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Arena's Nobel Prize Winners

2016-12-05T14:19:39+00:00

In celebration of Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the critically-praised 2005 Arena, "No Direction �鶹Լ��", directed by Martin Scorsese, will be shown again on �鶹Լ�� Four on Friday 9 December 2016. Since the announcement last month, there has been much discussion and debate, with Dylan remaining characteristically quiet on the matter. "No Direction �鶹Լ��" is an irresistible demonstration of the depth and breadth of Dylan’s talent.

Dylan may be one of the most-debated Nobel recipients in recent history but he is far from the only Prize winner Arena has documented over the years; what better way to celebrate his becoming a Nobel laureate, than to take a look at some of the acclaimed names that have come before him.

T.S.ELIOT

First up is Eliot. Winning in 1948 for ‘his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry’, Eliot remains one of the nation’s favourite poets. In his Nobel Lecture, Eliot wrote that ‘while language constitutes a barrier, poetry itself gives us a reason for trying to overcome the barrier’, going on to explain how different languages and poetic traditions nourish poems from other languages and traditions. His humane thesis was that poetry can contribute towards an ‘understanding between peoples’. His poems continue to stir and inspire, his unease at the tumult of post-war London striking a chord in troubled situations throughout the decades. In this clip from Arena’s 2009 film, Eliot reads from The Four Quartets.

WILLIAM GOLDING

Next is William Golding, whom the Noble Committee praised for ‘his novels, which with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today’, something that rings as true today as it did 30 years ago. Golding’s most famous novel, Lord of the Flies, continues to horrify and engage. It is a staple on school reading lists, stirring up debate in the classroom, and prompting students to ask difficult questions about their own behaviour. Although the establishment now recognise Golding as part of the British canon, at the time his inclusion was controversial, as seen in this clip from 'The Dreams of William Golding', originally broadcast in 2012.

DEREK WALCOTT

Derek Walcott’s explorations of post-colonial Caribbean identity have helped make him one of the most widely-praised poets alive today. Walcott’s epic poem Omeros echoes and takes ownership of �鶹Լ��r, with the author himself appearing as a character. Like Eliot, Walcott’s poetry contains many voices, with no one character taking precedence. Walcott’s Nobel Prize was awarded for his poetry, ‘the outcome of a multicultural commitment’, something clearly demonstrated in Arena’s eponymous film from 1993, as Walcott discusses the authority of Western culture.

DARIO FO

Don McLean characterized Dylan as ‘The Jester’ in his hit song American Pie, but Dario Fo is arguably more deserving of the title. Awarded the Nobel for being a writer and performer ‘who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden’. Embracing the commedia dell’arte tradition with his bold, inventive plays, Fo delighted and horrified generations of theatre-goers – and his fair share of political and religious leaders. In this clip from the controversial 'Morte e Resurezione di un Pupazzo', a mischievous Fo bemoans the unpredictability of miracles.

V.S. NAIPAUL

The Nobel Prize was not without its downsides for Naipaul, whose wife commented that the reception of the award had made him an old man, because there was no longer a pinnacle left to strive for. The Nobel committee commented that Naipaul’s works ‘compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories’, and his vast oeuvre – over 30 works of both non-fiction and fiction – consistently challenge and discomfit, as does the man himself!

HAROLD PINTER

Pinter’s plays are often described as comedies of menace, chilling explorations of the everyday. Pinter’s 2005 Nobel Lecture advocated for the continuous pursuit of truth in art, and decried the deceit of political language. His explicit critique of American international policy, particularly those of the Reagan and Bush administrations, fuelled fierce global debate. Unflinchingly political, a keen observer of our society’s most uncomfortable truths, in 'Harold Pinter: Celebration', the playwright ruminates on what politicians are like once they’re alone.

NELSON MANDELA

And finally, a man who needs no introduction…

Happy Birthday John Huston

2016-08-05T15:26:02+00:00

Here at Arena we are celebrating the 110th birthday of one of the most influential film directors of the 20th Century, John Huston; we are proud to say he was the focus of our film, Huston’s Hobby (1981, dir. Alan Yentob and Gavin Millar).

The American’s portfolio of work is varied. It began back in the 1940s during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and survived the decline of the studio system during the fifties, the Hollywood New Wave of the sixties and the rise of the blockbuster in the seventies.

The son of actor Walter Huston and father of actress Angelica Huston, he is known for his collaborations with actor Humphrey Bogart and Orson Welles, and his friendship with novelist Ernest Hemingway.

Before he ventured into motion pictures, Huston experimented with boxing and bull fighting. His career choices were bohemian in nature and broad in variety, much like the man himself.

The beginnings of his career as a film director came during the Second World War: Huston’s first feature film was The Maltese Falcon (1941) starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet. It was also the first pairing of Greenstreet and Lorre, who would go on to make eight further films together.

The Maltese Falcon is widely considered to be as influential to the art of film as Citizen Kane. Watching the films back to back, you see many parallels. Both were the debut films for the respective directors. Both use lighting to convey mood and depth of field. Both also adopted innovative camera angles, including the low camera angle, shooting from the floor to reveal the roof of the set. This was particularly tricky at the time because studio lighting and microphones were usually rigged above the actors as they performed.

John Huston famously also directed Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen (1951) along with Katharine Hepburn. The film was shot in what is today called Congo, and during filming all of the crew, including Hepburn, apparently got sick with dysentery from drinking the water. Only Huston and Bogart avoided getting ill by supposedly drinking nothing but whiskey throughout the shoot. Another story, recounted by Huston during his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award speech, was that the company hired a local hunter to cook for the cast and crew during filming. Meanwhile, members of the local village were going missing. One day the hunter was arrested by the Congolese police as it turned out he had been cooking his victims and serving them to the crew.

Here, Huston discusses the making of the film and how he worked with Hepburn on her memorable performance.

In 1956, Huston directed Gregory Peck in Moby Dick, which also featured Orson Welles. Welles and Huston collaborated on many film projects, remaining friends until Welles’s death in 1985. When Welles was awarded an Honorary Oscar at the 1971 Academy Awards, Huston accepted it on his behalf but criticised the industry for refusing to grant Welles the necessary freedom as a director.

In this clip from Arena’s The Orson Welles Story, Welles describes Huston’s theatrical approach to directing.

In the 70s, Huston was also in his 70s. Yet he showed no signs of slowing down and continued to work as a director and actor. He directed nine films in the decade, including The Man Who Would Be King (1975), starring Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer. He worked with established actors but also sought out emerging talent, such as Brad Dourif in Wise Blood (1979) and Sylvester Stallone in Escape to Victory (1981).

He also continued to act and is perhaps most well-known for his role as Noah Cross in Chinatown (1974). And before the role belonged to Ian McKellen, Huston played the speaking role of Gandalf for the animated versions of The Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980).

Huston directed 47 films in his lifetime, many of them adaptations of novels. His films varied in terms of genre and tone, from hardboiled film noirs like The Maltese Falcon to musicals such as Moulin Rouge (1952) and Annie (1982). Compared with directors such as Scorsese, Tarantino, Hitchcock and Carpenter, Huston’s films arguably lack a distinct style. Indeed, Huston himself accepts this apparent lack of continuity across his films. As the following clip reveals, inconsistency seeped into every aspect of Huston’s life, from his films, his career choices, and even is wives.

And yet one could argue that this “lack” of style is what identifies a Huston film. Each of his films feels fresh, innovative and evocative, rather than repetitive. They do not follow the same beats or retread the same territory. Each film is independent. This could be seen as a facet of Huston’s personality, always exploring new avenues, keeping a fresh perspective on life, and perennially remaining relevant.

Huston, however, suggests that he does seek to evoke certain themes in his movies. As the following clip reveals, Huston uses Moby Dick as an example of one prevailing theme in his films: the main protagonist pits themself against a higher power, in this case God. They are ultimately defeated in the end, but the defeat is not seen as inevitable until the final moments of the film.

There is little doubt that Huston still influences film makers and even actors today. For his role as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis adopted Huston’s distinctive voice and even appears to imitate Huston’s shuffling demeanour.

There remains one film starring John Huston which has yet to be released: The Other Side of the Wind, directed by Orson Welles. It is a film about a film maker (Huston), who plans to make a comeback in Hollywood by making a new movie called The Other Side of the Wind. Aside from its troubled production history, very little is known about the film. However, clips suggest that the style is akin to that of Welles’s F For Fake and the film could, perhaps, be one of the most original and innovative in the history of cinema if and when it is released.

Huston left his mark on cinema, kick-started the careers of many actors, influenced future directors and left a large volume of work which will live on for centuries to come. What’s more, even when Huston reached his 70s and 80s, he never contemplated retiring as a director. His determination in his later years is apparent in this clip. At the age of 75, he was still active, and preparing to film Annie.

A lifelong smoker, John Huston died from emphysema on 28 August 1987 at the age of 81. His final, and Oscar-nominated film, The Dead, was filmed as Huston sat in a wheelchair hooked to an oxygen machine.

John, Jo and Imagine: some stories our country tells us

2016-06-22T16:46:25+00:00

In 1971 John Lennon sang “Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do”. On the eve of the UK’s In/Out EU referendum, opinion polls show, that imagining “no countries” is proving very hard to do for millions of voters in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Watching the current Brexit debate I am struck by just how far we are from the optimistic early 1970s when John and Yoko asked the world to “Imagine” and the UK joined the European Economic Community.

In the 1996 four part film “Stories my Country told me” Arena addressed the complexity of national identity and how it is driven by the stories we tell ourselves. The story Thomas Mair wanted to tell appears to have been “Britain First” when he murdered Jo Cox, the MP for Batley and Spen, a Labour parliamentarian and mother of 2 young children.

Later, when asked his name in court, Thomas Mair refused. He had no name, but only the lines given to some B movie superhero caught up in the pathos of a fantasy revenge plot redolant of old style 19th Century national epics: “Death to Traitors, Freedom for Britain”.

But what Britain? In truth Brexit campaign have been asking their voters to imagine too. Since EU membership is the status quo, the leave campaign have had to ask voters to Imagine a return to the UK’s situation in the world before 1975, an appeal to nostalgia rather than the utopian vision John and Yoko project.

In an article published before she was murdered, Jo Cox wrote: “We cannot allow voters to fall for the spin that a vote to leave is the only way to deal with concerns about immigration. We can do far more to address both the level and impact of immigration while remaining in the EU. I very rarely agree with the prime minister but on this he’s right: we are stronger, safer and better off in.”

The film "Imagine Imagine" ends with the last Interview given by John Lennon, just before he was murdered on the 8th of December 1980. Talking in a clear and passionate voice John Lennon, the product of the international port city of Liverpool, a neo-New Yorker, but also proud of his Irish ancestry, came back again to 'Imagine’ the ballad he had sung nine years earlier. He attacked the need to have borders between the US and Canada. A reminder that in marrying Yoko he had crossed another border linking Asia and Europe.

In a service of remembrance Jo Cox’s sister Kim Leadbeater said: “We have to continue this strength and solidarity for the days, months and years to come as part of Jo’s legacy. To focus on that which unites us and not which divides us.”

Solidarity is the quality Jo Cox showed thoughout her life both as an Oxfam worker and MP. Her local minister called her a 21st Century Good Samaritan. Solidarity is also the name of Polish trade union that kick started the demise of the Iron Curtain, the border whose immensity was shown in Anthony Wall’s Arena journey along its entrails.

In the Cold War half a continent was denied European union – not by the ballot box, but by the barrel of a gun. The Iron Curtain began to fall with the Polish Trade Union Solidarity, around the same period when Lennon was shot in 1980. Yet despite his murder, the world has kept imagining John and Yoko’s dream and Poland joined the EU.

“You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one"

Yet what will the UK dream after Jo’s murder? The Brexit camp call the European Union a nightmare. They don’t want to ‘be as one’, but be one, alone and single in splendid isolation. Not so much New York as new Switzerland or New Norway.

John and Jo are no longer alive to vote, but on the 23rd of June millions do have the chance to use their imagination in the anonymous space of the voting booth and write the next chapter in the story our country tells us. Only then will we see if the tide of history turns and which Britain comes first.

This post was written by Fred Baker, an Academic and Film Maker who directed award winning Arenas:"Imagine Imagine" and "Eric Hobsbawm and the Pressburgerbahn" which was one part of Arena: Stories my Country Told Me.

Arena: Night and Day - Voice of Time

2016-06-17T10:49:11+00:00

There’s a horrible moment in one of John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s Strontium Dog strips from the 1970s. Trapped in a fierce gunfight, Johnny Alpha – the Dog of the title – reaches for one of his terrifying sci-fi weapons, a literal “time bomb”. He throws it towards his enemy who is then stuck in a localised time-loop, endlessly repeating the same gesture of violence. As Alpha leaves the scene, he tells his companion that the man will remain in the loop “until he starves to death”. This is the feeling I once had at a twenty-four hour film marathon. It was a weird mix of endurance, machismo and sensory deprivation as the cavalcade of ‘classic’ (i.e. familiar) movies went by. You might think that many things could improve Gary Sherman’s Death Line. Seeing it at three in the morning as it merges hypnagogically into The Flesh and the Fiends is not one of them.

Arena: Night and Day, which had its premiere at the 2015 Cambridge Film Festival, offers an experience very different to this cinematic slow torture. Anthony Wall and editor Emma Matthews have put together a brilliant piece of editing and archival curation. When considering the presentation of Arena in a festival or installation format, the easy thing would have been to wallow in Arena’s formidable cultural pedigree and put together a documentary marathon. Instead, Wall and Matthews took the other, more inventive route and succeeded in constructing a new film out of the highly charged material of the strand. Night and Day is comprised of carefully selected clips that chart the period’s real time passage. Noon to noon we move in synch through the day, The Rolling Stones arrive in Morocco at 12.04pm, George Martin makes his perfect Martini at 1.08pm, Francis Bacon and William Burroughs have tea at 4.27pm …

Arena's technical consultant Andy Armstrong created a screen which plays all 24 hours at the same time. This image was captured by Greg Hinks: each screen is intentionally blurred or in focus to evoke the experience of watching 24 screens at the same time

The result is a long, meditative film that has nothing to do with nostalgia but everything to do with duration. To quote the title of David Thompson’s recent Arena portrait of Nicholas Roeg: “It’s about time”. High time that Arena consolidates its primacy and legacy; time also to realise what, in essence, the series has always been about: contemporary culture. Contemporary is not just a synonym for ‘modern’. It describes the weird experience of sharing the moment with another. Contemporary art brings with it the challenges of this proximity. How do you think through that which we are so close to? How do you analyse or even evaluate that which has no history of opinion behind it? Since 1975, mapping the contemporary landscape has been Arena’s main remit. The house-style developed towards the film essay: contemplative, associative often poetic. Arena: Night and Day offers a stunning development of this approach.

Initially, as someone who raised herself on Arena, the experience of watching the film is that of looking for favourite moments. Soon though, the temporal rhythm makes it clear that this isn’t about a sequence of faces in order of importance, or a tribute reel building to a celebratory crescendo. Rather, the cuts invite you to think about the connection between time and image. The key question becomes "when are we watching?" rather than "what are we watching?". Case in point, at Cambridge the film was streamed into the cinema bar. I walk in shortly before midnight, Bob Marley’s on screen, and everyone’s singing along. Festival microclimates can often be hermetic time zones of their own. All those days in the dark make you squint when you come up for air. Here I very much had the sense that it was midnight and no other time. The film made me think precisely about the moment I was in, not just chronologically but also symbolically. We are experiencing midnight with Marley, joined in the night through the timestamp.

I came out of Arena: Night and Day with renewed faith in diurnal cinema. This was neither Groundhog Day nor a box-set binge. Rather than the bleak terror of the time bomb, Wall and Matthews provide an experience not unlike that described by J.G. Ballard in ‘The Voices of Time’. Twisting, stretching and re-combining the familiar, the film takes us through decades in a day and gets us to think about the ways we choose to time-code the passing of every hour.

Yvonne Salmon is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. She writes on film, modern and contemporary literature, art, law, and cultural history. She chairs the Cambridge University Counterculture Research Group and directs the Alchemical Landscape Project. www.eviesalmon.com

All the World's a Screen - Adapting Shakespeare

2016-04-20T15:04:20+00:00

In anticipation of our latest film, Arena: All the World’s A Screen - Shakespeare on Film, transmitting on �鶹Լ�� Four, this Sunday 24 April at 9pm, we consider what makes the Bard’s work so attractive to filmmakers across the globe (pun intended). Directed by David Thompson, All the World’s a Screen charts the cinematic evolution of Shakespearean adaptations since the conception of cinema, right through to the present day. Adaptations are fundamental to cinema: from classics like Hitchcock’s The Birds, to small comedy-dramas like The Lady in the Van, all the way to huge budget sci-fi films like The Martian, and some estimates suggest that 65% of the films we see are adaptations. It is no wonder then, that the plays of the world’s most influential writer are also the most filmed ever, with over 400 feature-length productions made. The general consensus is that Shakespeare wrote 37 plays; they span every genre and introduce us to a dizzying array of characters. Shakespeare’s writing is therefore an adaptive storyteller’s dream, ideal for presentation on the big screen.

Nevertheless, the process of adaptation is not easy. Filmmakers are faced with hundreds of choices in their move from the stage to the big screen. In 1985 the shift from literature to the cinematic was described by author Charles Newman, in a scathing critique of contemporary culture, as a move to ‘a wilfully inferior form of cognition’. He presents his view according to some imagined hierarchy of medium, characterising cinema as a greedy, capitalist exercise. But none other than Laurence Olivier had already undermined this notion when he produced a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V in 1944. Praised for its ‘faithfulness’ to the text, for being a ‘Shakespearean’ adaptation of Shakespeare, the film is nothing short of spectacular. Olivier’s first directorial effort, Henry V opens self-reflexively, recreating an Elizabethan stage performance in Shakespeare’s famous Globe Theatre. An actor tells us to open our mind’s eye in order to overcome the limitations of the theatre. Olivier’s film then transports us into a world of cinematic realism, replacing our mind’s eye with the camera’s eye, grounding the spectator in the world of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Olivier’s nod to these different perspectives reveals his view that ‘there wasn’t anything that could not be done’ in the medium of cinema. His film set the benchmark for how Shakespeare could be adapted. It was both commercially and critically successful; winning him an Academy Honorary Award in 1946 for ‘his outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing Henry V to the screen’. He later went on to win the first Best Picture Oscar given to a British film, with his adaptation of Hamlet. Olivier’s success cemented the legitimacy of cinema as a powerful tool for anyone who wanted to bring Shakespeare’s work to life; that same success urged filmmakers around the world to follow suit.

A battle scene from Olivier's Henry V

Filmmakers from America, Russia, Finland, Poland, Japan and India have adapted Shakespeare, some more faithfully (in the vein of Henry V) than others. However, Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 epic, Throne of Blood (based on Macbeth), shows how an adaptation can retain the soul of the source text, whilst also radically changing several of its central elements. What emerges is a highly captivating re-working of Macbeth, presenting images of great force and beauty in a way only cinema can. Kurosawa reflects the themes and characters of the play but in a completely new cultural context and with a non-literal translation of the text. Shakespeare’s superlative storytelling becomes interwoven with Japanese history, as Kurosawa himself explained in the following clip from Arena’s documentary on the director from 1986.

At times, spectators may become preoccupied with the fidelity of an adaptation to its source text, subscribing to Newman’s supposed hierarchy of medium. Yet works like Kurosawa’s, and other daring adaptations like the 1990s teen rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew), prove that adaptations do not need to be completely ‘faithful’ in order to produce art of value. Shakespeare thrives in any genre, as demonstrated by the numerous Bollywood adaptations that are extremely popular today, children’s animations like The Lion King in which the lion Simba stands in for Hamlet, and even B-movie sci-fi like Forbidden Planet. These films succeed in retaining the spirit of Shakespeare (however removed from the original text), whilst captivating new and wider audiences in the process.

Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger in Gil Yunger's '10 Things I Hate About You'

The decision to retain Shakespeare’s verse and language or not nonetheless remains central to any and every cinematic version of Shakespeare’s work. Some question how it is possible to retain the language of the 16th century and interest a modern audience. For instance, would Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood have worked if the verse and language had been more literally translated? Perhaps not for a Japanese audience, who are more accustomed to the style of Noh theatre. Similarly, would teens have gone mad for 10 Things I Hate About You if the language had remained faithful? Despite Heath Ledger’s sexual magnetism, probably not. At the same time, some filmmakers consider the language to be secondary to the plot or the emotional core of the plays. Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, whose 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet was praised for its youthful energy rather than its attention to the rhythm of Shakespeare’s verse, describes the reasons why he chose to focus instead on the intangible soul of the play instead.

This is not to say, however, that Shakespeare’s verse cannot be integrated into a modern adaptation. Enter: Baz Luhrmann, stage right. Lurhmann’s wildly successful 1999 Romeo + Juliet proves that transporting the star-crossed lovers into the MTV culture of the nineties, whilst retaining an assiduous attention to the verse, can result in an intoxicating blend of old and new.

Despite the differing opinions on what makes Shakespeare work on screen, his plays continue to inspire filmmakers, who can realise their own artistic vision with Shakespeare’s words as a guide. These interpretations tell us about different cultures and histories, and just occasionally we see a film that casts new light on old stories. From ‘faithful’ adaptations, to transposing works in entirely new contexts and cultures, art is undeniably derived from art. 400 years after his death, Shakespeare’s plays have inspired filmmakers of every generation and Arena: All the World’s a Screen provides you with a wonderful selection of examples. It’s just a shame we won’t be here to see where cinema will take Shakespeare in 400 years’ time!

This post was written by Ben Londesbrough, who is a second year English Literature student at the University of Exeter. After graduation he hopes for a career in film or television, where he can put his square eyes to good use.

Female Performers & Arena

2016-03-18T13:14:10+00:00

Our latest film, transmitting on �鶹Լ�� Four tonight, Friday 18 March at 9pm, is the first feature-length profile of the country music legend Loretta Lynn. At the age of 83, Loretta is still going strong and would work every day if she could: she’s still got thousands of songs to sing and thousands of things she’d like to say to the world. Over the years, Arena has profiled several female musicians, so what better way to celebrate the transmission of Arena: Loretta Lynn – Still a Mountain Girl than to take a look at five clips of female performers from our archive (we’ll leave the ranking to you).

POLY STYRENE

First up, the wonderful and brilliant Poly Styrene (d.2011) – a true punk rock icon. Plastic fantastic, disposable and satirical, Poly talks us through some of the things that make her tick. Including adverts, science and bird song. From: Arena: Who Is Poly Styrene?, directed by Ted Clisby and first broadcast on 22 January 1979.

LENE LOVICH

“It doesn’t mean I don’t like to scream though, because I do” – the American singer Lene Lovich performs ‘Lucky Number’ and explains that she doesn’t care if people stare and laugh at her. With stage presence like that, why would you? The clip is from Arena: Sleeping Beauty, directed by Nigel Finch and first broadcast on 21 January 1980.

CELIA CRUZ

And now, a true professional who always had the audience in the palm of her hand – watch the masterful Cuban singer Celia Cruz (d.2003) light up the stage in Arena’s film My Name is Celia Cruz, directed by current series editor Anthony Wall and first broadcast on 12 February 1988.

BRENDA FASSIE

For any South African, Brenda Fassie (d.2004) needs no introduction. Here she performs one of her biggest hits, ‘Weekend Special’, and when she asks the audience to sing “Brenda, we love you”, they sing the words back loud and clear. Although she was often called the ‘Madonna’ of the Townships she was a powerful and fiercely political performer in her own right. From Arena: Brenda Fassie, directed by Chris Austin and first broadcast on 18 April 1993.

TAMMY WYNETTE

And, by way of a finale, an intimate performance Loretta’s fellow country music legend: Tammy Wynette (d.1998). Tammy and Loretta performed together many times and their music shares the brutally honest, straight talking style that is characteristic of country at its best. This clip is from Arena: Stand By Your Dream, a profile of Tammy Wynette directed by Rosemary Bowen Jones and first broadcast on 16 January 1987.

The Disneyland, Treasure Island that is Soho

2016-01-29T10:50:00+00:00

Soho, fun-loving and never quiet, attracts a wide mix of people. The heart of London’s West End has a history as rich as our archive and its streets, pubs, offices and sex shops, form the backdrop to several Arena films.

In Night and Day (1987, directed by Gerry Pomeroy) we watch writer Jeffrey Bernard at home and visiting his favourite Soho haunts. Bernard talks about his life as a columnist for some of London’s daily papers, before making his way out onto the streets of Soho. He describes his favourite public house, The Coach and Horses, as a sanctuary for the working residents of Soho: a place so important to its regulars and to Bernard himself that if you were to arrive any later than opening time at 11am, you were effectively late for work.

Next we meet with Frank Norman and a few of Bernard’s friends for lunch at Kettner’s, a 1930s styled brasserie, founded in 1867 and closing its doors as a restaurant today - 30th January 2016. Bernard joined Norman in creating a book called Soho - Night and Day. They wandered around the streets of Soho, having hospitality heaped upon them by the many publicans and restaurateurs who wanted to appear in the book.

Kettner's restaurant, Soho

One of the world’s most famous Jazz clubs, a venue that has hosted the likes of Glenn Miller, Linda Lewis and Paul Rodgers, is Ronnie Scott’s, the setting for our 2012 film, Sonny Rollins ’74 Rescued. This film, as you can tell from the title, was originally recorded in 1974, and sees Sonny Rollins performing alongside some of his friends to a large audience. The footage was discovered in a loft in a very poor state, rescued by Arena and broadcast in almost its original beauty in 2012. The film evokes the ambience of the famous jazz lounge, bringing a bit of Ronnie Scott’s to a living room near you.

In Arena’s film, The Art of the Radio Times and the Eye of the Eye (directed by David Wheatley and Anne James in 1981), the staff of the famous, and sometimes controversial magazine, Private Eye, talk the audience through the history of the magazine. The Eye's co-founder and second editor Richard Ingrams also reflects on the importance of the magazine's location. In 1981 the office was situated above one of Soho’s many sex shops. Ingrams suggests that Private Eye’s seedy offices helped to keep the magazine rooted in the real world: the exciting squalor of Soho over the staid, elite political world of Westminster.

Soho is a place that Arena has been lucky enough to film over the years, and is a place with many more stories to come, though these stories might perhaps relate less to sex shops, pubs and satire, and more to luxury housing developments...

Arena at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas: Notes from a Passer-by

2015-11-27T12:00:36+00:00

From flâneur to badaud. Notes taken between 12pm Friday 23 October 2015 – 12pm Saturday 24 October 2015 whilst in Cambridge during Arena - Night and Day.

These notes were taken by Will Finch, a postgraduate music student living and working in Cambridge. @WillLFinch

12pm Sits at desk in Christ’s College wondering if it is appropriate to watch the beginning at work. Decides it is. Line-manager decides it isn’t. Catches views of bells as Arena begins.

12.55pm Walks from lunch to John Lewis to buy an SD card in anticipation of evening. Walks straight past “Our thinnest ever 4K TV” playing Night and Day.

4pm Looks at Twitter and sees tweetpic of “Our thinnest ever 4K TV”. Curses himself.

5.25pm Cycles past King’s Parade screen. A few glance as they walk by.

“Excuse me, do you know what this TV is playing?
“Na mate.”

Night and Day screening in the left-hand window of the King's College Shop

6pm Arrives home from work. Cooks and eats eggs to Night and Day stream.

6.50pm Stands outside King’s Parade screen and attracts more attention taking photos than Night and Day. Decides to leave.

7.00pm Walks back and forth along Bridge Street. Cannot find venue.

7.15pm Sees Gardenia has started to stream the film.

Says to Anthony -

“I never thought I’d hear the Archers theme coming from Gardenia’s"

7.30pm Arrives at St John’s College Porter lodge. St John’s Porters maintain their reputation.

“Do you mind if I take a photo of the TV?”
“No, you need permission”
“Ah, okay. Can I stand here and watch?”
“No”
“Great, thanks for your help”

St John's, Porter's Lodge

8.15pm Arrives at The Mill. Michael Jackson is lending a sonic hand to a drum solo on screen. Sees man watching, wide-eyed at the screen.

“Do you know what you are watcing?”
“No, but I’ve seen more faces I know than I can remember”
“That’s great, it’s called Arena, do you know it?”
“No”

Buys drink and takes position near a woman with an open text book. Jack Nicholson appears on screen as she takes a “study selfie”.

8.35pm Conversation with Bar Manager

“Do you know Arena”
“Sure, I keep seeing things I remember from when I was younger. I’m not sure exactly what they are, but I remember”

A fellow documenter arrives and takes photo of the screen. Makes welcoming gestures - he leaves.

9pm Arrives at Hot Numbers, bearded solo guitarist sings with Arena projected in the background. I think I see BB King.

He sings “Non, je ne regrette rien” as a dog looks longingly at a plate of pasta behind him.

“Did you know you’d be playing infront of this?” “No, I’m touring to launch my new EP and got this gig. A few weeks later they asked if I minded playing in front of a screen. I said I love that kind of thing” “Did you know when I walked in I think BB King was playing behind you?” “No! That’s great.”

10.30pm Walks through Wolfson College. Salsa dance group blares music outside; TV in quiet study room goes unnoticed.

11pm Recieves headphones at Sidgwick site and hears the film with its soundtrack for the first time since dinner. Beautiful.

Dwells on the audience participation at Celia Cruz’s concert on the projector and audience participation in Cambridge tonight.

12am Spends time at King’s Parade. Most walk past without seeing the screen.

12.40am Watches stream at Christ’s College office desk.

1.15am Stands on King’s Street watching through window. Drunk students have an argument about “Who the hell is Natasha?”

1.20am Walks to Gardi’s. They’ve closed the laptop lid. Arena is now a blue login screen.
Orders chip butty and asks what happened.

“We closed the lid and it stopped, I don’t know who to call to get it started”

1.35am Eats butty on King’s Parade and catches another viewer watching.

2.00am Cycles home to watch more with sound and in bed.

5am Wakes up with laptop on bed blaring.

Outside projection of Arena's 24 hour film at the Sidgwick site, University of Cambridge

9am Walks to Wolfson college and eats brunch in the porters lodge. Graudating students arrive in gowns.

10.45am Visits Sidgwick site to see space without the screen.

11am Walks past Gardi’s the screen is now black.

11.15am Arrives at John Lewis. Fred and Anthony filming in front of “our thinnest ever 4k TV”.

11.25pm Accompanies Fred and Anthony to Cambridge City Library.

11.45pm Walks to The Mill, via King’s Parade, to watch the film end.

12.00pm Westminster Quarters sounds from Great St Mary’s, its home, and The Mill’s TV, now one of its thousand other homes. Day and Night begins again.

Asif Kapadia's 'Amy' and 'The Day She Came to Dingle'

2015-10-30T15:52:32+00:00

In December 2006, Amy Winehouse performed for Other Voices, an acclaimed Irish TV series filmed in Dingle every winter. For the 2012 programme ‘Amy Winehouse: The Day She Came to Dingle’, Arena joined forces with Other Voices and caught up with some of the people that Amy met on that day, including taxi driver Paddy Kennedy, her bass player Dale Davis and Rev Máirt Hanley of the Other Voices church. In this blog post, we take a look at the connections between Asif Kapadia’s award-winning film ‘Amy’, released on DVD today, and ‘…The Day She Came to Dingle’.

Asif Kapadia’s ‘Amy’ is a picture of living hell. A hell where one is never allowed a moment’s peace from the intrusive lens of the paparazzi camera, a lens that follows Winehouse on holiday, to GP appointments, and even to her death, as we see footage of her body carried out of her house in a red body bag. Hell is London’s Camden Town, a place where vices abound and privacy has been defeated.

Amidst all her emotional and physical troubles, it is easy to forget about Amy Winehouse as a musician – not only did she possess a formidable talent but as her pianist Sam Beste notes in ‘Amy’, ‘she had one of the most pure relationships with music - like it was a person’. This acute observation echoes a comment Winehouse makes in an interview with John Kelly for Other Voices, as she explains how she responds to the religious sentiment in gospel music.

‘I’m not religious, but there’s nothing more pure than the relationship you have with God or what you believe in – apart from your love of music.’

This interview is featured in ‘Amy Winehouse: The Day she came to Dingle’, a film which captured a moment where Winehouse found the kind of paradise she constantly pursued but rarely found, a sanctuary in which her relationship with music was allowed to flourish.

Every winter, Other Voices plays host to one of the most exclusive music festivals in the world, in Dingle, a remote town in County Kerry on the Atlantic coast. In medieval times, the Irish residents thought it was ‘the edge of the known world’, and it was believed that if you ventured out into the sea, you might fall off the face of the earth. As Philip King, editor of Other Voices notes, getting there ‘takes a commitment’.

Winehouse played St. James’ Church, an intimate 80-seat space that has seen performances from artists as varied as Ryan Adams and Florence + the Machine.

‘It does feel nearly like an act of praise or an act of worship to have [these musicians] perform in this space’ explains the Rev. Máirt Hanley.

The perfect stage is set for Amy Winehouse, whose act is one of praise and worship for the idol that is music. The production is pared down, and the atmosphere is ‘communal and collegiate’, with a distinct absence of ‘clipboards running around’, as Other Voices music producer Aoife Woodlock puts it. It is a long way from the perilous glitz and glamour of the BRIT Awards that came just months later, and the baying mobs of Amy’s final, catastrophic concert in Belgrade, powerfully portrayed in Asif Kapadia’s film.

‘She said it was her dream to play in small venues,’ recalls Sam Beste, in ‘Amy’.

It is a wet and windy December night in 2006 when Winehouse performs. Her rebellious demeanour contrasts with her meek mannerisms in between songs, as she repeatedly thanks her audience with the grace of a shy ballerina. She catches you by surprise every time she begins a song, such is the ease and spontaneity with which her voice soars.

‘When Amy sang, she let us in – if we have the ears to hear, and the eyes to see – into the heart of who she was as a singer,’ King remembers.

‘When she was here, I felt she was happy . . . She sang the blues away . . . She used her gift to still her trembling soul. She used her gift as a way to explain herself to herself . . . to give herself some relief’.

After the performance comes the interview with John Kelly, an interview in which she discusses her musical influences. Her eclectic taste and profound musical erudition are evident, and she is unafraid to express strong opinions, admitting that Ella Fitzgerald ‘doesn’t stand out’ to her as a performer, preferring instead the likes of Sarah Vaughan. As in the performance, what is striking about this interview is that this is a woman who is simply allowed to enjoy her relationship with music, the kind of luxury that would prove increasingly difficult in the hellish years that followed.

Watching ‘Amy’, we learn that Winehouse lived by the mantra that ‘Life is short’ – something she claims Blake Fielder-Civil taught her. This remains a source of immense regret for the rest of us. Too often we are told ‘that art comes out of a sense of things not being right . . . struggle or suffering or people being really extreme’ begins the Rev. Máirt Hanley, adding that in Amy’s case, it ‘came out, to an extent, of her living life on the edge.’

‘But it doesn’t have to stay on the edge . . . And her music is tinged with the sadness that she never got that resolution. It’s so very tragic.’ This statement prefigures sentiments expressed by Tony Bennett in ‘Amy’:

‘Life teaches you how to live if you can live long enough.’

Hiro Mikuriya has written this post for Arena. He is a London-based student who did work experience with Arena in the summer of 2015. He is currently completing an English MA in Issues in Modern Culture at University College London, having recently completed his BA in English Literature at the same university.

Remembering Orson Welles

2015-10-10T08:00:00+00:00

Orson Welles – actor, director, writer and producer would have been 100 this year. To mark the occasion, a number of events have taken place around the world. The BFI, for instance, held a 2-month celebration throughout the summer, whilst the Venice Film Festival paid tribute to Welles with screenings and an exhibition named ‘Shakespeare & Cigars’ featuring cigar boxes on which Welles had painted his favourite Shakespearean characters.

Arena met Orson Welles in 1982. The Orson Welles Story, a 3-hour film, is built around an 8-hour interview with the man himself, conducted by director Leslie Megahey. The prospect of facing a cultural giant - who also had a reputation for being a difficult interviewee - was a daunting one for the Arena team.

‘There was complete silence,’ remembers Megahey, of the first time they stood in the same room as Welles. ‘I’d never seen Alan Yentob lost for words.’

All went well however, as Megahey opened with the statement: ‘It does seem that you try to recreate a sort of innocence in your approach to every single film.’

‘I like that very much,’ responded Welles, ‘I think that’s true. And I seldom like anything that is said about my films.’

‘So we’re off to a good start,’ he added, with a chuckle. Relief all round.

This early exchange prefigures the rest of the interview. We see the idea of innocence explored more fully - or what we could think of as a sense of wholeness constantly subject to the threat of compromise and dissolution.

Orson Welles discusses his difficult relationship with movie making

In the story Welles tells about his own film-making career, sabotage is a familiar foe. Interfering producers, money troubles and post-production bust-ups often meant that hustling became more important than any actual film-making. The conditions for making the film he wanted to make, it would seem, were never quite there. Film-making, more than any other art form, is heavily dependent on the artless, the money men, something that Welles clearly grew to resent.

Charlton Heston, interviewed for 'The Orson Welles Story'

‘There is something in him that drives him to alienate the people with the money,’ said Charlton Heston, star of Welles’ 1958 film Touch of Evil, the post-production of which Welles was barred from.

'Perhaps there is a subconscious streak that makes him resent that unlike a painter, who, if he had to, could work in a supermarket, bagging groceries and earning money to buy the paints…as a director, he cannot do that, he must somehow persuade the studio to give him money.’

‘Perhaps on some subconscious level, Orson has never been able to accept this.’

The compromised wholeness that haunts Welles is not simply that of his artistic integrity, but also, that of the truth. Accusations that he actually had no hand on the script for Citizen Kane proved scarring, whilst he is still at pains to correct anecdotes that misrepresent him.

‘It bothers me terribly’ goes his lament, half-joking, half-serious. [They are] my real obsession.’

‘All my loving friends keep telling me to stop brooding about it.’

Orson Welles, photographed during the interview

The elephant in the room, one would think, is that interviews are a prime situation in which Welles has experienced a compromise of the truth, shouldering the weight of a history of misattributions and mangled words. This, however, is no ordinary interview, and Welles senses it. In the marathon conversation that unfolds before us, Welles proves a spectacular interviewee, booming in full, cigar-toting glory, imparting insight, sincerity and self-deprecation. He calls Don Quixote ‘the most perfect knight to have ridden out against a dragon,’ and one cannot help but feel that Welles is here equally chivalrous. The portrait that emerges is a man who, in that most quixotic of ways, is a fool for wanting too much - a fool for wanting to make the perfect film, a fool for daring to dream of self-sufficiency, a fool for rejecting Modernity, much like the Falstaff he plays in Chimes at Midnight. This, however, is a fool one cannot help but admire, a fool who comes out a King, albeit a destitute one.

‘On this earth, the way things are,’ says former co-star Jeanne Moreau, ‘there is no Kingdom that is good enough for Orson Welles.’

Orson Welles’ kingliness is also at the very root of what made him find his own screen presence so problematic.

‘There used to be a division of actors in the Comédie-Française in France – they were called King actors,’ explains Welles.

‘And I’m a King actor…I have to play authoritative roles…or I discombobulate the scene.’

‘It’s a kind of handicap.’

In certain films, Welles would thus retreat into the shadows, as he does in The Magnificent Ambersons, or barely emerge from it, as in The Third Man. With Arena, however, Welles finds a stage fit for a King - and fully embraces the light.

‘Someone in the press,’ notes Megahey, ‘called it the greatest performance of his life – because he was playing himself.’

‘It was the most unforgettable day I ever had working in television.’

Notes from the not so former Iron Curtain or Echoes of Eric Hobsbawm

2015-09-08T13:25:19+00:00

We are pleased to host this guest post from Dr Frederick Baker, who is a director of British and Austrian parentage now based in Vienna and Cambridge. He is also an academic and an expert on the politics and culture of Europe. He has made a number of Arenas, including 'Stalin: Red God' (2001), a film about the nostalgia and persistence of support for Stalin in the former USSR, 'Imagine IMAGINE' (2003), an account of the enduring appeal of the John Lennon classic, and 'Shadowing the Third Man', which tells the story not only of how the film was made, but the history that informed it. That film was Baker's principal submission to Cambridge University for his PhD. He also made 'Eric Hobsbawm on the Pressburger Bahn' (1996), in which Hobsbawm looked at the turbulent history of the 30 miles of the world's first electrified railway from Vienna to Bratislava. It was part of a 3.5-hour meditation on nations and nationalism, entitled 'Stories my Country Told Me' (1996).

Syrian refugees thank Austria (Photograph courtesy of Frederick Baker)

The border between Austria, Hungary and Slovakia: the former Iron Curtain

I filmed there years ago and the pictures are in "Arena: Stories my country told me". Soldiers creeping through the undergrowth to stop illegal immigrants from entering Austria from across the former Iron Curtain – from Hungary and Slovakia.

Off camera Eric Hobsbawm told me: "In Europe, the money flows east and the people flow west".

The soldiers left long ago and the border crossings have now been sold off to the highest bidder. But this summer, a special chill is back, and its blowing not from Siberia, but the war ravaged heart of the Middle East.

Nickelsdorf

The same border 17 years later. It is beautiful summer weather. The Austrian police approach an abandoned poultry refrigeration truck. What the police find inside is not chickens, but people. 71 dead Syrians, including a one year old child. The news says they had each paid circa 2000 dollars for the trip. The ventilation had failed and the doors had been wired up from the outside. The next day the 4 presumed traffickers are arrested in the Hungarian capital, Budapest. They are 3 Bulgarians and an Afghan national.

The Austrian public are in shock. This is not the Mediterranean, this is Central Europe. This is not the sea, this was motorway parking. This was the A4, the same motorway everyone uses to get to the airport, off on holiday to all points east and west, but not Syria.

Pilgramgasse

Days later I was walking down the Pilgramgasse in Vienna when a group of women with placards caught my eye. They were sitting outside a pharmacy. Curious, I crossed the street, to see that instead of slogans, the placards bore words like: nappies, tampons, toothpaste and toilet paper. No it was not a surrealist joke, but citizens shopping for the things Syrian refugees need in Traiskirchen.

Traiskirchen reception centre is just south of Vienna and was built to hold 450 people. It currently holds 5000. Many refugees are forced to sleep in corridors or in the open. With no cash to go shopping for the refugees, I asked what else they needed. The freelance aid workers said mens clothing, suitcases and books. Books in English. Globalised refugees don't read German.

Poster at Westbahnhof station (Photograph courtesy of Frederick Baker)

Westbahnhof, Vienna

The next day the mood changed, thousands arrive at the Westbahnhof from Budapest. Victor Orban has shown a rare glimpse of humanity. Station kiosks are shopped empty. Volunteers push bottled water, toys and deoderant into the hands of veiled women and sunburnt children on their father’s shoulders. Only 6 want to stay, Germany is the word on all their lips and Munich is the destination of the trains they board.

In 1938 this station was the point of departure for the "Kindertransporte“ of Jewish children fleeing Nazi persecution. Time has moved on. This time Germany is the haven and England offers only barbed wire and dogs at the Channel Tunnel.

Eric Hobsbawm made this journey in his youth. Vienna, Berlin, Kings College Cambridge. His words came back to me the next day. President Victor Orban had returned to acting tough. No more trains to the west, even if refugees had valid railway tickets. "Germany, Germany“ the crowd of people at Budapest’s station chanted as if this was some sort football match. But it was not, it was history in the making.

Eric Hobsbawm always insisted on differenciating between two kinds of nationhood. The one defined by blood, as in Germany, and the other by citizenship, as in France and the US. But here was a new Germany. No blonde hair or blue eyes in sight. Eric would have chuckled to see these Syrian born wannabe-Germans chanting "Merkel, Merkel“.

The German Chancellor, herself from the former East Germany, had once said that multiculturalism was dead. But now she’s refusing to build a new iron curtain, and is opening up to one of the key facts of European history. I can still hear Eric telling me: „"In Central Europe, the money moves East and the people move West“. Merkel has understood that in 2015 it is not just Germany that has – to use Archbishop Tutu’s phrase - become "A Rainbow Nation“, but the whole of Europe too.

The East gave the world the word "Solidarnosch“, the proud name of the anti-communist Polish trade union that triggered the reunification of Europe. Today solidarity is in short supply in Eastern Europe. Besides Conservative led Britain, it is the Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian governments that are reluctant to take on a larger share of the refugee influx.

Austria is confused. Vienna took in thousands of Czechs and Slovaks in 1968, as they escaped from the Russian tanks out to crush the Prague Spring. The fatal refrigerated lorry was found on the very same border that saved over 100,000 Hungarians in 1956 and 1989. Yet on Austrian TV the Hungarian ambassador rejected any link between Hungarian refugees of the past and the Syrians of the present, as "unhistorical“. He is clearly no adherent to Hobsbawm‘s law.

Sitting in a sweltering Vienna it is hard for cooling not to be seen as a positive thing. Yet there is something especially forboding about the fact it was a refrigeration lorry in which the 71 refugees died. It is a similar angst of asphixiation, and return to the airlessness days of the Cold War, that makes many Austrians nervous when they see their neighbours building new fences.

Traiskirchen and the Channel

In a final twist that Eric Hobsbawm would have enjoyed, the Austrian government have brought in Christian Konrad, a retired banker, to sort out the chaos in Traiskirchen holding centre. There is a new law to force obstructive councils to house their share of refugees. Conrad is a man who made millions preaching the free market and investing in the east. In keeping with the new fashion for modesty, he is setting up his offices in a container, the same kind of container that is being used to house the new arrivals.

If we were shooting a piece to camera I know would Eric say? Yes you guessed it:

"The money flows east and the people flow west“.

West as far as Calais? Eric is sadly not longer here to answer that question, but from the perspective of History the present attempts to make the Channel Tunnel Britain's Iron Curtain must fail. You can't block something that was built to reach across the channel to grasp the invisible hand of the market, by also sticking out a bayonet and shouting the immortal cry of the little Englander.

Frederick Baker also appeared on the �鶹Լ��'s From Our Own Correspondent, broadcast on Saturday 5 September 2015.

Poster at Westbahnof (Photograph courtesy of Frederick Baker)

The border between Austria, Hungary and Slovakia: the former Iron Curtain

Off camera Eric Hobsbawm told me: "In Europe, the money flows east and the people flow west".

Nickelsdorf

Pilgramgasse

'Blurred Lines' court case awards $7.5m

2015-03-17T11:05:59+00:00

A US jury has ruled that the writers of 'Blurred Lines' - one of the best selling singles of all time copied Marvin Gaye's 1977 track 'Got To Give It Up'. Gaye's children - Nona, Frankie and Marvin Gaye III sued Pharell Williams and Robin Thicke back in 2013, and this week the decision was made that the 2013 single breached the copyright of Gaye's track. The family has now been awarded $7.3m (£4.8m) in damages.

Nona and Frankie Gaye are the grandchildren of legendary jazz musician Slim Gaillard. His daughter Jan married Marvin in 1977, shortly after his divorce from first wife Anna Gordy. Not only was Slim father in law to Gaye, but he also contributed backin vocals to his famous track 'Sexual Healing'. Arena followed Slim back in 1989 as he takes us through his life, here seen jamming with his extensive family, along with daughter Jan and grandchildren Frankie and Nona Gaye.

Tribute to Nigel Finch

2015-02-19T15:24:28+00:00

This week marks 20 years since the death of Arena Series Editor Nigel Finch. Along with Anthony Wall, he was an instrumental character in the development of Arena’s distinctive style, directing many classics such as My Way, Chelsea Hotel and The Private Life of the Ford Cortina. Among those who knew Nigel, it is his vibrant personality as much as his films that is vividly remembered to this day. Nigel Williams wrote in his obituary, “When I first met him, working on the �鶹Լ�� Arts programme Arena in the early seventies, he seemed to hail from some unimaginably exotic location. He had the conversational sharpness of someone who has been used to caf society from an early age and, as he swung down the corridors to his cutting-room, his brightly coloured leather jacket gave him the air of a hero of a comic book or of some tropical bird whose plumage, defying the safety of camouflage, exists to let you know he’s there”. This clip taken from ‘Arena at 30’ shows Anthony Wall, among other Arena faces, remembering Nigel.

Television writer Howard Schuman delivered a fitting tribute to Nigel, describing him as ‘one of the most original and brilliant talents in television’ in this introduction to his classic BAFTA award-winning ‘Chelsea Hotel’. First transmitted in 1981, this documentary looks at New York’s famous Chelsea Hotel, a legendary haven for some of the 20th Century’s greatest talent, from Mark Twain to Dylan Thomas. This film epitomised Arena’s new style of television making, breaking the mould of what an arts documentary had been up to that point.

Nigel Finch and Anthony Wall ran the Arena strand together from 1985 until Nigel’s death in 1995. A former Arena PA, Belinda Phillips, remembers working with the pair, describing the creative ‘telepathy’ between them. In 1989, Nigel conceived the memorable Arena film ‘The Other Graham Greene’ as a means of simultaneously making a film about the novelist and exploring the extent to which real lives are always fictionalised in film and biographies. Here, Nigel discusses his first meeting with Graham Greene at the Ritz Hotel in London.

Kurt Vonnegut was so taken by Nigel's film of him that he sent this letter on 5th June 1983. He tells Nigel, 'you are an important artist, and I will follow your career from now on eagerly, certain that you will go from strength to strength'. ‪

Nigel died on Valentines Day 1995. His memorial service was held on Mardi Gras Day that year - a fitting date given the ambitious four hour live transmission of Mardi Gras celebrations that Arena undertook in 1988, which Nigel directed alongside Anthony Wall, Mary Dickinson and J.Gabour - at which many of his friends and colleagues paid tribute to him. Alan Yentob described his '...most singular quality was his openness. Everything for him had promise. He was a stranger to banality and even to boredom. That's why he was such good company'. Here, Anthony Wall talks about the great work he did for Arena over the years, followed by a montage of clips from his films.

Follow this link to read Nigel Williams' 1995 obituary in full

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-nigel-finch-1573483.html

25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

2014-11-11T12:08:29+00:00

�鶹Լ�� News reports on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

Sunday marked the 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As part of the events to mark this historic event, over 40 Trabant cars were driven along Berlin’s Bornholmer street, the first border crossing between East and West Berlin to be breached during the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989. The well-known Trabi, a series of cars built in the German Democratic Republic before the fall of the Berlin Wall, have now become a symbol of former East Germany. Produced for nearly 30 years with almost no significant changes, over 3 million Trabants were produced in total, often remembered for their poor performance and cheap construction. However, hundreds streamed into West Germany in their Trabants after the Berlin Wall was opened, and they have since become a symbol for the fall of the Eastern Bloc.

In 1999, ten years after the fall of the wall, American broadcaster and writer Reggie Nadelson joined formed Soviet spin doctor Vladimir Pozner in an attempt to trace the chilling and strange route of history’s most astonishing border in ‘Arena: Looking For the Iron Curtain’. Here, they visit the town of Zwickau in former East Germany and talk to Edgar Haschke, Editor of ‘Super Trabi’ magazine about his experiences of living in former East Germany and the significant of the Trabi for himself and many others

Reggie Nadelson and Vladimir Pozner trace the chilling route of the Iron Curtain

Arena: Looking For The Iron Curtain (1999), Directed by Anthony Wall, Produced by Martin Rosenbaum

The collapse of the Soviet regime should have left Stalin firmly buried in history books, denounced by Khrushchev as far back as 1956. But in his native Georgia, Stalin is far from dead – and all over the Soviet Union his legend casts a long shadow into the present. Arena’s 2001 film Stalin: Red God traces how he became the single most worshiped man in the world, tapping into the reservoir of faith left by the suppression of the Russian Orthodox Church. Here, ‘Pravda’ cartoonist Boris Yefimov discusses the phenomenon of Stalin the Red God in today’s former Soviet Union.

Arena looks at the legacy of Stalin in the former Soviet Union

Arena: Stalin - Red God (2001), Directed by Frederick Baker, Series Editor - Anthony Wall

A Tribute to Jack Bruce

2014-10-31T12:35:51+00:00

Cream

Jack Bruce, the bassist from 1960s band ‘Cream’ has died aged 71. The group which included Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker are now considered one of the most important bands in rock history, selling 35 million albums in just over two years and given the first ever platinum disc for Wheels of Fire. Bruce wrote and sang most of the songs, including "I Feel Free" and "Sunshine Of Your Love". The band performed live at the Royal Albert Hall for the last time in their 1968 ‘Farewell Concert’. The concert was filmed and broadcast on the �鶹Լ��, and here they are performing the legendary ‘Sunshine of Your Love’

Cream perform 'Sunshine of Your Love' from Tony Palmer's 'Cream Farewell' 1968

From Tony Palmer's Cream Farewell 1968

Arena’s series editor, Anthony Wall began his career as the Morning Star’s rock critic from 1974-78. We dug out an interview he did with Jack Bruce in 1975, where he talks candidly about his political and musical roots, and on the formation of 'Cream’.

Cream article

INTO THE GLOBAL VILLAGE PERIOD - Jack Bruce talks to Anthony Wall, Morning Star Rock Critic

Jack Bruce, bassist extraordinary and all-round accomplished musician, comes from a Communist Party family from Bishop Briggs, near Glasgow. In 1971 he showed he hadn’t rejected his roots, by giving a series of fund-raiding benefit concerts for the UCS work-in. He was a member of the Young Communist League and sang in its choir. The music had a strong influence on his later work. “The music I write – it’s Scottish. We’re moving into the global village period, so the music I write has influences from the ghettoes of America, from India, but most of all from Scottish folk music”.

Bruce first came to prominence in the rhythm and blues scene of the mid 60s. So did drummer Ginger Baker and guitarist Eric Clapton and together they formed Cream and achieved unprecedented success and acclaim. Since then Bruce has played with a number of bands including Lifetime, which featured John MacLaughlin and Tony Williams, who played with Miles Davis for about nine years. At the beginning of this year Bruce formed a new group. ‘I hope that the band I’m with now will last forever, because it has the potential to do everything I want to. And I think that the only way you’ll achieve what you want to musically is by playing with the same group of musicians for a long time”.

The group consists of brilliant Mick Taylor (guitar), late of The Rolling Stones, Carla Bley (keyboards), a leading avant garde jazz composer, Bruce Gary, an American session drummer, and Ronnie Leahy (piano) who has played with a number of British bands, ‘I didn’t ask any of them, with the exception of Ronnie Leahy, to join the band. They all asked me if they could join because they wanted to play my music. This is marvelous – obviously”. Bruce is clearly the band leader and during their recent tour they relied heavily on material from his latest album “Out of the Storm”, but he is insisting on the others writing and there should be no shortage of ideas in a group so full of talent. Carla Bley has already written some pieces for a planned first album. Bruce has a unique bass playing style. “I play melodic bass, if you like, but that doesn’t mean I play it like a lead guitar. The bass was liberated in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s by jazz musicians like Charlie Haden and I feel I’m a logical development of that, moving into the rock field. “But I don’t think it matters what instrument you play. An instrument is merely an extension of your personality”. Bruce feels the same way about his songs. Though the words have usually been supplied by Pete Brown their overall meaning relates as much to him

“We write the words together. Sometimes Pete’s given me a poem or a set of lyrics, and I’ve set it to music in the traditional way, but usually we sit down and hammer out each image until it’s something I can sing”. Bruce talked about his musical ideals and the state of music at present. “I believe that rock and roll or rock or pop or whatever, that is, is the only music that is the people’s music. But what’s wrong with it is that it was a very limited emotional scope. What I’m trying to do is increase that.”. But he emphasized that the music had to work for the people who want to hear it. His ideal seemed to be musical freedom with the kind of rapport that exists between musicians and non-musicians among, say, black people in America.

“I spent a lot of time with Tony Williams, and he’s treated with such respect by non musicians, by his brothers. That’s what I thought we were beginning to move towards in ’67. Here it’s second class music, and I’m sure it’s kept that way because that’s the way the system is”. He talked about the way the possibilities that seemed to exist in Cream’s heyday, were destroyed. “When I started in the early 60s, we were very dedicated to spreading the word of improvised music, it wasn’t making money at all. Then there was an accident called Cream which made money. “It was the underground thing that happened in San Francisco and spread from there that made the group successful. There was a real underground, and at the beginning Cream was a member of it. I thought at last things were coming together. And then the big businessmen realized they could sell more records using the underground as a gimmick than they could to the ‘straights’. It was still called the underground, but it was very well thought out in a business way”. Bruce also criticized the approach some musicians had taken since then.

“Musicians spent a long time gaining freedom within a commercial basis, by which I mean being able to do the net gig, make the next record, not become millionaires. I think a lot of musicians are killing it. They go too far and play what to me is undisciplined drivel”. But Bruce feels that appreciation of music is underdeveloped in Britain. He has interesting views on the subject, which relate strongly to the way he sees society as a whole. “People talk in music, in time. Africans talk in 12, Japanese talk in three the British talk in two or four and their music comes out that way too. Africa music is wonderful, it incorporates all time signatures – or Balinese music which is the same. That’s what I’m trying to do”.

“It may seem complex, but it’s not. It’s because we’re still basically living with Victorian scruples. Even rock and roll is Victorian if you like, it was to be four square to succeed”. For Bruce there’s no straightforward formula for music and his attitude to music is inseparable from his attitude to life. “It’s pushing yourself to the limits in every way, in your life style. It’s as important as science or anything like that. It’s not that it should be this or it should be that, what is should be is people, extensions of their personalities, striving, really struggling, that’s what music is about”.