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Arena

Season 1981 1981
NR

  • 1981-03-19T21:00:00Z on BBC Two
  • 1h 30m
  • 1d 10h 30m (23 episodes)
  • United Kingdom
  • English
  • Documentary
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.

23 episodes

Season Premiere

1981-03-19T21:00:00Z

1981x01 An Evening With René Clair

Season Premiere

1981x01 An Evening With René Clair

  • 1981-03-19T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Programme which looks at the life and work of French film director Rene Clair and his work in France and Hollywood. With Leslie Caron, Gina Lollobrigida, Jean- Pierre Cassel, Claude Autant-Lara and Michel Boisrond.

1981-01-03T21:00:00Z

1981x02 Chelsea Hotel

1981x02 Chelsea Hotel

  • 1981-01-03T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary about the Chelsea Hotel in New York, a legendary haven for the some of the greatest artistic talent of the 20th century, from Mark Twain to Dylan Thomas.

Andy Warhol and William Burroughs have dinner in the room where Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001, and Quentin Crisp, who lived in the hotel for more than 35 years, recalls moving in.

Since 1923 the Radio Times has been a leader in design & illustration & Eric Fraser one of its regular contributors talks about his work. > Through out the film covers & illustrations from the Radio Times from 1923 to the present day are featured with a soundtrack composed of excerpts from radio progs incl music, sport, comedy, lectures & early radio announcements. Eric FRASER talks about his change of style from humour to a more serious style since the war, his favourite type of work & how he manages to work to a script & produce designs very quickly. The intv with Fraser & vars hm working on an illustration are intercut through out the film. Name FRASER, Eric

1981-01-24T21:00:00Z

1981x04 Private Worlds

1981x04 Private Worlds

  • 1981-01-24T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary on two very individual English Artists. Sam Smith, who carves wooden toys and models evocative of the Edwardian era, and Chris Orr, illustrator of the minutes of suburbia.

Documentary whcih looks at the role of Radio One D.J. John Peel and his producer John Walters have had in the encouragement of rock bands who have yet to break through into commercial recording.

1981-02-21T21:00:00Z

1981x06 Edward Hopper

1981x06 Edward Hopper

  • 1981-02-21T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary on Edward Hopper, american painter, whose work is the subject of an exhibition in London at the moment.

1981-02-28T21:00:00Z

1981x07 Stages

1981x07 Stages

  • 1981-02-28T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary on the staging of The Ik in a quarry near Adelaide in australia by Peter Brook's travelling theatre company. Tribal Aboriginal performers travelled 1000's of miles to see the performance, along with popular plays presented by them.

1981x08 The Smallest Theatre...

  • 1981-03-07T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary looking at Britain's smallest theatre, run in Scotland by Barrie and Marrianne Hesketh for the last seventeen years, in which they take all the part s, design and direct all the shows.

1981-03-14T21:00:00Z

1981x09 Huston's Hobby

1981x09 Huston's Hobby

  • 1981-03-14T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary profile of film director John Huston.

1981-03-21T21:00:00Z

1981x10 A Walk With Amos Oz

1981x10 A Walk With Amos Oz

  • 1981-03-21T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary profile of leading Israeli writer, Amos Oz in which he talks about t he thirty year history of the Israeli state whilst touring his home city of Jerusalem.

1981-03-28T21:00:00Z

1981x11 God's Fifth Columinist

1981x11 God's Fifth Columinist

  • 1981-03-28T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Film Portrait of William Gerhardie who died in 1977, whose book Bod's Fifth Colu mn was published in 1981. Michael Holroyd discusses Gerhardie's life and work a nd introduces an interview recorded in 1971.

1981-04-04T20:00:00Z

1981x12 Did You Miss Me?

1981x12 Did You Miss Me?

  • 1981-04-04T20:00:00Z1h 30m

Profile of pop singer Gary Glitter, who "retired" in 1976 and who was soon hopelessly in debt, but whose career has shown recent signs of revival.

1981x13 The Return Of Lupino Lane

  • 1981-04-15T20:00:00Z1h 30m

Programme which looks at some of the films of silent film comedian Lupino Lane, whose work was mostly destroyed when his studio went bankrupt in the twenties. However exracts from 14 of his restored films are featured here.

1981x16 Somewhere Over The Rainbow...

  • 1981-05-09T20:00:00Z1h 30m

Profile of american painter Robert Natkin, who talks about the early influences on his life.

1981x17 If The Music Had To Stop...

  • 1981-05-16T20:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary which examines the effects of the cuts in education spending on Britain's Youth Orchestras, looking in particular at the example of Leicestershire schools.

1981-08-16T20:00:00Z

1981x18 Curtains?

1981x18 Curtains?

  • 1981-08-16T20:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary looking at the future of the National Youth Theatre, looking at its history and the financial threats to its future exsistance. With interviews with Sir Ralph Richardson, Kate Adie, Martin Jarvis, Peter Terson, Helen Mirren.

1981x19 The Cinema Of Andrzej Wajda

  • 1981-09-06T20:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary in which Polish film director Wajda is interviewed in Warsaw and Cra cow shortly after receiving the Palm D'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. He talks about his films and his avoidance of censorship as a film-maker in Poland.

Portrait of comedy film writer, director and sometime actor, Mel Brooks filmed on location in Hollywood with Gene Wilder, Dom de Louise and Sid Caeser.

1981x21 Have You Seen The Mona Lisa?

  • 1981-11-03T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary about the image on the Mona Lisa and the various contexts in which the image can be seen throughout the world.

1981x22 Let Them Know We're Here

  • 1981-11-10T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary which looks at the development of an idea for a play by Hanif Kureishi through the group improvisation and ideas of the Joint Stock Theatre Company to the first performance of the finished play, Borderline.

1981x23 A Pretty British Affair

  • 1981-11-17T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary on British film-makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger who talk about their career in partnership which produced some now-acknowledged "classics" of British Cinema, with comment from Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

Documentary which features the view of Booker prize-winning author Salman Rushdie of India through the eyes of his hero from the novel `Midnight's Children', Saleem Sinai.

Season Finale

1981-12-15T21:00:00Z

1981x26 Brixton To Barbados

Season Finale

1981x26 Brixton To Barbados

  • 1981-12-15T21:00:00Z1h 30m

Documentary in which Jamaican-born poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, now resident in Brixton, visits Carifesta, a festival of West Indian culture held in Barbados, and surveys a small part of the very diverse cultural activity of the Islands. Performers include: South Stars - Trinidad; Network - Trinidad; Shake Keane - St Vincent; Bahamas National Dance Company; The Soulful Groovers - the Bahamas; Rebirth; the Renegades - Trinidad; Drama Group - Montserrat; the Mighty Arrow - Montserrat; Chronicle Atlantic Symphony Steel Orchestra; Michael Smith - Jamaica; the Dicey Doh Singers - Bahamas; the Mighty Sparrow - Trinidad; Irakere - Cuba.

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