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Arena - Collection (Various episodes from 1983 onwards) (1280x720p HD, 50fps, soft Eng subs)
01. Agatha Christie - Unfinished Portrait
Profile celebrating the centenary of the famous author Agatha Christie's birth. Looking at her life, her character and the key moments in her childhood that influenced her writing.
02. All the World’s a Screen - Shakespeare on Film
From the silent days of cinema, Shakespeare's plays have often been adapted to the big screen. Film-makers relished his vivid characters and dramatic plots as well as the magic and poetry of his work. / / At first the results were patchy, then came Laurence Olivier. With Henry V, made to stir patriotic spirit during the Second World War, he perfectly translated Shakespeare from the stage to the screen. He followed Henry V with Hamlet, and both were smash hits. Olivier led the way for directors as diverse as Orson Welles, Kurosawa, Franco Zeffirelli, Roman Polanski, Baz Luhrmann and Kenneth Branagh. / / The Bard's language has been no barrier, with bold versions of his dramas coming out of Russia, Japan, India and many other countries, not to mention Hollywood's free adaptations in genres as diverse as musicals and science fiction. Already over 30 films worldwide have been produced based on Romeo and Juliet alone. / / For the first time in a single documentary, Arena explores the rich, global history of Shakespeare in the cinema, with a treasure trove of film extracts and archival interviews with their creators.
03. B. Catling Where Does It All Come From
An eye-popping insight into the extraordinary, late-flourishing career of maverick artist, teacher and performer Brian Catling RA, whose unique vision and imagination are celebrated through a shifting narrative of newly restored archive material, exclusive interviews and specially shot footage. / / Brian Catling was born in 1948, a foundling adopted and raised in tenements on the Old Kent Road in postwar south London. He is an internationally exhibited and lauded sculptor and, as B. Catling, the author of The Vorrh Trilogy, a vast work of untrammelled imagination, and the novel Earwig, which provided the inspiration for Lucile Hadzihalilovic's 2021 film of the same name. Catling is also a professor at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford, a royal academician and a Cholmondeley Award-winning poet. He is also the erstwhile impresario of the legendarily disreputable Cabaret Melancholique and an occasional sinister cinematic presence, both in front of and behind the camera. / / Where Does It All Come From is a window into Catling's world that, like Catling himself, defies categorisation. It is shaped through a stitching-together of rediscovered archive material with newly shot interviews, fragments of previously unseen filmworks, interjections and interactions, ghosts and revenants. Important locations in Catling's life and work - south London and Whitechapel, museums, churches, dives, Gozo, Leipzig, Copenhagen - are interwoven with imaginary landscapes and revisited, explored or recreated. Interviews and long-lost performances are remade and repurposed, seances held, dead or vagrant voices resuscitated. Characters, symbols and strange beings - some of whom then reveal their role and purpose - are glimpsed or merely spoken of, sometimes without explanation. At times, fiction hijacks fact to reveal other, deeper truths. / / We see Catling at work, in the past and the present, in public performance, on stage, conjuring uncanny presences in galleries, abandoned rooms and in his studio. His histories are told, including childhood obsessions with outsiders and monsters, the early days of art school and labouring jobs at Truman's Brewery, becoming an artist, a sculptor and maker of installations, and his decision to retreat from the London art world. / / A host of writers, artists, musicians, curators and former students, including actor Ray Winstone recollecting a terrifying encounter in London's Whitechapel, are also called upon to bear witness to a creative spirit who defies definition and is capable of endless self-reinvention.
04. Chelsea Hotel
First transmitted in 1981, this documentary programme looks at New York's Chelsea Hotel, a legendary haven for some of the 20th Century's greatest talent, from Mark Twain to Dylan Thomas. With appearances from Andy Warhol and William Burroughs, who have dinner in the room where Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001, and Quentin Crisp, who lived in the hotel for more than 35 years.
05. Delia Derbyshire - The Myths and the Legendary Tapes
Docudrama that explores the life and creative output of Coventry born-Delia Derbyshire - electronic musician, sound pioneer and female outsider in postwar Britain. From 1962 until 1973, she worked at the BBC's Radiophonic workshop, where she created the iconic Doctor Who theme tune, which remained uncredited in her lifetime. / / Delia Derbyshire introduced avant-garde electronic sound to a whole generation through the medium of a children's teatime television show. Sound was both a refuge for Delia and a haunting manifestation of something darker. Delia was three years old during the Coventry blitz listening to the electronic sounds of the air-raid sirens against a backdrop of her devastated hometown. Delia describes the sound of the 'all-clear' and air-raid sirens as her first experience of electronic music. / / This is a story where sound encapsulates the pain, violence and potential of modernity and positions Delia as tapping into a heightened realm, where her femininity and creativity are unshackled, amplified and set free. This essence in her music invites aggression and control, often unconsciously, from those around her. Her technical and creative brilliance, intuition and integrity is a threat that speaks to the devastating gender power politics of her age and which still persists today. / / Delia's story is told through two archives: the first, a collection of lost works, 267 reels of quarter-inch magnetic tape recordings of Delia's work found in her attic after her death, the other, her school books, paintings and keepsakes, discovered in her childhood bedroom. / / The combined archive, which now resides at Manchester's John Rylands library, is an incredible resource of unfiltered material. Delia's poetic collages and atmospheric soundscapes reveal themselves as intriguing expressions of her extraordinary inner life. The drama begins with Delia Derbyshire as a time traveller and imagines a visitation where she brings with her fragments, objects and sounds from her past to bring her struggle and vision to life, finding solace in deeply personal soundscapes. / / Her struggle with alcoholism, frustrations at her contribution been downplayed in a predominantly male workplace as well as her intense artistic collaborations and life on the fringes of relationships are all explored in the film - all themes that collapse into sound, texture and harmonies. Delia is portrayed through a mix of observation and imagination. No single perspective would be sufficient to gain a true understanding of Delia. The docudrama replaces biography and a biopic style with something more lyrical. / / Its playful, psychedelic mix utilises archival materials, interviews with her collaborators and dramatisations while honouring the BBC Radiophonic Workshops arranger-composer's own questing spirit. / / This is a life story told through sound, using both Delia's own pieces of music alongside a soundtrack constructed from samples chosen with musician and performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti from Delia's attic tapes. It explores the fantasy of a collaboration, an exchange of ideas across eras between two fascinating musicians. It celebrates independence and imagination and looks at how, when that energy is evoked by women and creates a spark, the pattern seen throughout history is that it is often dismissed, ridiculed or downplayed. A cinematic exploration of a legendary musical figure, written and directed by Caroline Catz, who also plays Delia.
06. Desert Island Discs
First transmitted in 1982, Arena celebrates Roy Plomley's Desert Island Discs with the help of many celebrity castaways, including Frankie Howerd, Russell Harty, Trevor Brooking, the Lord Mayor of London, Professor JK Galbraith and Arthur Askey. The special guest for the 40th anniversary programme was Paul McCartney who was also a fan of the show: 'I love its homeliness. It conjures up the best in traditional British pleasure, like the great British breakfast. It's an honour to be asked'.
07. Everything Is Connected - George Eliot’s Life
Contemporary artist Gillian Wearing celebrates the legacy of Victorian novelist George Eliot. / / Just as Eliot's novel Middlemarch explored the lives of ordinary men and women, this experimental film is made up of a diverse cast of people from different backgrounds and features Jason Isaacs and Sheila Atim as the narrators.
08. Into the Limelight - Tribute Bands
An affectionate look at what goes on 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 some legendary live music. / / In the Limelight, a converted Methodist church, the spirit of rock is alive, along with Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Phil Lynott - in reality John, Keith and Wayne. The posters on the club walls display more than a decade of tribute-band entertainment by the likes of Pink Fraud and Stairway to Zeppelin. Arena reveals the characters offering locals the opportunity to hear their favourite music performed live. (2007)
09. Masters of the Canvas [No subtitles available for this episode]
When pop artist Peter Blake confessed that his fantasy was to be the mysterious masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki, who never speaks and never removes his mask, little did he know what the consequences would be. / / Poet and television producer Paul Yates, also fascinated by the persona of Nagasaki, read the article and proceeded to research the possibility of Blake painting Nagasaki's portrait as a centrepiece for a film which would also, he hoped, include an exclusive interview with Nagasaki himself. Does he exist outside the ring and, if so, who is he? (1992)
10. Painted with My Hair
Painted with My Hair is inspired by the paintings, poetry and letters of Donny Johnson, an exceptionally intelligent and talented US lifer, who has been locked away inside his country's notoriously punitive prison system since the age of 18. At 58, Donny was released from solitary and had his first parole board hearing in April 2018. But for 24 years of his prison life, he was 'buried alive' in an 11-by-seven-foot concrete cell inside the Super Max Security Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison, where creativity and the making of art were crucial to Donny's survival. / / Together with thousands of other long-time solitary confined prisoners, Donny was denied all physical contact with other human beings, and subjected to sensory and social deprivation. He was permitted to speak to visitors only via a phone through bullet-proof glass. Nevertheless, in 2002, against all the odds and through an initial 'prisoners pen-pal' contact and subsequent weekly correspondence with a New York writer and psychoanalyst, Stephen Kurtz, Donny began an intense and mutually transforming friendship. This relationship, expressed through over 500 letters, lies at the heart of this film. And while Donny revealed himself to be a fluent and incisive writer, even more remarkably, with encouragement from Steve, he became a dedicated artist - despite being refused access to conventional painting materials and forced to make brushes from his own hair, and to synthesise his pigments from the coloured sugar coatings of M&M's and Skittles. / / As Donny himself cannot be interviewed, his life and emotionally charged journey of self-discovery are presented in the film via quotations from his many letters, read by the award-winning American actor Stanley Tucci. Donny's 'voice' thus becomes the driving force of the documentary, articulating its main themes and topics, from his childhood to the present. Interwoven with Donny's own words are vivid and articulate contributions from people involved in his life, among them his mother Helen Grimes, his now close friend Steve Kurtz, and his San Francisco-based prisoners' rights lawyer Charles Carbone. A further emotional level is added through music, in the form of specially recorded jazz/rock improvisations for electric guitar and a few songs that have particular significance for Donny. / / Donny's life is an example of one man's resilience and personal transformation, achieved in defiance of a prison system that locks up more of its citizens - mostly the poor - than any other country. And this unusual and provocative film celebrates creativity and friendship as the essential routes to self-realisation for prisoners whose humanity is systematically denied. / / Whether 'indefinite confinement' continues to be Donny's fate was determined by a parole board hearing held in California's High Desert State Prison on 19 April 2018. Despite evidence of Donny's rehabilitation while in prison, his parole was not granted, with even a second hearing denied for a further five years. While the hearing could not be filmed, the tension leading up to the board's decision, and its momentous emotional repercussions for Donny, his family and everyone else in his life, constitute the moving last sequence of the film.
11. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
First transmitted in 2004, this is a stunningly-photographed, thought-provoking road trip into the heart of the poor white American South. Singer Jim White takes his 1970 Chevy Impala through a gritty terrain of churches, prisons, truckstops, biker bars and coalmines. / / Along the way are roadside encounters with present-day musical mavericks the Handsome Family, David Johansen, David Eugene Edwards of 16 Horsepower and old-time banjo player Lee Sexton, and grisly stories from the cult Southern novelist Harry Crews.
12. Six Days in September
First transmitted in 1979, Arena profiles John Hoyland, seen by many as England's finest abstract painter. / / As a major retrospective of his work opens in London, Hoyland faces hostile criticism, starts a new painting and explains why, in his bleaker moments, painting can seem little more than ' flicking away in a corner with a feather duster.’
13. The Burger and the King
A remarkable guided tour through the culinary world of Elvis Presley, in his later years famed as much for his appetite as for his music. The King's passion for food is recounted by close friends, relatives and personal cooks who share the recipes that kept their idol happy. From the squirrel and raccoon dishes of his youth to the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches that contributed to his demise. (1996)
14. The Everly Brothers Reunion Concert
In the autumn of 1983, the Everly Brothers played their legendary reunion concerts in London. Of all the venues in the world, they chose the Royal Albert Hall because they had treasured memories of playing there with their father Ike, a guitar virtuoso in his own right. / / All London was there and it was such an event that the filming was fed live into the BBC 9 O'Clock News. After their acrimonious split, which had lasted ten years, Arena's cameras proved that they and their unique, beautiful sound were as magical as ever. / / First broadcast at Christmas 1983.
15. The Everly Brothers Songs of Innocence and Experience
The Everly Brothers were among the most successful and revered of all the giants of early rock 'n' roll. A determining influence on the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel and the Beach Boys, they brought the ethereal harmonies of the Appalachian Mountains to the wild mix of rock 'n' roll. / / First broadcast in 1984 as part of their reunion after ten bitter years apart, Arena traces their fabulous career, their split and triumphant reunion. Most of all, Don and Phil wanted to revisit their roots in the coal mining area of Kentucky where their father Ike, a miner, had been a local guitar star. He too had played with his coal mining brothers, in the 30s. In the moody atmosphere of Muhlenberg County, they have an emotional reunion with three generations of Everlys. / / With contributions from master musician and producer Chet Atkins, songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant and the legendary guitar singer and ex-coal miner, Ike's close friend Mose Rager.
16. The Vasulka Effect
An exploration of the life and work of video art pioneers Steina and Woody Vasulka. The film examines the artistic processes of the pair and their profound effect on the 1960s New York art scene and beyond, through their experiments in the electronic medium of video. / / Following their story over a 40-year-long journey, the film explores how the video art movement caught the spirit of the times. Their unique cross-disciplinary environment - The Kitchen - helped to launch the careers of many artists who have defined the American avant-garde, including Philip Glass, Jonas Mekas, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Robert Mapplethorpe, Laurie Anderson and Cindy Sherman. The film examines the artistic struggles between the pair and celebrates the revolutionary power of the creative spirit.
17. Voices from the Island
Nelson Mandela and his fellow ex-prisoners recall their incarceration on South Africa's Robben Island. For three decades, the island housed not only political prisoners but convicts, lepers and the mentally ill. Yet amidst the hopelessness, Nelson Mandela and his comrades devised strategies and subterfuges with which they transformed life on the island, while the vision of a new South Africa began to take shape. (1994) /
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