Arena (British TV series)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast magazine as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over six hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Anthony Wall, Nigel Finch, Jana Boková, Alan Yentob, Leslie Megahey, Leslie Woodward, Adam Low, James Marsh, Julian Temple, Mary Harron, 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, who has edited Arena since 1985.
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History
The arts strand Arena was initially created in 1975 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 stand 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 achieved 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.
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 Nigel Finch and Anthony 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 Leslie Megahey's legendary portrait of Orson Welles (1982), Nigel Williams' definitive study of George Orwell (1982), and Yentob's portrait of Mel Brooks (1981).
On Yentob’s move to become Head of Music & Arts in 1985, Finch and Wall took over as joint editor of Arena until of 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.
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.
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".
Branding
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.
The Arena opening titles were voted among the 'Top 5 Most Influential Opening Titles in the History of Television' by Broadcast magazine in 2004.
Series editors
Anthony Wall has been the Editor of Arena since 1985. He joined the series in 1978 and became one of its leading directors.
Awards and nominations
Arena has won a Primetime and International Emmys, a Grammy, nine BAFTAs, 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.
Selected filmography
Year | Films | Director |
---|---|---|
2014 | Martin Scorsese
David Tedeschi | |
2014 |
Whatever Happened to Spitting Image? | Anthony Wall |
2013 | Adam Low | |
2013 |
AKA Norman Parkinson | Nicola Roberts |
2012 |
Sister Wendy and the Art of the Gospels | Randall Wright |
2012 |
Screen Goddesses | David Thompson |
2012 |
The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour Revisited | Frank Hanly |
2012 |
Amy Winehouse: The Day She Came to Dingle | Maurice Linnane |
2012 | David Thompson | |
2012 |
The Dreams of William Golding | Adam Low |
2012 |
Sonny Rollins: This is Who I Am | Dick Fontaine |
2012 |
Dickens On Film | Anthony Wall |
2011 |
George Harrison: Living in the Material World | Martin Scorsese |
2011 |
Produced By George Martin | Frank Hanly |
2010 |
Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way | Bruce Ricker |
2010 |
Harold: A Celebration | Anthony Wall |
2010 | Nicola Roberts | |
2009 | Adam Low | |
2008 | Vikram Jayanti | |
2008 |
V.S. Naipaul: The Strange Luck Of... | Adam Low |
2007 |
Bergman and the Cinema | Marie Nyrerod |
2007 |
Encountering Bergman | David Thompson |
2007 |
Bob Marley's Exodus '77 | Anthony Wall |
2007 | Zimena Percival | |
2006 | Ashtar Alkhirsan | |
2005 | Samantha Peters | |
2005 | Martin Scorsese | |
2005 |
Bacon's Arena | Adam Low |
2005 |
Calling Hedy Lamarr | Georg Misch |
2004 |
Painting the Clouds: A Portrait of Dennis Potter | Martin Rosenbaum
Nigel Williams |
2004 |
Shadowing the Third Man | Frederick Baker |
2004 |
Pavarotti: The Last Tenor | Frank Hanly |
2003 |
Dylan Thomas: Grave to Cradle | Anthony Wall |
2003 |
Imagine Imagine | Frederick Baker |
2002 |
Harold Pinter Season at the BBC | Anthony Wall
Nigel Williams Martin Rosenbaum |
2002 | Adam Low | |
2001 |
Salgado: Spectre of Hope | P. Carlin |
2000 | Anthony Wall
B. Ricker | |
2000 | James Marsh | |
1999 |
Looking for the Iron Curtain | Anthony Wall |
1999 | M. Dickinson | |
1999 |
Cuba Night | P. Esterson
J. Shinner |
1997 |
The Football Men | F. Hanly |
1996 | M. Harron | |
1996 |
The Burger & the King: The Life & Cuisine of Elvis Presley | James Marsh |
1996 |
Eqbal Ahmad on the Grand Trunk Road | H. O. Hazareth |
1996 |
Desmond Tutu and the Rainbow Nation | T. May |
1996 |
Eric Hobsbawn on the Pressburger Bahn | F. Baker |
1996 |
Stories My Country Told Me | Anthony Wall |
1995 | Nigel Finch | |
1995 |
Punk and the Pistols | P. Tickell |
1994 | J. Marsh | |
1994 | P. Lee | |
1993 | Leslie Woodhead | |
1993 | F Hanly
T. May | |
1991 | Nigel Finch | |
1991 | B. Marcus
Nigel Finch | |
1990 | J. Livingston
Nigel Finch | |
1989 |
The Other Graham Greene | Nigel Finch |
1988 | Adam Low | |
1987 | Jonathan Demme | |
1987 |
Evelyn Waugh Trilogy | Adam Low |
1987 |
The Confessions of Robert Crumb | M. Dickinson |
1986 |
C. L. R. James' First Cricket XI | C. Pattinson |
1985 |
Saint Genet | Nigel Williams
C. Chabot |
1985 | M. Dickinson | |
1983 |
Borges and I | D. Wheatley |
1983 | H. Brookner | |
1982 |
The Orson Welles Story | Alan Yentob
L. Megahey |
1981 | Anthony Wall | |
1981 | Nigel Finch | |
1980 |
Making The Shining | Vivian Kubrick |
1979 | Nigel Finch |
Sources
- Vahimagi, Tise. British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press / British Film Institute, 1994. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.