With Francine Stock. Nicole Kidman discusses the research she carried out for her latest thriller, Before I Go To Sleep, in which she plays a woman who wakes up every morning with no memories. Novelist Iain Sinclair waxes darkly about Fritz Lang's masterpiece M, which introduced Peter Lorre to an unsuspecting public. Going to a conventional cinema seems so last century, as films are now being shown in boats, forts, boxing rings and, for one weekend only, Bletchley Park. The Film Programme takes ...
Sep 04, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Francine unlocks The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari as the horror classic is re-released in cinema. Holding the keys are novelist Kim Newman, psychiatrist Peter Byrne and production designer Maria Djurkovic. Another chance to hear Richard Attenborough's interview with Francine, in which he discusses his philosophy of film and explains why cinema needs to be compassionate and political as well as entertaining. Singer Gruff Rhys discusses his documentary American Interior about his qu...
Aug 28, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Luc Besson discusses the neuro-science behind his latest thriller, Lucy, in which Scarlett Johansson's brain capacity increases to dangerous levels. The Dardenne Brothers discuss their latest award winning drama Two Days, One Night, with Marion Cotillard. Palaeontologist Jack Horner explains how he tried to make Jurassic Park as scientifically accurate as possible. Catherine Bray reviews a box-set of the films of Kelly Reichardt, whose movies defy conventions such as conclus...
Aug 21, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock Actress Robin Wright reveals which director told her that there would be no need for actors in 20 years time, thanks to digital technology which can scan their every expression. Director David Michod answers his critics who said there was no plot in his revenge drama The Rover. With several Oscars for Gravity, 2014 seemed like a good year for the visual effects industry in this country, but in fact, many British companies are facing a crisis, as The Film Programme explains. W...
Aug 14, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. John Slattery, aka Roger Sterling in Mad Men, discusses his directorial debut, God's Pocket, one of the last films to star Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died earlier this year. Lilting director Hong Khaou reveals the personal story behind his new drama about a gay man who tries to form a bond with the mother of his late partner, even though she cannot speak English and suspects that she would not have approved of their relationship. Neil Brand tells us how to score your dragon...
Aug 07, 2014•28 min
With Matthew Sweet. Sherlock co-creator and League Of Gentlemen founder Mark Gatiss reveals his favourite screen detectives in the last instalment of his series. Richard Ayoade of The IT Crowd discusses his dystopian adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Double and reveals the words of advice he got from fellow director David Cronenberg. Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris discuss the perils of working with mechanical effects, such as a cloud car that floats above Parisian rooftops, in Michel Gondry's fanta...
Jul 31, 2014•28 min
With Matthew Sweet. Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss reveals the identity of one of his favourite screen detectives in another instalment of his series. Hercules labours again in the form of ex-wrestler Dwayne Johnson, the latest in the long line of body builders who have played the son of Zeus. Christopher Frayling and Natalie Haynes trace the mythology from Italian cinema of the 50s and 60s, where he starred in twenty sword and sandal epics, including Hercules And The Moon Men and Hercules And ...
Jul 24, 2014•28 min
With Matthew Sweet. Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss lines up another of his favourite screen detectives. St Etienne's Bob Stanley picks his favourite London soundtrack. Penny Eyles and Angela Allen reveal some of the script supervisors' trade secrets, from working on classics like The African Queen, Kes and Women In Love. Antonia Quirke tells us why she thinks that Some Like It Hot is the perfect movie. As Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes hits cinemas across the country, Matthew Sweet presents a b...
Jul 17, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Richard Linklater discusses the reasons he made a film over 12 years. Boyhood charts the progress of a young boy from six to eighteen and Linklater reveals why his young actors never saw the movie until it was completed and why he hasn't come to terms with the project finally being over.
Jul 10, 2014•28 min
With Matthew Sweet. In a new series on The Film Programme, Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss reveals his favourite movie detectives, starting with Alastair Sim's lugubrious Inspector Cockrill. Peter Fonda remembers his Easy Rider co-star Dennis Hopper and recalls their legal dispute about the authorship of the counter-culture classic. How has the World Cup affected cinema attendances ? Clare Binns of the Picturehouse chain and independent cinema owner Kevin Markwick reveal their figures. Antonia Q...
Jul 03, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to director Diego Quemada-Díez about his immigration odyssey The Golden Dream and the influence of his mentor Ken Loach. Neil Brand tinkles the ivories and discusses where Jersey Boys fits in to biopic musicals. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie is out this week and the Film Programme takes a look at the successes and perils of the sitcom movie. Director Peter Berg on Afghanistan war film, Lone Survivor. Film Critic Andrew Pulver takes a look at the life of Eli Wallach, the star of T...
Jun 26, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Toby Jones discusses what it was like working with young refugees whose life stories form the plot of Leave To Remain, and reveals some tantalising details about his role as Captain Mainwaring in the forthcoming film adaptation of Dad's Army. French star Fanny Ardant plays a sixtysomething woman who embarks on an affair with a man twenty years her junior in Bright Days Ahead. She tells Francine why she doesn't approve of the term 'cougar' and why we shouldn't worry about get...
Jun 19, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Amma Asante, the director of Belle, discusses the real life story of a mixed-race young woman who was brought up as an aristocrat by her uncle in 18th century London. Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris talk about Chinese Puzzle, the final instalment of a trilogy that's spanned 12 years and has proved a phenomenon in France, appealing in particular to the so-called Erasmus Generation. Of Horses and Men director Benedikt Erlingsson talks about Iceland's love of the horse and why i...
Jun 12, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock Kevin Spacey talks about his documentary NOW: In The Wings On A World Stage about the making of his theatrical production of Richard III, which reunited the actor with director Sam Mendes for the first time since their Oscar winner American Beauty Fruitvale Station, the true story of the fatal shooting of an African-American man by a police officer, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. Director Ryan Coogler reveals the difficulties of making a film ...
Jun 05, 2014•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Ken Loach talks about his latest political drama Jimmy's Hall, set after the partition of Ireland when pragmatism and idealism clashed, often violently. Emmanuelle Seigner describes working with husband Roman Polanski on Venus In Fur about the sado-masochistic relationship between an actress and a director. She explains why the film is definitely not autobiographical. Robert Altman's classic state-of-the-nation address, Nashville, is released on DVD for the first time, almos...
May 29, 2014•28 min
With Antonia Quirke Actor/director John Turturro explains why his barber helped him secure Woody Allen's involvement on his new comedy Fading Gigolo and why Allen was his biggest critic. Composer Neil Brand on how music conjures up the creature in monster movies like Godzilla. Film buyer and exhibitor Clare Binns and critic Tim Robey discuss how the Cannes Film Festival has been for them, so far. What exactly does a scientific adviser do on a comic strip adaptation like Thor ? A theoretical phys...
May 22, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Viggo Mortensen discusses film noir and Greek mythology and the part they have to play in his new thriller The Two Faces Of January. Producer Rebecca O'Brien has walked down the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival with director Ken Loach on ten separate occasions. She takes us behind the scenes at the festival, as she prepares to jet off to the South Of France with Loach's new drama Jimmy's Hall. Clare Binns is going to Cannes for a very different reason, to buy films for...
May 15, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Frank is the story of a singer who never takes off his over-sized papier mache head, on-stage or off. The director Lenny Abrahamson reveals why the film is only partly based on singer Frank Sidebottom, who also wore an over-sized papier mache head and had his own television programme in the 1990s. Stacie Passon, the director of Concussion, discusses her new drama about a suburban mother who becomes a call girl for other affluent women, and shares her reservations about the c...
May 08, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Stanley Kubrick's wife Christiane reveals how they met and fell in love on the set of World War I drama Paths Of Glory, and why he was misunderstood by the British press. The star and director of Blue Ruin, Macon Blair and Jeremy Saulnier, discuss their award-winning revenge thriller, and how the director had to dip into his own pocket, and his wife's, to get the film made. Walerian Borowczyk is best known as the director of La Bete, a surreal fantasy that was banned in cine...
May 01, 2014•28 min
Actress Mia Wasikowska talks about acting with camels in Tracks, the true story of Robyn Davidson who walked 1700 miles across the Australian desert. Director Joanna Hogg discusses her latest dissection of middle-class alienation in Exhibition about two artists who have to leave their dream home, a modernist house in West London. Composer Neil Brand unpicks Clint Mansell's score for Noah and discovers the "God chord". The Film Programme follows two teams competing in Sci-Fi London's 48 hour film...
Apr 24, 2014•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Film and theatre director Sir Richard Eyre reveals how he fell in love with James Dean at first sight. Steven Knight discusses his new thriller, Locke, which is set entirely in a car driving down the M6. Philip Hoare, author of the award-winning Leviathan, reflects upon the representation of the whale in cinema, from Free Willy to Moby Dick,via Orca The Killer Whale Sound editor Richard Hymns talks about the challenges of making a film without any dialogue in All Is Lost, st...
Apr 17, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Why of all the planets in our solar system does Mars hold the most fascination for film-makers ? As The Last Days On Mars is released, Sir Christopher Frayling, Professor Roger Luckhurst and novelist Naomi Alderman discuss the reasons for our obsession with the red planet and reveal why it all began with a simple mistranslation. A man walks into a confessional and informs the priest that he's going to kill him in seven days time. This is the premise for the new thriller from...
Apr 10, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky discusses his controversial blockbuster about Noah, which has been loudly condemned by some religious groups in the United States. Documentary film-maker Mark Cousins considers the history of kids in film and why he thinks children and cinema are made for each other. In the year that Film 4 won the Oscar for Best Film with Twelve Years A Slave, the news that its controller Tessa Ross has decided to leave the job stunned the British film i...
Apr 03, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to director Sally Potter as Bradford Film Festival shows a retrospective of her work which include Orlando, Rage and The Tango Lesson. BAFTA winning Production Designer Eve Stewart shares the tricks of the trade in her latest project The Muppets Most Wanted. Although Eve has previously worked on the Kings Speech, the Damned United and Les Miserables, she tells how the lure of Miss Piggy and Kermit was too much to resist. Finnish documentary maker Petri Luukkainen talks to th...
Mar 27, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to the Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn about British prison drama Starred Up which co-stars Jack O'Connell. He explains how he finds virtue in the most unlikely characters, from Pope in Animal Kingdom to Russell in Killing Them Softly. The musician and composer Mica Levi on her first film sound track working with Jonathan Glazer on sci fi Under the Skin, with Scarlett Johansson. We visit her in the studio where she dissects the alien soundscape she created for the film. Prod...
Mar 20, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to writer and director Jonathan Glazer about Under the Skin, an unsettling sci fi film starring Scarlett Johansson. His previous work includes Birth and Sexy Beast. He explores the challenges of seeing the world through alien eyes. Spinal Tap, the rock mock doc, is 30 years old and Scott Jordan Harris and Sophie Monks Kaufman debate whether it still works for a new generation. The South By South West Festival, or SXSW, is underway in Austin Texas, covering film, music and in...
Mar 13, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Tilda Swinton about the much-anticipated film by Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel and why romance is particularly special to those aged under nine or over 90. And inspired by Anderson's take on hotel life, film historian Ian Christie and critic, Kate Muir look at these citadels of glamour, alienation, opportunity and even horror. The director Ted Kotcheff looks back at his 'lost' Oz psychological thriller Wake In Fright from 1971, now re-released, while critic Alice...
Mar 06, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to actor Stellan Skarsgard about his role in the latest film by Lars von Trier - Nymphomaniac. Playing in two parts, it runs to around four hours and includes challenging explicit material. Skarsgard appears alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg as a man who rescues her from an alleyway after a beating. He explains why he enjoys working with the controversial director. Composer Alexandre Desplat discusses his score for Philomena which has been nominated for an Oscar. His work inclu...
Feb 27, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to John Ridley, the Oscar nominated screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave about the journey from first historic hand account to the big screen also and the portrayal of race in mainstream cinema today. Critic Jonathan Romney critiques the work of director Jim Jarmusch whose latest movie 'Only Lovers Left Alive' hits theatres this week. Award winning production designer Maria Djurkovic and film historian Kim Newman discuss the enduring appeal of the French musical The Umbrellas of...
Feb 21, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock brings a round up of the winners of this year's EE British Academy Film Awards with analysis from critics Robbie Collin and Catherine Bray. Plus the director Spike Jonze on his new sci fi romance, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix and the voice of Scarlett Johansson. Phoenix plays a gentle, lonely divorcee who falls in love with his computer operating system. Jonze explains why he was attracted to setting the film in the near future. And the producer, writer and long-term collaborator...
Feb 17, 2014•28 min
