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 1 - Art Spiegelman: Of Cats and Mice
Release Date:Following the publication of his book 'Maus', a comic strip depicting cats and mice in the story of a young Jewish couple arrested and transported to Auschwitz, its creator comic-strip artist, Art Spiegelmann and his family, travel to Auschwitz for the first time.
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Episode 2 - Night and Day
Release Date: 1987-01-23A 24 hour journey through the streets of London as seen by two writers. Spectator columnist Jeffrey Bernard explores the daylight hours, with thriler writer Celia Fremlin walking the hours of darkness.
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Episode 3 - Dennis Potter
Release Date: 1987-01-30Alan Yentob interviews TV dramatist Dennis Potter about his work through the years, touching on subjects such as why and how he started writing, his sense of being different as a child, the insularity of his past in Forest of Dean, starting at the BBC in 1959 and a failed attempt at going into politics.
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Episode 4 - Martin Chambi and the Heirs of the Incas
Release Date: 1987-02-06Story of photographer Martin Chambi, a Peruvian Indian whose photographs of the Inca ruins and Peruvian society brought him to the forefront of revolutionary artistic and social movements in South America in the 1930's.
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Episode 6 - Ruth, Roses and Revolver
Release Date: 1987-02-20Director David Lynch presents a guide to the work of the Surrealists.
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Episode 7 - A Brother With Perfect Timing
Release Date: 1987-02-27Documentary on jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African who moved to Amer ica in 1965. His music uses a blend of jazz and the traditional styles of South Africa.
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Episode 8 - Andrei Tarkovsky's Cinema
Release Date: 1987-03-13Beyond the edges of the frame influential filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky give the viewers a sense of time passing, time lost, and the relationship of one moment in time to another.
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Episode 9 - Confessions of Robert Crumb
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Episode 10 - How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?
Release Date: 1987-03-27Maria Von Trapp, Bob Guccione, Martin Scorsese, Mary O'Hara, Tony Monopoly and o thers talk about their training to become Roman Catholic monks, priests or nuns, and also discuss the similarity between the church and the world of arts and entertainment.
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Episode 12 - Talk Is Cheap
Release Date: 1987-04-10 -
Episode 13 - Night Moves
Release Date: 1987-04-11Documentary on the personalities and machines of the trucking industry in Great Britain.
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Episode 14 - The Waugh Trilogy Part 1: Bright Young Thing
Release Date: 1987-04-18Three part pfofile of writer Evelyn Waugh. Covers the period of his early life with comments from Sir Harold Acton, Lady Diana Mosley, Anthony Powell, Peter Quennell and Graham Greene.
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Episode 15 - The Waugh Trilogy Part 2: Mayfair And The Jungle
Release Date: 1987-04-19The most productive years of Waugh's writings. With comments from John Mortimer, Kingsley Amis, and Graham Greene.
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Episode 16 - The Waugh Trilogy Part 3: An Englishman's Home
Release Date: 1987-04-20 -
Episode 17 - Joseph Beuys
Release Date: 1987-06-06Documentary tracing the career of controversial German artist Joseph Beuys, from World War II up to his death in 1986.
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Episode 18 - Revolutionary With A Paintbox
Release Date: 1987-11-20A profile of Diego Rivera. The portrait compiles testimony from Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, ex-model and lover Bolores Olmedo and painter Jose Luis Cuevas. There is archive footage of Zapata, Trotsky and Rivera himself.
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Episode 19 - Your Honour, I Object! Guccione V Russell
Release Date: 1987-11-27A courtroom 'drama' featuring Bob Guccione versus Ken Russell in a breach of con tract case regarding disagreements over a script for a film version of Daniel De foe's "Moll Flanders" which Guccione hired Russell to direct.
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Episode 20 - Invisible Ink
Release Date: 1987-12-04Documentary on the writings of Indians who travelled to Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries and wrote about their experiences.