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Arena (1975)
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.
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Episode 3 - The Strange Case Of Yukio Mishima
Release Date: 1985-12-03BBC2 Arena documentary from 1985, which examines the controversial life and bizarre death of the Japanese author, playwright, actor and patriot, Yukio Mishima, who was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for literature, and who committed suicide by ritual disembowelment, on 25th November 1970 after attempting a military coup. Using rare archive footage, including film of Mishima giving a final speech just moments before his death, as well as interviews with the author conducted in English, and reminiscences from his former friends and colleagues, including his English born biographer, Henry Scott Stokes, and translator Donald Keene, the film attempts to shed light on what drove him towards his unusual choice of fate.