be silenced for ever. For Ronan O'Rahilly, its founder, it was always part party, part soc…

This profile of Keith Waterhouse follows him through his hectic diary. As a columnist for the Daily Mail he reports from the Conservative conference in Bournemouth and the Labour conference in Blackpool, where he slips away to become a tram…

It has been said that the English hoard words like misers and the Irish spend them like sailors. Tonight's Arena presents three great Irish masters of the English language, Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan. Anthony Cronin, …

For more than two decades, Van Morrison has been fusing different musical influences, creating a style of his own. In this programme he duets with Bob Dylan and plays harmonica with blues legend John Lee Hooker. He leads the Danish Radio Bi…

This one-man show based on the life of Oscar Wilde was the jewel in the crown for Irish actor Michael MacLiammoir 's career. The programme was first shown on St Patrick's Day 1964.

Roci Rocky is the name of American artist Robert Rauschenberg 's pet turtle. It is also the name of an epic and visionary project which in the last eight years has taken Rauschenberg around the world a dozen times: Roci - the Rauschenberg O…

When Kenneth Anger first published his classic expose of Hollywood's best-kept secrets and scandals, it was immediately banned. The underground film-maker struck a raw nerve in 'tinsel town'. Tonight he goes for a 'walk on the wild side' wi…

Top US crime writer Elmore Leonard 's street-wise characters range from violent hoodlums in and around Detroit to low-life hustlers on Florida's Gold Coast. Arena travels with him as he visits some of the colourful and contrasting people an…

In the last of the current series of Arena, musical performance artist Laurie Anderson presents an examination of mankind's obsession with its own image. For thousands of years artists and scientists have attempted to unravel the enigmas of…

A show as big as the Lone Star State this is an epic voyage through the wildest state in the union - from the honkytonks and dancehalls to the hill country and burning deserts; from big cities to towns so tiny they're not even on the map. A…

Brutalised at home and school, John Healy drinks a promising boxing career into the "grass arena" - the savage community of vagrant alcoholics. He drifts towards certain death, until a fellow prisoner teaches him chess. His striking new tal…

The first of a special three-part presentation in which American film director Billy Wilder discusses his career with German film maker Volker Schlondorff. From Marlene Dietrich to Marilyn Monroe. Humphrey Bogart to Gary Cooper , Wilder has…

Second of three in-depth conversations with the film director and writer Billy Wilder. He recalls his memories of the great Hollywood stars - "Mae West walked out of the door all white gold and feathers. She looked like a locomotive." He ta…

Last of a special three-part presentation in which American director Billy Wilder discusses his career. He remembers working with Marilyn Monroe on Some Like It Hot "With Monroe life was a surprise - sometimes she knew eight pages of dial…

When pop artist Peter Blake confessed in a magazine article that his fantasy was to be the mysterious masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki, who never speaks and never removes his mask, little did he know what the consequences would be. Poet and t…

A portrait of the controversial American film director, Oliver Stone, whose work often arouses the fiercest passions in both supporters and critics. In a revealing interview, Stone looks back on his life and work, reminiscing about his diff…

On 14 February 1989 Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Tonight, on the third anniversary of the fatwa, a gathering of international writers and artists re-asserts the surpassing value of freedom of expression.

In 1983, David Hampton was arrested for pretending to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier and conning his way into the homes of some of New York's most powerful and influential families. Seven years later this case became the inspiration for…

Rockstar Dean Read was the biggest rock star the communist world had ever seen. Virtually unknown in his native America, the "Red Sinatra" was the first pop musician Mikhail Gorbachev ever heard. He sang My Yiddishe Momma to Yasser Arafat i…

This film asks how the culture of a country survives amid gunfire. Ivan Rabuzin , the 71-year-old Croatian artist, says his paintings stand as accusations. "They show an image of earthly heaven and they are based on the real world in which …

"I'll either be famous or infamous," declared the controversial German painter who died in 1969. His subjects range from tranquil landscapes to frenzied sex murders, from brutalised war criminals to religious allegories. In his lifetime he…

Refused entry to America from China in 1958 because of the embargo on "communist goods", the giant panda Chi-Chi came to London Zoo - a constant object of media attention and public adoration. Eight years later she was sent on a diplomatic …

Tales of the City first appeared in the 70s as a daily column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Armistead Maupin's stories about life in San Francisco as seen through the eyes of a zany cast of characters had such a massive following that he…

A self-portrait of photographer and film maker Robert Frank. Often called the "eyes of the Beats", Frank's work spans 45 years from his influential book of photographs The Americans in the 1950s to a controversial Rolling Stones documenta…

Javier Mariscal is an artist who cannot be categorised - a designer who thinks a Camel cigarette packet has as much value as a Picasso. Phillipe Starck , the doyen of the design world, calls him "the Andy Warhol of Spain". Mariscal himself…

Three films which take a journey through the rich musical heritage of Argentina. The story begins just south of Buenos Aires in the Pampas. This is the land of the gaucho - the solitary hero on his horse, the symbol of Argentinian identity…

Three films which take a journey through the rich musical heritage of Argentina. In the vast regions from the plains of the Pampas to the provinces of the north, three distinct styles of music and dance evolved: the zamba, the chacarera an…

The Calchaquies valleys in the Andes and the Humahuaca canyon form the most underdeveloped and remote region in Argentina, with traditions going back beyond the Inca conquest. The far north with its small mountain villages like Molinos and …

Few activities in modern life can rival sport for creating excitement, passion and commitment. Arena takes a look at how the tensions and glories of sporting life are turned into prose by the sportswriter. Hugh Mcllvanney, many times winne…

In her first television profile, Linda McCartney talks about her life in photography and, with husband Paul, about the difficulties of being married to a Beatle and how she has coped over the years with a mixed press. She is probably better…

Arena's 1993 season opens with this three-part exploration of the life and work of the enigmatic writer. Greene's obsessions with the seedy world of love, sex, betrayal, disloyalty and failure influenced millions of readers over 60 years. W…

Disloyalty, secrecy and spying fascinated Greene both in his work and in his private life. Tonight's film charts the hidden years of his life when his marriage broke down and he became involved in a series of intense and turbulent affairs. …

Last of the biographical films, with extracts read by Sir Alec Guinness. A World of My Own (1961-91) Passionately promoting the link between Catholicism and communism, defending Kim Philby , supporting guerrillas in central America or figh…

In the 1980s American artist J S G Boggs stunned the art world by holding an exhibition of banknotes, drawn by himself. In one go, he broke moral, artistic and legal taboos-counterfeiting money, poking fun at the art world, and raising the …

The story of the unlikely and unpublicised relationship between a 60s American rock band and some of Britain's little-known orchestral composers. Once the icons of the San Francisco hippie scene, the Grateful Dead are still a leading tourin…

Elder statesman of jazz and a co-founder of the style that became bebop in the 40s, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie will be remembered by many as the trumpet player with ballooning cheeks and a misshapen horn. His career began in the 30s in Ph…

One of the world's leading figures in the battle against Aids is not a doctor, scientist or politician, but a writer - Larry Kramer - who says: "Aids has given me my life's work." A novelist, playwright and screenwriter, Kramer first came t…

Palestinian writer, academic and exile, Edward W Said takes a journey into the worlds of history, literature, ideas and imagination to explain how he wrote his most recent book, Culture and Imperialism. Opening in New York, "the city of ex…

For three decades the Soviet Union's obsession with space stirred the soul of the nation like a secular religion - from the first space star Yuri Gagarin to the sad saga of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev who circled the planet for almost a year…

An interview with the poet who last December won the Nobel prize for literature, and whose current novel-length poem has caused him to be dubbed the "Homer of the Caribbean". He talks to Stuart Hall on the Caribbean island of St Lucia wher…

One of China's most successful film directors, Zhang Yimou , talks about his life, his work, and his views on China. The stunning photography and quintessential "Chineseness" of his films - from Red Sorghum, Judou and Raise the Red Lantern …

To mark his 60th birthday, and the publication of his new book Operation Shylock, Philip Roth breaks his long silence and talks to Arena about his life, books, and some of the links between the two. Since his outrageous comic novel Portnoy'…

To the innocent reader, the characters in a work of fiction are the author's inventions. To those in the know, it is often more complicated. Arena investigates the effect novels can have on those people who do see a resemblance between them…

Chronicling New York low and high life, Weegee's photographs have often shocked the world. His wife, Wilma Wilcox , talks about the man behind the myth.

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp entered a white porcelain object in a New York exhibition. it was a urinal. Arena unearths the origins of this extraordinary story with an account from Duchamp's lover of the time, ceramicist Beatrice Wood.

An Arena special which documents the making of Reitz's second great German epic, The Second Heimat, which begins on BBC2 next Saturday. When Jewish writer Carole Angier watched the original Heimat (recently repeated on BBC2), she was so mov…

The arts series returns with four films tracing the origins of classic rock songs. The inspiration behind Buddy Holly's famous song - Peggy Sue Gerron Rackham - now runs a drainage company in Sacramento, California. Arena takes her back to…

Brenda Fassie is South Africa's answer to Madonna. A black singer for black people, she is streetwise, outrageous and aiming to be an international star. With her new album I'm Not a Bad Girl, this Arena special shows Brenda Fassie in perfo…

The second documentary in this Arena series telling the true stories behind classic rock songs is devoted to Elvis Presley's first million-selling release, Heartbreak Hotel. This film tracks down the song's writers, schoolteacher Mae Axton …

All the characters named in the song were real people who frequented Andy Warhol's studio in the late 60s. Trans-sexual Holly, and Jackie and Candy, who were transvestites, starred alongside street hustler Joe Dallesandro, in the low-budget…

Last programme in the Arena series tracing the origins of classic rock songs. This musical journey travels the famous highway that has inspired successive generations of musicians, including Bob Dylan and his 1965 song. One of the longest …

Your television and radio are cast as personalities (played by Peter Cook and Josie Lawrence) in this night of themed programmes showing how the two media have competed over the years, and which medium does what best. To make the most of t…

Ian McKellen ruminates on the distinct eras of radio broadcasting, characterised as Shakespeare's seven ages of man, with the aid of Professor Asa Briggs.

Alistair Cooke, whose weekly epistle has been broadcast on radio since 1946, explains why it is the best medium for him.

The story of early radio's method of broadcasting live football, referring to a numbered grid - published in the Radio Times - on which listeners followed the action.

Family Sunday meals conjure up for many Family Favourites, Round the Home and The Billy Cotton Band Show.

On just one estate in east London there are five pirate stations, battling to stay on air.

Does TV steal radio's best comedy ideas? Included in the debate are Frank Muir, Denis Norden, Armando Iannucci and the voice of Spike Milligan.

Harold Listings, a frustrated radio technician, takes revenge.

Nasa scientists are using giant radio antennae to pick up communications from ET.

Dr Carl Dolmetsch finds out why the pips changed pitch.

The tragic story of the lone yachtsman and his radio.

Live on TV for the first time, Fisher, German Bight, Dogger.

Concluding BBC2's Arena Radio Night, a film drama starring James Whitmore, Nancy Davis (later Reagan). Joe and Mary Smith are shaken one night when they hear what seems to be the voice of God coming from their radio.

An exploration of the phenomenal popularity of L Frank Baum 's famous children's story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written in 1900. About 20 film versions of the story have been made (including a 1925 one with Oliver Hardy), and the program…

In the 1980s Vladimir Pozner , once dubbed "Ivan the Telegenic", became the second most celebrated communist in the west. Carrying Gorbachev's message to western television screens, he intrigued and troubled millions of viewers. But who is…

The new stars of ragga and gangster rap - Shabba Ranks, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Buju Banton - have become as notorious as they are successful. They command huge audiences and record sales but they have been accused of hating women, inciting…

For centuries, bare-knuckle boxing has been going on behind closed doors. Nigel Finch's unusual film investigates this illegal activity by following one hopeful as he prepares for a fight against the "Cyclone", the Northern Ireland bare-knu…

During the 1970s and 1980s Derekjarman kept a Super-8 film diary, chronicling the cultural high life and low life of London. The footage ranges from William Burroughs reading aloud at the nightclub Heaven, to candid behind-the-scenes footag…

In 1960 an American film called Primary changed the notion of what a documentary could be, using techniques never before seen on TV. It was made by Robert Drew , whose role in the movement that has become known as cinéma vérité has gone lar…

Seventy million Kalashnikov (or AK-47) guns are scattered across the world. It was the Russians' Cold War weapon and is still the first choice of terrorists, guerrillas and mercenaries. Through the story of Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov,…

On 1 April 1984 former Motown star Marvin Gaye provoked his father once too often, and was shot dead in his bedroom. It was the tragic finale to an extraordinary series of events in the life of one of the major talents of pop music in the 7…

The idea that power exists in the remains of heroes and the things they leave behind is the focus of an Arena trilogy broadcast this weekend and introduced by this programme. Religious devotion is not the only source of modern-day relics. P…

"Move Albert Einstein ," declares Japanese professor Kenji Sugimoto at the start of a bizarre journey in search of the great one's missing brain. Sugimoto would not look out of place in a Pink Panther film as he grunts and mutters his way a…

A film drama set against civil war in Peru. When Ortiz, a professional graverobber, stumbles across the huge golden disc of the ancient sun god Atahualpa lost for years, he sets off for Lima where he hopes to sell it for a high price. Chain…

In 1978 Charlie Chaplin 's coffin was stolen from his grave in Vevey, Switzerland, and a large ransom was demanded of his widow Oona. This fictional film inspired by those events follows the east European characters responsible. A Screen Tw…

The author of the stories behind Blade Runner and Total Recall grew up in California at a time when an agricultural idyll was fast being replaced by motorways, shopping stores and junk culture. Philip K Dick drew inspiration for his 42 scie…

Robben Island is South Africa's Alcatraz. For three decades Nelson Mandela , Walter Sisulu and hundreds of other political prisoners were held in its maximum security prison for opposing the apartheid regime. Conditions were harsh and priso…

Using herself as the model, American artist Cindy Sherman has produced hundreds of photographs exploring the use of female stereotypes. Most recently she has addressed the theme of sexuality and Aids. Renowned for her secrecy - this is the …

Brazil's major slave-trading port for nearly three centuries, Bahia has a black population of over 80 per cent which maintains the legacy of African tradition at every level of daily life. Jana Bokova's vivid film portrait captures the spir…

Sandra Bernhard 's outrageous one-woman show deals with many normally taboo subjects and controversy runs through her personal life: she was once Madonna's lover and is a lesbian pin-up, but she also posed for Playboy. In this country, howe…

This Arena special profiles sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who has suddenly become fashionable at the age of 84, and has been chosen to represent America at the Venice Biennale, the world's most prestigious art exhibition.

Arena returns with a three-part special, presenting a film portrait of one of the world's great comic actors, incorporating home movies, film clips and interviews.

The second of a three-part film portrait of one of the world's great comic actors.

The last of a three-part film portrait of one of the world's great comic actors. Tonight's film begins in 1964, with Sellers at the peak of his success. Dr Strangelove and The Pink Panther are filling cinemas throughout the world and his m…

In August 1975, the face of British rock music was fundamentally changed: the Sex Pistols were formed. A host of colourful characters, including the Damned's Captain Sensible, Richard Hell, Jerry Nolan from the New York Dolls, and the legen…

The passion fans had for his music was matched only by the passion Elvis Presley had for his food. This documentary records his inexhaustible appetite for fast foods, the team he had working around the clock to satisfy his gastronomic exces…

What is a nation? From Corsica to Kashmir, from Quebec to Bosnia, violent separatist movements are fighting to form their own nation states. This edition of Arena explores the fabric of national identity, and follows four of the world's lea…

At 70 years of age, singer Tony Bennett has been dubbed the King of Cool by the MTV-watching generation. Arena reveals the man behind the silky voice as Tony Bennett - civil rights activist, jazz enthusiast, painter and New Yorker - takes a…

The legendary Sid Caesar was one of America's favourite TV stars in the fifties. His writing team, which include Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon, was probably the first ever to be assembled in one room. The team recently reunited wit…

On 22 October 1995, for the first time, all the world's leaders gathered together in the United Nations in New York to have their photograph taken for the beginning of the UN's 50th anniversary celebration.

A portrait of the Italian film-maker Michelangelo Antonioni , who has directed such films as L'Awentura, which follows immediately, LaNotte and Zabriskie Point. The work of the director is known for its studies of alienation and its experim…

Sports writer Hugh Mcllvanney presents the first of a trilogy of programmes for the Easter weekend about three great football managers; Matt Busby. Jock Stein and Bill Shankly. Tonight's film takes a look at the early careers of these men,…

Hugh Mcllvanney presents the second in a trilogy of programmes about three great football managers; Matt Busby , Jock Stein and Bill Shankly. Tonight's film focuses on 1945-60, the period when the three former miners were all to become man…

Concluding the three-part series presented by sports writer Hugh Mcllvanney about three great football managers; Matt Busby, Jock Stein and Bill Shankly. This film charts the incredible success that these three men brought to their clubs du…

Tonight's programme considers musa sapientum, the fruit of the wise. The Velvet Underground's John Cale tells the story behind Andy Warhol's famous LP cover, Auberon Waugh and John Walters recall their first encounters with the fruit after …

In 1962, before John F Kennedy signed the embargo banning the importation of cigars into America from Cuba, the President ordered 1,200 Havana cigars, according to Pierre Salinger, his former press secretary. Tonight's programme follows th…

The first of a three-part profile of the writer, composer and actor covers Coward's meteoric rise from suburban south London to the world's highest-paid author by the time he was 30.

The second of three programmes celebrating the life and career of Noel Coward focuses on the journey through the Far East which inspired his most famous song, Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Coward's own home movies - being shown on television for…

Concluding the three-part Easter special with a look at the last 30 years of Noel Coward's life. His post-war eclipse as a dramatist gave way to a new career as a highly successful cabaret performer in London and Las Vegas and in numerous f…

Arena explores the rise of the legendary crooner Frank Sinatra from his early family background to overwhelming showbusiness success. Interviews with friends, family and associates reveal a star-studded career in music and film alongside a …

The first of a two-part documentary telling the story of Brian Epstein. Gay when homosexuality was illegal, a gambler, shopkeeper and failed actor, he was also the pop king with the Midas touch who, in the sixties, was as well known as the …

Concluding the two-part profile of the pop manager who brought global success to the Beatles. By the mid-sixties, the group's fame meant Epstein had little time to devote to the other acts under his control. He was also being increasingly …

Newsreel footage from 1962, when Fidel Castro's arrangement with then-Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to install nuclear-weapon sites triggered off the Cuban missile crisis.

Cuba's baseball prowess has been long estabished. Fidel Castro himself was once scouted by a US team, and in 1992 Cuba surpassed even the Americans to win the first Olympic baseball gold medal. With many top Cuban players offered lucrative …

Cuba's place in world politics, from mid-sixties to mid-eighties.

Homer swaps jobs with Fidel Castro, who goes to work at the nuclear power plant in Springfield.

The effects of the demise of the dominant political ethos in the east.

Since his death in 1967, the face of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara has stared down from posters and banners around the world, the most reproduced image since the Mona Lisa. This programme, written by Reggie Nadelson, explores the industr…

Cuba's relations with the United States in recent times.

In Salman Rushdie 's new novel The Ground beneath Her Feet. singer Vina Aspara is caught up in an earthquake on Valentine's Day 1989, and never seen again. On that day Rushdie's own life was in unheaval as Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced the …

The Iron Curtain ran north to south through Europe and divided the world for 50 years. American writer and broadcaster Reggie Nadelson joins former Soviet Union spin doctor Vladimir Pozner in an attempt to retrace the chilling and strange r…

The legendary 18th-century lover has been immortalised in books, films and on television, but are these fictionalised accounts historically accurate? Novelist Josephine Hart investigates the truth behind the many myths surrounding this eni…

In 1957, Jayne Mansfield was riding high as the most photographed woman in the world. Yet, ten years later, she was reduced to stripping in seedy nightclubs to finance a serious alcohol problem and support her five children from three broke…

This second blonde-bombshell profile focuses on Britain's home-grown prototype, Diana Dors. The Rada-trained actress emerged as a sex symbol in the fifties through a run of low-budget British comedies. Hollywood success, however, proved el…

Perhaps best remembered as the shapely blonde who waded into the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita, fifties sex symbol Anita Ekberg became a Hollywood icon and a cult figure in European cinema. This portrait, which concludes the documentary …

Actor Dennis Hopper plays the eccentric host to this guide to the world of commercial creativity. The programme analyses advertising's true place in modern-day, media-obsessed popular culture, highlighted by clips from some extreme and powe…

More and more young Muslim women today are wearing the veil, saying that it frees rather than oppresses them. This one-off Arena explores how a simple piece of cloth has endured in the eastern and western imagination.

An edition in the occasional arts documentary strand. Wisconsin Death Trip. Inspired by a book of the same name, film-maker James Marsh tells the haunting tale of murder, madness and suicide that took place behind the thin veil of respectab…

The first of a two-part Christmas special profiling the Hollywood actor and director Clint Eastwood. Eastwood recalls his tough childhood, and looks back at his early career, from Rawhide to Dirty Harry and the spaghetti westerns. With cont…

Concluding the two-part profile of the life and work of Hollywood actor and director Clint Eastwood. The story continues with Eastwood's directorial debut, as he completed Play Misty for Me in five weeks before going on to huge success in …

The art strand Arena returns with a new seven-part series. Best known for such novels as LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia, and the autobiographical work My Dark Places, crime writer James Ellroy has recently moved beyond his genre to crea…

There is seemingly no endeavour for which there is not an award, from Preacher of the Year to Streetsweeper of the Year. Arena asks what lies at the heart of our fascination with awards and prizes, and society's desire to pick winners and l…

Eighty-six-year-old novelist Budd Schulberg talks to old friend Hugh McIlvanney about his life and his long and varied career - including his screenplay for the multiple Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront.

Tonight's film dramatises the story behind the leading artists who personified the Beat Generation, which saw its roots in the meeting of Allen Ginsberg , Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs in the forties. Examining their bohemian life in t…

During the past 30 years the photographic work of Brazilian-born Sebastiao Salgado has helped to bring conditions of famine and poverty to international attention.

Joseph Stalin is seen outside his native land as one of history's most deplorable tyrants, but throughout the former Soviet states a cult of Stalin still exists. This film documents Stalin's development from would-be provincial priest to ru…

A one-off film in which author Beryl Bainbridge chronicles the extraordinary relationship during the 18th century between Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale, the wife of rich London brewer Henry Thrale, which forms the basis for her latest no…

Writer, performer and director, the late Eric Sykes was the renaissance man of British comedy. This episode of Arena opens the doors of the room that was his creative home for forty years. Post-war Britain saw Sykes catapulted to fame in th…

Charlie Drake is perhaps best known as the "little man" taking on the world in such films as 'The Cracksman' and television series like 'The Worker'. Drake himself had much to overcome: marital, financial and career troubles dogged him, but…

The sketch, first shown in 1967, that took the Golden Rose at Montreux. Drake plays the conductor and all of the musicians in an orchestra.

Since a 1951 breakthrough appearance on the long-running radio series 'Educating Archie', Bygraves has proved a hit with the British public, whether he performs as an actor, a comedian or a ballad singer. He still entertains today, dividing…

In 1986, Dirk Bogarde burnt most of his personal papers at his home in southern France. However, 12 cans of home movies, shot mostly by Bogarde's long-term partner Anthony Forwood, survived the flames. This two-part Arena special draws on t…

The second of Arena's two-part film about Bogarde plots his progress to the forefront of European cinema in films such as Joseph Losey's 'The Servant' and Luchino Visconti's 'Death in Venice', before retiring from acting to become a writer.…

As the 2001 winner, the Baltic state of Estonia, prepares to host this year's Eurovision Song Contest, this documentary explores the dramas, dreams, and dilemmas of what many see as a festival of kitsch, but which to the Estonians could be …

First in a two-part profile of Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa, looking at his childhood, early career and emergence as a major director during the American occupation. Kurosawa's samurai roots and traumatic early experiences influenced …

Concluding the profile of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. International acclaim followed masterpieces like the influential 'Seven Samurai', but success at home was elusive. Unable to find funding for his epic films in Japan, Kurosawa att…

Arena revisits its 1995 BAFTA-nominated Sellers trilogy, this time using only film shot by the late comic, who died in July 1980. Sellers is seen at home, on set, on holiday and in carefully stage-managed scenarios in this revealing treasur…

This edition chronicles Pinter's East End childhood, his work as an actor, the critical appraisal of his work, and his passion for cricket. The film looks at the various rooms in which Pinter formulated his ideas and wrote his early works, …

This programme focuses on the relationship between the public and private aspects of Pinter's life and work. The film includes footage from two Pinter stage productions - 'One For The Road' with Pinter himself in the lead role, and 'Celebra…

Harold Pinter takes the lead role in the Gate Theatre, Dublin's production of his play, produced by Michael Colgan and directed by Robin Lefevre. In an unnamed police state, Nicolas, who works as a torturer, interrogates three members of th…

A 70th birthday tribute to Harold Pinter in three parts. The first section acknowledges Pinter's involvement in highlighting political injustices and puts his writing in its political context. The second installment sees the playwright in c…

An anxious recluse deals with the pressures of the outside world. A play by Harold Pinter, filmed in New York's Almeida Theatre in 2001

In a world of mimicry and satire, do the Dead Ringers team know who they really are? Meet Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Mark Perry, Kevin Connelly and Phil Cornwell, whose impressions of everyone from Anne Robinson and Sven-Goran Eriksson to Geo…

Not many can talk for a minute without hesitation, repetition or deviation - but, for 35 years, Just a Minute panellists have done just that. Paul Merton, Clement Freud, Linda Smith and Ross Noble continue the story, with referee Nicholas P…

The story of Mikova, the remote Slovakian village where the family of icon Andy Warhol came from.

Gillian Kearney plays the author in an Arena docudrama. With Anna Chancellor.

As he becomes an octogenarian, a two-part Arena special celebrates the life and distinguished career of one of Britain's best-loved public figures. Lord Attenborough's film CV as actor stretches from Brighton Rock to Jurassic Park, while as…

The conclusion to this two-part profile, which accompanies the Attenborough at 80 season of films this week, looks at Attenborough's career as Britain's most distinguished film director, whose biopic Ghandi won eight Oscars in 1982, includi…

The huge and enduring popularity of John Lennon 's song, Imagine, is examined in this documentary. Yoko Ono , who is now acknowledged as the co-author of the song, is filmed as she continues her mission to spread Lennon's message using "an…

In the 50th year since his tragic death, author and broadcaster Nigel Williams examines the work and legend of one of the most famous poets of the 20th century-Dylan Thomas. Born in 1914 in Swansea, he was an unruly child, yet determined to…

Buffalo Bill was instrumental in transforming the Wild West into the caricatured setting portrayed in countless films and novels. Using archive footage, this part-dramatised documentary tells story of a man who was variously prairie scout, …

The acting career of Alec Guinness spanned more than five decades. Although readily identifiable in character, the real man avoided the trappings of fame, preferring a secluded life in the country with his wife Merula. This film profile, th…

For 40 years, Luciano Pavarotti has been hailed as one of the greatest tenors of all time, an artist fit to rank alongside the great Caruso. As his career reaches its climax, this documentary, showing as part of the BBC's Summer of Opera, c…

Country singer Jim White takes a road trip through the rural white American South in in an Arena documentary. Driving through a terrain of truck stops and churches, he finds a community fiercely holding on to their religious beliefs - the …

Examining the battles between the film's producers, and the demands of star Orson Welles.

A documentary chronicling the series of Amnesty International fundraising concerts, which brought together a wealth of comedy talent and paved the way for future events such as Comic Relief. Plus music from Bob Geldof, Joan Armatrading, Phi…

The Potter at the BBC strand marking the 10th anniversary of his death starts with this feature-length profile. It charts his childhood, time at Oxford, bid for parliament and rise as a constantly controversial TV dramatist who was loved an…

How the playwright used popular songs as a powerful dramatic device and to express the depth of his characters in Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective.

A portrait of the late playwright, featuring extracts from his work - read by Keith Barron - and interviews with Potter himself.

From Elvis to Norah Jones , Hank Williams 's songs have been recorded more often than those of any other country music writer. Dirt-poor and rail-thin, he blazed out of Alabama in the late 1940s with the fervor of a man whose days were numb…

Cited as being the most beautiful star in the Hollywood firmament during the 1930s and 40s, Hedy Lamarr's talents as an accomplished physicist who also engaged in perfecting radar systems made her no average screen goddess. Her research was…

Haunting and ferocious, Francis Bacon's paintings made an indelible impression on art history. His life - as outrageous as his work - is recalled by Arena in the only documentary exclusively permitted by Bacon's estate since his death in 19…

Bob Dylan, Jean Genet, Orson Welles and Francis Bacon are among the subjects in a look back at memorable editions of the past 30 years. With film makers Alan Yentob, Anthony Wall and Nigel Williams.

Director Martin Scorsese enlists the help of Dylan himself, Joan Baez , film-maker DA Pennebaker , Greenwich Village folk icon Dave Von Ronk , and beat poet Allen Ginsberg , for an emotional, musical and intellectual journey through the sin…

Martin Scorsese delicately balances Dylan's internal world with signpost images from the external as he follows the newsworthy phenomenon of a 23-year-old star laden with expectations - from the old left to become a political activist, and …

Surprisingly, Bob Dylan first came to the attention of the British public through his role in a 1963 BBC TV play, The Madhouse on Castle Street. The tape was later wiped and has since become the holy grail of missing Dylan works. Joining th…

An incredible 22.8 million viewers were agog as Diana, Princess of Wales spoke candidly of her marriage into the royal family. Ten years on, the secrecy and tensions behind this seminal interview - and the impact it had on the public and th…

Documentary celebrating one of London's great characters, the bus conductor. The film tells the stories of five extraordinary conductors from five decades of London's history (original title "Little Platform, Big Stage").

Hancock's Half-Hour and Steptoe and Son - two persuasive reasons for making Ray Galton and Alan Simpson pre-eminent among Britain's postwar comedy writers. In their first full-length profile, the duo, who met as teenagers in 1948 when they …

A one-off documentary following six months in the life of Libertines and Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty - the musician who currently throws the British tabloid press into a frenzy like no other due to his drug addiction and relationship…

The phenomenon of sanctity is examined in a documentary asking what makes a saint, comparing the Catholic Church's well-known practices with those of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Marking its 56th year on the air, Arena examines the enduring appeal of Radio 4's rural soap, which began in 1951 as a public service programme to help Britain's farmers get back on their feet. The everyday tale has evolved slowly over the …

Documentary about the Tube, the world's oldest underground system, with its own unwritten rules of behaviour and protocol, and used by three million passengers every day.

The year 1977 was a crucial one in the life of reggae superstar Bob Marley. After an attempt on his life in his home that he was lucky to survive, he was forced to move from Jamaica to London. But despite his exile, it was the album that Ma…

Examining the life and work of film director Ingmar Bergman , through people who know and have spoken to him, including Melvyn Bragg and Marie Nyrerod , producer of Bergman and Faro Island.

In his remote home at the seashore on Sweden's Faro Island, Ingmar Bergman talks about the childhood that shaped him.

Ingmar Bergman examines his cinema career, which began when his first script was filmed in 1944. He is also joined by journalist and director Marie Nyrerod to look at his private archive.

Britain's postwar cinema was not well looked upon by many critics. The melodramas, crime films and horror shockers were almost all derided by contemporary critics. Unearthing a wealth of vibrant extracts from forgotten and over-looked movie…

The earliest surviving episode in the BBC archives of The Archers, originally broadcast 11th March 1952, is repeated here in its entirety along with archive film of the period.

Affectionate documentary that goes behind the scenes of the Limelight Club in Crewe, where for ten years tribute acts to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Phil Lynott have been providing a post-industrial town the chance to hear so…

Live performances by tribute bands such as Limehouse Lizzy, Are You Experienced, The Jamm and ABCD, at Crewe's Limelight Club.

A look at the Newport folk festival and the American folk revival of the 60s, which encompassed old time mountain music, blues and gospel.

Murray Lerner's documentary features Bob Dylan's performances at the Newport folk festival between 1963 and 1965 - the time when Dylan changed the music of the world.

Arena goes in search of the Bob Dylan starring 1962 BBC drama Madhouse on Castle Street, wiped in 1968.

A tribute to the Liverpudlian comedian, who turned 80 last month. Here, he discusses his 50-year career and the influences on his comedy style. Featuring film clips of his early performances and footage of his latest tour.

Profile of the Nobel Prize-winning British writer, VS Naipaul. Filmed in Wiltshire, India and his native Trinidad, he remains as incisive, forthright and controversial as ever.

Documentary which gets to the heart of that much-maligned and stereotyped character, the London cabbie, using archive footage, music and film, as well as the drivers themselves.

Writer Philip Hoare embarks on an epic journey to investigate humankind's ongoing fascination with the whale. He travels from Southampton to the whaling ports of America, before concluding his study in the Azores, exploring the significance…

BBC4's Whale Night begins with an insight into the the construction of the Blue Whale exhibit at the Natural History Museum.

Author and whale-watcher Philip Hoare takes us into the world of baleen whales, the largest animals ever to have lived and the order including blue, fin and humpback whales.

Author and whale-watcher Philip Hoare takes us into the world of toothed whales, from the plight of the captive killer whale to the fate of the stranded London whale.

Philip Hoare follows the historical trail of the whale hunters to the frozen seas of the North Pole, where he finds the bowhead, the white beluga and the tusked narwhal.

Legendary, reclusive and controversial, Phil Spector changed the face of pop with his reverbladen "wall of sound" production techniques, working with artists including the Ronettes and John Lennon. Here, Spector explains his creative proces…

A host of theatrical greats pay tribute to the accomplished actor, who died in March this year aged 86. Featuring extracts from some of his most famous roles, including Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons and his masterfu…

Crooner Tony Bennett reflects on his life with his friend and jazz enthusiast Clint Eastwood. Bennett traces his musical lineage, highlighted by concert footage.

Archive film shows how American jazz culture spread across the world in the 1940s and 50s, representing a movement that started in the clubs of New York and LA.

The Poetry Season continues with this in-depth look at the life of one of the 20th century's most important literary figures. As well as uncovering the many sides of the Nobel Prize winner who was a poet. playwright, children's writer, crit…

A performance of his critically acclaimed 1958 play about a man tormented by two mysterious strangers.

Brian Eno, former Roxy Music keyboardist and a pioneer in ambient music, engages with fellow minds in conversations on science, art, systems analysis, producing and cybernetics.

In June 2009, a group Britain's leading actors gathered for one night only to perform a celebration of the work of Harold Pinter at the National Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson.

Documentary telling the story and examining the legacy of Johnny Mercer, one of America's greatest songwriters and a man at the heart of the Great American Songbook.

Profile of the influential jazz pianist Dave Brubeck as he approaches his 90th birthday, who had one of the biggest popular hits in jazz history with Take Five.

Arena enlists supermodels Lily Cole and Lizzy Jagger and actresses Dervla Kirwan and Emer Kenny to help Rolf Harris achieve a painting ambition.

Profile of record producer Sir George Martin, with his wife Judy, son Giles, Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Michael Palin among the many contributors.

Martin Scorsese's portrait of George Harrison, which traces his life from his beginnings in Liverpool to becoming a world-famous musician, philanthropist and filmmaker.

Martin Scorsese's portrait of George Harrison looks at his post-Beatles days as a member of the Travelling Wilburys and a solo artist, as well as his non-musical ventures.

An exploration of Charles Dickens's contribution to the history of film and television, using archive footage of classic and less familiar adaptations from 1898 to the present day.

Documentary about the great saxophonist Sonny Rollins, built around his 80th birthday concert, where he is joined by the likes of Roy Haynes, Jim Hall and Ornette Coleman.

Newly-discovered film footage of tenor sax legend Sonny Rollins at Ronnie Scott's in 1974, with a band featuring guitarist Yoshiaki Masuo and soprano saxophone player Rufus Harley.

An insight into the private obsessions and insecurities of the author of Lord of the Flies. With contributions from his daughter and son and bestselling author Stephen King

Documentary exploring the life of Sir Jonathan Miller CBE, theatre and opera director, humorist and television presenter. With contributors including Kevin Spacey and Eric Idle.

Documentary telling the story of the day Amy Winehouse recorded a stunning acoustic performance in a church in the small Irish fishing village of Dingle in 2006.

The making of The Beatles' controversial 1967 film, featuring previously unseen archive footage.

Fully restored and with a remixed soundtrack, 'The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour comes out of the shadows and onto the screen.

Documentary about the early female movie stars: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe - immortal goddesses made by Hollywood to reign over the silver screen.

Documentary telling the personal story of Sister Wendy Beckett, who travelled the world telling the story of Christian art and painting in the 1990s, quickly becoming a star.

To mark the centenary of his birth, Arena examines the glamorous life and exceptionally long career of pioneering photographer and eccentric English gentleman, Norman Parkinson.

First of two documentaries celebrating the National Theatre's 50th anniversary, with contributions from artistic directors, playwrights and stars such as Dame Joan Plowright.

Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner talk about running the new National Theatre from its opening in 1976 to the fulfilment of Olivier's original dream.

Documentary telling the story of the genesis of the satirical puppet show Spitting Image, with contributions from caricaturists Peter Fluck and Roger Law and producer John Lloyd.

Made specially for schools, this version of Arena examines the history and purpose of the National Theatre as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Martin Scorsese's documentary film charting literary, political and cultural history as per the New York Review of Books, America's leading journal of ideas since 1963.

Profile of Nicolas Roeg, examining his personal vision of cinema as evidenced in his films, including Don't Look Now, Performance, Walkabout and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

To celebrate Arena's 40th anniversary, a new film made entirely from its own archive, evoking the one experience common to all - the 24-hour cycle from dawn to dusk to dawn again.

With contributions from her family and fellow musicians, now in her early eighties and still going strong, country music singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn looks back at her life.

Documentary exploring the rich, global history of Shakespeare in the cinema, with a treasure trove of film extracts and archival interviews with their creators.

Documentary marking the year pop music and popular culture ripped up the rule book, as restless experimentation and the search for new forms of expression took hold.

The tragicomic rollercoaster story of a unique venue, the Roundhouse in north London, which has hosted virtually every big name in rock and alternative theatre since 1966.

Arena spends the summer with supercool self-confessed rock chick, Chrissie Hynde. Featuring a glorious live performance at one of London's most intimate venues.

Series telling the stories of the pioneers of American roots music. The 1920s saw record companies travel rural America to record the music of ordinary people.

Series telling the stories of the pioneers of American roots music. The second episode explores gospel, the songs of the coal mines and the Mississippi Delta blues.

As Desert Island Discs reaches 75, today's custodian of the island, Kirsty Young, introduces the 1982 Bafta-winning Arena classic.

The story of the pioneers of American roots music explores Hawaiian music, Cajun music and Mississippi John Hurt's blues.

Today's music superstars use a lovingly reassembled old machine to record in the same way that their early predecessors did - with no edits, no overdubs and no retakes.

Exploring the relationship of artist Stanley Spencer's daughters, Unity and Shirin, as they try to understand and reclaim their father and investigate their family's archaeology.

A Bob Dylan performance of songs expressing his new-found Christianity in the late 70s, enhanced by a series of sermons between the songs, written by the actor Michael Shannon.

A chance to hang out with Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Joan Plowright and enjoy sparkling conversation spliced with a raft of astonishing archive.

Multimedia artist Rachel Maclean takes a satirical look at the contradictory pressures faced by women today.

A year in the life of abstract artist Sean Scully, one of the world's wealthiest painters. Little known at home but a superstar abroad, Sean flies around the world to open 15 major museum exhibitions - a journey that also reveals his extrao…

A long-lost film of the creative community formed by Peter Beard, Jackie Kennedy's sister Lee Radziwill and her relatives, the Beales of Grey Gardens, in 1970s New York.

A rare insight into the work of Cindy Sherman, one of the world's leading, and most elusive, contemporary artists.

Documentary profiling Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama whose work, including her much-visited Infinity Mirror Room installations, defies classification.

When legendary writer and adventurer Bruce Chatwin was dying of Aids, his friend and collaborator Werner Herzog made a final visit to say farewell.

Documentary that exposes a darker, less well-known side of film director Ingmar Bergman, focusing on the landmark year of 1957, which saw Bergman direct two films and four plays.

This feature-length documentary for Arena by acclaimed director Vanessa Engle tells the remarkable story of a charlatan art dealer who swindled over $50 million from the art establishment before going on the run.

Haunting film about Britain and the nuclear age, from the first bomb tests to our potentially futile preparations for attack during the Cold War.

Contemporary artist Gillian Wearing celebrates the legacy of Victorian novelist George Eliot in an experimental film made up of a diverse cast of people.

Born into a farming family in rural Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney became the finest poet of his generation and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 - but his career also coincided with one of the bloodiest political upheavals o…

Made across six months in the run-up to publication of 'The Mirror and the Light', the final book in Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning Tudor trilogy on the life of Thomas Cromwell, this film enjoys exclusive and extensive access to one of the …

In 1974, Ike White recorded an album while serving life for murder. The album became his ticket to freedom. But, just as he was on the cusp of stardom, Ike disappeared.

Through the words of James Baldwin, this film touches on the lives and assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers.

The definitive story of international art sensation Keith Haring, told using previously unheard interviews. Haring blazed a trail through the art scene of 80s New York and revolutionised pop culture.

xclusive testimony reveals the multifaceted man behind the maverick performer Fela Kuti, who created a sound for a continent - Afrobeat.

For decades among the foremost names in documentary, Nick Broomfield has often implicated himself in the film-making process with honesty and candour. Yet never has he made a movie more distinctly personal than this complex and moving film …

Docudrama portrait of Delia Derbyshire, the electronic sound pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme tune, exploring the idea that this extraordinary composer herself lived outside of time and space.

British-Nigerian poet and activist Femi Nylander travels to West Africa to discover the modern-day impact on its people of atrocities that took place over a century ago.

An exploration – from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Grace Jones – of how black artists use the sci-fi genre to examine black history and imagine new, alternative futures.

How a US lifer survived long-term solitary confinement through a remarkable pen-pal friendship and the making of beautiful little paintings from M&M's.

An investigation into the extraordinary life and work of B. Catling, an eye-popping insight into the late-flourishing career of a maverick artist, teacher and performer.

An Arena documentary about the life and work of video art pioneers Steina and Woody Vasulka, which reveals the profound effect they had on the American avant-garde.

Documentary that follows Björn Andrésen, the boy catapulted to fame when Luchino Visconti chose him to play Tadzio in his screen adaptation of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

River takes its audience on a journey through space and time spanning six continents, showing rivers on a scale and from perspectives never seen before.

A hundred years after its publication, this film reveals the tawdry, shocking, poetic, uplifting and gloriously kaleidoscopic humanity of James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses.

2022 marks the centenary of one of the defining poems of the 20th century, 'The Waste Land'. TS Eliot's groundbreaking work first exploded into the world on 15 October 1922 and has continued to resonate with successive generations. But in 2…

A visually arresting feature documentary, set in the present but which tells the rich story of Haiti’s past, that follows a number of carnival performers in the lead-up to, and during, the annual Jacmel Mardi Gras. This is not the carnival …

he life and career of the pioneering musician, a black artist who grew up in the segregated American South and broke down barriers and took 1950s America by storm. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones supported him and took inspiration from h…

With unique access to Karl Lagerfeld’s inner circle - many having never spoken publicly before - and his beloved cat, this film opens up the extraordinary world of the man known as Kaiser Karl.

A look at the relationships and rivalries within The Rolling Stones in their formative years, as well as the creative musical genius of Brian Jones, key to the success of the band.

A profile of artist and activist Nan Goldin, using slideshows, interviews, photography and rare footage to tell the story of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid overdose crisis.

Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel transformed women's fashion, a truly revolutionary designer whose influence is still evident today. Her designs called into question the role of women, sex and power, and ignited a whole new way of dressing. Yet her …

Poet, rapper, playwright and recording artist Kae Tempest is one of the most viscerally exciting artists working in Britain today. They are the youngest ever recipient of the prestigious Ted Hughes prize and have been nominated for both Bri…

A celebration of the unique life and talent of Caroline Aherne, featuring unseen photographs and contributions from a cast of her lifelong friends, including Steve Coogan, Jon Thompson, Craig Cash and producer Andy Harries.

The story of Noel Coward, the most prolific writer, director and entertainer of the 20th century, told in his own words.

In this new film from Arena, a cast of musical experts and admirers uncover the truth about the Maria Callas myth and the gift of her extraordinary voice.

In May 2024, Alan Bennett turned 90. This film celebrates the life and long career of one of Britain's best-loved playwrights. Part frank reflection on the ageing process, part remembrance of the joys of youth, Alan is aided by the films he…

Launched 30 years ago, Loaded magazine epitomised the 90s in its irreverence and appetite for hedonism. But how did it stand up to pressure to put more 'sexy babes' on the cover?

Friends, family and co-stars take part in this revealing and entertaining look at British icon Roger Moore and his rise to global fame. With rare home-movie footage.

At the peak of his career, acclaimed ballet dancer Steven McRae severely damages his Achilles tendon. This is the story of his rehabilitation and the days leading up to his triumphant return to stage.

The incredible story of broadcaster, journalist, musician and author Clemency Burton-Hill's recovery following a devastating brain haemorrhage in early 2020.

The disappearance of McCartney’s original Höfner bass over 50 years ago is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s great mysteries. This is the story of the iconic instrument and the quest to find it. Featuring exclusive interviews with Paul McCartney, his …