Arena | |
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![]() Message in a bottle title sequence used by Arena since 1975. | |
Genre | Documentary |
Created by | Humphrey Burton |
Written by | Various |
Directed by | Various |
Opening theme | "Another Green World" by Brian Eno |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of episodes | over 600 |
Editor(s) | Anthony Wall (1985–present) Anthony Wall and Nigel Finch (1985–1995) Alan Yentob (1979–1985) Leslie Megahey (1977–1978) Various (1975–1977) |
Production company(s) | BBC |
Release | |
Original network | BBC Two (1975–2011) BBC Four (2003–present) |
Original release | 1 October 1975 – present |
External links | |
BBC Four - Arena |
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC since 1 October 1975. Voted by TV executives in Broadcast magazine as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has produced over six hundred episodes directed by, among others, Frederick Baker, Jana Boková, Jonathan Demme, Nigel Finch, Mary Harron, Vikram Jayanti, Vivian Kubrick, Paul Lee, Adam Low, Bernard MacMahon, James Marsh, Leslie Megahey, Volker Schlondorff, Martin Scorsese, Julian Temple, Anthony Wall, Leslie Woodhead, and Alan Yentob.
Television in the United Kingdom started in 1936 as a public service which was free of advertising. Currently, the United Kingdom has a collection of free-to-air, free-to-view and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channels for consumers as well as on-demand content. There are six main channel owners who are responsible for most material viewed. There are 27,000 hours of domestic content produced a year at a cost of £2.6 billion. Since 24 October 2012, all television broadcasts in the United Kingdom have been in a digital format, following the end of analogue transmissions in Northern Ireland. Digital content is delivered via terrestrial, satellite and cable, as well as over IP.
Documentary television is a genre of television programming that broadcasts documentaries.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London, and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total, 16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff are included.
The current series editor is Anthony Wall, who has edited Arena since 1985.
Anthony Wall is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose lifelong contribution to cinema has been honoured with the Special Medallion of the Telluride film festival. He has for more than 30 years been a director, then Series Editor and Executive Producer of the BBC's flagship arts documentary strand Arena, voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast magazine as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time.
The arts strand Arena was initially created in 1975 [1] by the BBC Head of Music & Arts at that time, Humphrey Burton, when he founded a magazine named Arena exploring art, design, filmmaking, and theatre. In 1977, under producer and director Leslie Megahey, the strand divided into Arena Theatre and Arena Art and Design, and Arena became less of a magazine and more a home for short, distinctive and stylish films about mainly British theatre and visual arts. In 1978 Megahey became editor of Omnibus and Alan Yentob, who had been supervising Arena Theatre, took over and the two themes were merged. The series, relaunched in January 1979 and renamed simply Arena, began to adopt a format of single subject essays. It earned great critical acclaim for its enthusiasm for the popular as well as the high arts. During Yentob's time as editor, Arena had six BAFTA nominations and three BAFTA awards.
Humphrey McGuire Burton, CBE is a British classical music television presenter, broadcaster, TV director, producer, impresario, lecturer and biographer of musicians.
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art.
Design can have different connotations in different fields of application, but there are two basic meanings of design: as a verb and as a noun.
A group of radical directors, notably Nigel Finch and Anthony Wall, gathered around Yentob and Arena, including Nigel Williams and Mary Dickinson. Hits from 1977 included Who Is Poly Styrene?, La Dame Aux Gladiolas, a portrait of Edna Everage, and most notably the groundbreaking My Way, an examination of the appeal of the song, by Finch and Wall. It was the first of their collaborations, which developed a new kind of arts film, taking an unlikely subject and building a poetic meditation on its various aspects - further examples include The Chelsea Hotel (1981), The Private Life of the Ford Cortina (1982), Desert Island Discs (1982). Other successes included Megahey's portrait of Orson Welles (1982), Williams's study of George Orwell (1982), Yentob's portrait of Mel Brooks (1981) and Wall's four-part documentary on Slim Gaillard (1989).
Nigel Lucius Graeme Finch was an English film director and filmmaker whose career influenced the growth of British gay cinema.
Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, known by the stage name Poly Styrene, was a British musician, singer-songwriter, and frontwoman for the punk rock band X-Ray Spex.
Dame Edna Everage is a character created and performed by Australian comedian Barry Humphries, known for her lilac-coloured or "wisteria hue" hair and cat eye glasses or "face furniture", her favourite flower, the gladiolus ("gladdies") and her boisterous greeting: "Hello, Possums!" As Dame Edna, Humphries has written several books including an autobiography, My Gorgeous Life, appeared in several films and hosted several television shows.
On Yentob’s move to become Head of Music & Arts in 1985, Finch and Wall took over as joint editor of Arena until Finch’s death in 1995. Following a period of uncertainty concerning the future of the arts strand, series editor Wall protected the series in a reshuffle of the BBC. Since then Arena has been transmitted outside the conventional weekly broadcast strand on BBC Two and BBC Four, and latterly on BBC Four.
BBC Two is the second flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tends to broadcast more "highbrow" programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence, and is therefore free of commercial advertising. It is a comparatively well-funded public-service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public-service networks worldwide.
BBC Four is a British free-to-air television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was launched on 2 March 2002, with a schedule running from 7:00 pm to 3:35 am. The channel shows "a wide variety of programmes including comedy, documentaries, music, international film, original programmes, drama and current affairs ... an alternative to programmes on the mainstream TV channels". It is required by its licence to air at least 100 hours of new arts and music programmes, 110 hours of new factual programmes and to premiere 20 foreign films each year.
Under Wall and Finch, Arena developed the idea of the themed evening, beginning with Blues Night (1985), followed by Caribbean Nights (1986), Animal Night (1989), Food Night (1990), Texas Saturday Night (1991) and Stories My Country Told Me (1995), a three-and-a-half-hour presentation on Nations and Nationalism. Since then Arena has won numerous awards with regular screenings at the BFI Southbank and has continued to cover the arts and culture at the highest level, with films on Bob Dylan, Harold Pinter, The National Theatre and Spitting Image, to name but a few.
Nationalism is a political, social, and economic ideology and movement characterized by the promotion of the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity—based on shared social characteristics such as culture, language, religion, politics, and belief in a shared singular history—and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture, and cultural revivals have been associated with nationalist movements. It also encourages pride in national achievements, and is closely linked to patriotism. Nationalism is often combined with other ideologies, such as conservatism or socialism for example.
BFI Southbank is the leading repertory cinema in the UK, specialising in seasons of classic, independent and non-English language films. It is operated by the British Film Institute.
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, author, and visual artist who has been a major figure in popular culture for six decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement. His lyrics during this period incorporated a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defied pop-music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture.
Most recently Arena has developed a substantial online presence featuring the Arena Hotel, a site that turns the 600-film Arena archive into a resource to build an online hotel for the stars. The Arena Hotel was nominated for a Focal International Award in 2013. The Hotel was commissioned for The Space, and will continue to expand.
Werner Herzog has praised the series as "the oasis in the sea of insanity that is television".[ citation needed ]
The programme's theme music is taken from the title track of the 1975 album Another Green World by Brian Eno, himself the subject of a 2010 Arena film subtitled Another Green World. [2]
The Arena opening titles were voted among the "Top 5 Most Influential Opening Titles in the History of Television" by Broadcast magazine in 2004.
Anthony Wall has been the Editor of Arena since 1985. He joined the series in 1978 and became one of its leading directors.
Arena has won a Primetime and International Emmys, [3] a Grammy, [4] nine BAFTAs, [5] six Royal Television Society Awards, a Peabody and the Prix Italia. Arena also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Paris is Burning, and the Best Performance Award for Lili Taylor's role in I Shot Andy Warhol at the Sundance Film Festival.
Year | Films | Director |
---|---|---|
1979 | Nigel Finch | |
1980 | Making The Shining | Vivian Kubrick |
1981 | The Comic Strip Hero | Anthony Wall |
1981 | Nigel Finch | |
1981 | Anthony Wall | |
1982 | The Orson Welles Story | Alan Yentob L. Megahey |
1983 | H. Brookner | |
1983 | Borges and I | D. Wheatley |
1985 | M. Dickinson | |
1985 | Saint Genet | Nigel Williams C. Chabot |
1986 | C. L. R. James' First Cricket XI | C. Pattinson |
1987 | The Confessions of Robert Crumb | M. Dickinson |
1987 | Evelyn Waugh Trilogy | Adam Low |
1987 | Jonathan Demme | |
1988 | Adam Low | |
1989 | The Other Graham Greene | Nigel Finch |
1989 | Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 1) - "A Traveller's Tale" [6] | Anthony Wall |
1989 | Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 2) - "How High The Moon" [7] | Anthony Wall |
1989 | Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 3) - "My Dinner With Dizzy" [8] | Anthony Wall |
1989 | Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 4) - "Everything's OK In The UK" [9] | Anthony Wall |
1990 | J. Livingston Nigel Finch | |
1991 | B. Marcus Nigel Finch | |
1991 | Nigel Finch | |
1991 | The Human Face [10] | Nichola Bruce Michael Coulson |
1993 | F Hanly T. May | |
1993 | Leslie Woodhead | |
1994 | Paul Lee | |
1994 | J. Marsh | |
1995 | Punk and the Pistols | P. Tickell |
1995 | Nigel Finch | |
1996 | Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Eric Hobsbawn and Slovakian Nationalism [12] | Frederick Baker |
1996 | Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Desmond Tutu and the Rainbow Nation [12] | T. May |
1996 | Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Eqbal Ahmad on the Grand Trunk Road [12] | H. O. Hazareth |
1996 | The Burger & the King: The Life & Cuisine of Elvis Presley | James Marsh |
1996 | M. Harron | |
1997 | The Football Men | F. Hanly |
1999 | Cuba Night | P. Esterson J. Shinner |
1999 | M. Dickinson | |
1999 | Looking for the Iron Curtain | Anthony Wall |
2000 | James Marsh | |
2000 | Anthony Wall B. Ricker | |
2001 | Salgado: Spectre of Hope | P. Carlin |
2002 | Adam Low | |
2002 | Harold Pinter Season at the BBC | Anthony Wall Nigel Williams Martin Rosenbaum |
2003 | Imagine Imagine | Frederick Baker |
2003 | Dylan Thomas: Grave to Cradle | Anthony Wall |
2004 | Pavarotti: The Last Tenor | Frank Hanly |
2004 | Shadowing the Third Man | Frederick Baker |
2004 | Painting the Clouds: A Portrait of Dennis Potter | Martin Rosenbaum Nigel Williams |
2005 | Calling Hedy Lamarr | Georg Misch |
2005 | Bacon's Arena | Adam Low |
2005 | Martin Scorsese | |
2005 | Samantha Peters | |
2006 | Ashtar Alkhirsan | |
2007 | Zimena Percival | |
2007 | Bob Marley's Exodus '77 | Anthony Wall |
2007 | Encountering Bergman | David Thompson |
2007 | Bergman and the Cinema | Marie Nyrerod |
2008 | V.S. Naipaul: The Strange Luck Of... | Adam Low |
2008 | Vikram Jayanti | |
2009 | Adam Low | |
2010 | Nicola Roberts | |
2010 | Harold: A Celebration | Anthony Wall |
2010 | Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way | Bruce Ricker |
2011 | Frank Hanly | |
2011 | George Harrison: Living in the Material World | Martin Scorsese |
2012 | Dickens On Film | Anthony Wall |
2012 | Sonny Rollins: This is Who I Am | Dick Fontaine |
2012 | The Dreams of William Golding | Adam Low |
2012 | David Thompson | |
2012 | Amy Winehouse: The Day She Came to Dingle | Maurice Linnane |
2012 | The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour Revisited | Frank Hanly |
2012 | Screen Goddesses | David Thompson |
2012 | Sister Wendy and the Art of the Gospels | Randall Wright |
2013 | AKA Norman Parkinson | Nicola Roberts |
2013 | Adam Low | |
2014 | Whatever Happened to Spitting Image? | Anthony Wall |
2014 | Martin Scorsese David Tedeschi | |
2017 | The American Epic Sessions | Bernard MacMahon |
2017 | American Epic | Bernard MacMahon |
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