With Francine Stock. Flight Of The Conchords' Jemaine Clement discusses his vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows and reveals why they used their IT engineer called Stu to play an IT engineer called Stu. Jan Vokes is the star of a new documentary Dark Horse about the staff and members of a working men's club in the South Wales valleys who clubbed together to buy a race horse. She tells Francine about her new-found fame, and what it's like to see her face plastered on billboards opposite...
Apr 16, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Ryan Gosling discusses his directorial debut Lost River, which was met with a mixture of cheers and jeers at its Cannes premiere. The head of BBC Films, Christine Langan, looks back at its 25 years history, including such hits as Billy Elliot, Philomena, and Fish Tank, and laments the lack of original stories that land on her desk. One of Britain's few winners at this year's Oscars, hair and make-up artist Frances Hannon, talks about her award-winning moustaches and wigs for...
Apr 09, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Kenneth Branagh discusses his live-action version of Cinderella and why he made the stepmother less wicked and more sympathetic, and why test audiences didn't always agree with his decision. While We're Young director Noah Baumbach discusses mid-life crises, Ben Stiller and the enduring influence of Woody Allen. Blind is a new movie from Norway which imagines the internal life of its blind protagonist. Director Eskil Vogt talks about the challenges of filming the imagination...
Mar 26, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. The men who brought Paddington to the big screen, producer David Heyman and director Paul King, reveal why it took seven years to turn the bear from darkest Peru into a movie star. Thelma Schoonmaker, the Oscar winning editor of Raging Bull and The Wolf Of Wall Street, talks about the restoration of The Tales Of Hoffmann, written and directed by her late husband Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Xavier Dolan has made five films in five years, the latest of which, Mommy,...
Mar 19, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Terence Stamp reveals why he fell out with director John Schlesinger on the set of Far From The Madding Crowd. Film-makers Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts tell Francine why they have set up their own film club, A Nos Amours, due to the demise of repertory cinema in this country. Clive Bell and Tomoko Komura perform the Japanese art of silent film narration called Benshi. Critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh picks her DVDs of the month.
Mar 12, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Neill Blomkamp, the creator of science fiction satire Chappie, tell us why we should learn to stop worrying and love Artificial Intelligence. Neil Brand reveals why the spaghetti western would not have been the same without Ennio Morricone's memorable scores. BAFTA winner Daisy Jacobs discusses her short film The Bigger Picture which combines animation, stop-motion, papier mache pigs and her mum's kitchen table. As Life Of Riley, the final film from auteur Alain Resnais, is ...
Mar 05, 2015•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Stephanie Beacham reveals why Marlon Brando wore y-fronts and wellington boots during their love scenes for The Nightcomers, a little-seen prequel to Henry James' Turn Of The Screw. Catch Me Daddy director Daniel Wolfe discusses the reasons that he made a modern-day western set in Yorkshire about the controversial subject of honour killings. Actor Harry MacQueen has made his directorial debut, Hinterland, with just £10,000 that he received from an inheritance. He explains ho...
Feb 26, 2015•28 min
Antonia Quirke talks to three Oscar nominees as they head off to the Academy Awards for the first time. Anthony McCarten, the writer and producer of The Theory Of Everything, is up for two awards - best adapted screenplay and best film. He reveals why he's turned down an invitation to Madonna's after-party. Production designer Suzie Davies is nominated for her work on Mr Turner, and confesses to behaving like a star-struck fan at the nominees lunch, and has the photographs to prove it. Mat Kirkb...
Feb 19, 2015•28 min
Antonia Quirke presents a valentine to the cinema in a special edition about love in the movies. She talks to Terence Stamp, once described as the most beautiful man in the world, about what it was like to be loved from afar by millions of strangers. And she hears from Sir Richard Eyre who explains why he believes romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story is a perfect movie, and from award-winning documentary maker Kim Longinotto about Love Is All, her evocative compilation of love scenes from over...
Feb 12, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Selma recounts the life of Martin Luther King for the first time on the big screen. Its director Ava DuVernay tells Francine what she thinks of the controversy in the United States about the film's portrayal of President Lyndon B Johnson, which some critics say is unfair and unbalanced. Actor Eddie Marsan talks about the research he undertook for Still Life, in which he plays a funeral officer who has to track down the relatives of people who have died alone. And he reveals ...
Feb 05, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Director Paul Thomas Anderson discusses the challenges of writing Inherent Vice, the first ever movie adaptation of a novel by reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon. Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry talks about the dangers of filming in the favelas of Rio for his caper movie Trash. And reveals why he ripped up the script and let his child actors improvise and decide their own ending. Listeners sing word-perfect renditions of the Odeon Film Club song and ABC Minors anthem, five...
Jan 29, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Novelist Alex Garland discusses his directorial debut Ex Machina and tells Francine why he thinks Professor Stephen Hawking is wrong to worry that the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Liz Fraser is known as one of the Carry On girls, even though she only appeared in four of the series. As her film debut, I'm All Right Jack, is released on DVD, she spills the beans on stereotyping, Peter Sellers, and the unions. Director J.C. ...
Jan 22, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Arsenal fan Nick Hornby reveals what appealed to him about Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild, about her 1000 mile hike through mid America, and why he was never tempted to try the walk himself. Jazz drumming is the unlikely subject for a movie, but Whiplash has won numerous awards in festivals across the world. Its director Damien Chazelle and star J.K. Simmons discuss the film's theme of how music teaching can turn into bullying.
Jan 15, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Into The Woods stars James Corden and Emily Blunt discusses what it was like to sing on screen for the first time. Director Bennett Miller reveals the reasons he cast Steve Carrell against type as a multi-millionaire who sponsored an American Olympic wrestling team with tragic consequences. As a retrospective of Eric Rohmer's career continues at the BFI Southbank, Boyhood director Richard Linklater and critic Antonia Quirke consider the quiet genius of films like The Green R...
Jan 08, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Batman star Michael Keaton discusses the similarities between his career and that of his character in Birdman, an actor making a come-back after finding fame playing a winged super-hero. Director James Marsh reveals what Stephen Hawking really thought of his bio-pic The Theory Of Everything. Enemy, in which Jake Gyllenhaal plays a man haunted by his doppelganger, is the second movie released in the last 12 months about doubles. The other, The Double, was based on a story by ...
Jan 01, 2015•28 min
With Francine Stock. Angelina Jolie reveals why she's planning to give up acting to concentrate on directing, and describes the moment she discovered that her neighbour Louis Zamperini was an Olympic athlete and ex-prisoner of war, and what it was like showing him her film about his life, Unbroken, just before he died. Actor Pal Sverre Hagen, known as Norwegian's Ryan Gosling, reveals what it was like to recreate Thor Heyerdahl's epic voyage across the Pacific for the film Kon-Tiki, while Thor H...
Dec 18, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock Composer Danny Elfman talks about his long collaboration with director Tim Burton that's included Batman and Alice In Wonderland. Nick Hornby recites all of the lyrics to the ABC's Minors Song, the theme tune to a kids club that showed cartoons and the work of the Children's Film Foundation. Sound designer Ben Burtt reveals just how many elements went into the making of E.T.'s voice, including a few animals, a professor, and his wife snoring in bed. Three Film Programme exper...
Dec 11, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Director Kevin Macdonald on Jude Law's Scottish accent in his submarine drama Black Sea. And how geo-politics caught up with a film that's partly set in Crimea. Jason Reitman discusses the moral panic about social media in his ensemble piece Men, Women And Children. And reveals his 70 year old mother's texting habits. FX maestro Ben Burtt reveals the identity of the language that the Ewoks speak in the Star Wars saga. Neil Brand shows us the part that music played in dramati...
Dec 04, 2014•28 min
As 2001: A Space Odyssey is re-released in cinemas, Francine Stock presents a special edition on Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece. 'My God, it's Full of Stars' were the last words of Dave Bowman before he journeyed through the Stargate, according to writer Arthur C. Clarke but it's an apt description for this edition of The Film Programme. Francine journeys through time and space to uncover the mysteries of this 1968 classic. Searching for the mind of H.A.L. and lost alien worlds among the delights...
Nov 27, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Julianne Moore about her role in the new HUNGER GAMES movie, MOCKINGJAY Part 1. The Director Randall Wright shares his experience of working with and making a film documentary about David Hockney and continuing The Story Of The Sound Effect series, Randy Thom talks about the importance of alien sound in CONTACT. And with news of an extended Franchise Francine talks to Chris Miller and Phil Lord, the directors of THE LEGO MOVIE, about the success of their film, the trick o...
Nov 20, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Tommy Lee Jones about his new film The Homesman, a gritty take on the Western in which the harshness of frontier life and the impact it had on women are central to the story. She also discovers why set designer Maria Djurkovic is such a valued member of the teams in the many projects she undertakes, including this week's release The Imitation Game. There's the latest in the series of Sci-Fi Sound FX secrets, in this programme the heavy breathing that has made Darth Vader ...
Nov 13, 2014•28 min
Francine Stock hears from director Christopher Nolan about the tension between eco-conservatism and interplanetary pioneer spirit in his new space Blockbuster INTERSTELLAR. There's also the second part of a series featuring the sound effects experts - this time Randy Thom who added more than a little of himself to the spells and wand-craft of the Harry Potter series, and on the 30th anniversary of its release, Lord Puttnam talks about the enduring impact of THE KILLING FIELDS, particularly in Ca...
Nov 06, 2014•28 min
British director Mike Leigh discusses his latest film Mr Turner. With a career spanning over 40 years, he tells The Film Programme why he has wanted to make a film about the artist for over 20 years, and why actor Timothy Spall was the only man for the job. In the run up to the London Korean Film Festival, Film critic Anton Bitel discusses Korean 1960 classic 'The Housemaid'. Seen as utterly shocking by cinema goers at the time, it has been rediscovered and its restoration has attracted a new au...
Oct 30, 2014•28 min
Director of The Babadook, Jennifer Kent explains how she used the psychological to create horror, and the talks about the challenges in casting kids. Film critic Kim Newman takes a look at children in horror films, from The Innocents to The Exorcist. British actor Riz Ahmed discusses his new role in Nightcrawler and discusses the role that instant internet news plays in todays media and our responsibility as consumers of it. Francine Stock presents a new series running throughout The Film Progra...
Oct 23, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Fashion designer turned film producer Agnes B. discusses her directorial debut My Name Is Hmmm... and reveals her life-long affair with cinema. The head of DreamWorks Animation, Jeffrey Katzenberg, considers the future of animated films and looks back at a career he describes as a rollercoaster. Animal Farm was the first animated film made by the British film industry in 1954. But what nobody realised at the time, least of all the producers Halas and Batchelor, was that the ...
Oct 16, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Olivier Award winning playwright Gregory Burke discusses his feature film debut '71, about a young soldier who finds himself lost in Belfast during the height of the Troubles. Peter Strickland, the acclaimed director of revenge drama Katalin Varga, reveals what happened when Bjork asked him to film a concert on her Biophilia tour, and what it all has to do with crystals, microbes and BBC Inside Science presenter Adam Rutherford. Pianist Neil Brand demonstrates the seduction ...
Oct 09, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Director David Fincher reveals how he adapted the best-selling thriller Gone Girl for the big screen and why he's not worried that seven million readers already know the plot's infamous twist. Lux Aeterna composer Clint Mansell discusses the pleasure and pain of writing for Hollywood and what he really thinks about having his music replaced by somebody else's score. Poet George Szirtes reviews the poetic realism of Le Jour Se Leve, written by Jacques Prevert and considered o...
Oct 02, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. British actress Olivia Williams discusses her experiences of Hollywood and why the Tinsel Town satire Maps To The Stars is all too real. An investigation into why Italian cinema was so coy about the mafia until fairly recently. Polish director reveals why he returned to his homeland for his post-war drama Ida and how a black-and-white movie in a foreign language about a novice nun turned out to be his biggest hit. Location manager Sue Quinn explains how she managed to get a ...
Sep 25, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. Nick Cave discusses a documentary about his life and work called 20,000 Days On Earth, which mixes fact with fiction, as film-makers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard placed the singer in a series of staged encounters and let the cameras roll. Cave explains why he wasn't entirely happy with some of the things they asked him to do. Novelist Jonathan Coe discusses the Claudette Colbert comedy Midnight, written by one of his film heroes, Billy Wilder The Riot Club director Lone Sch...
Sep 18, 2014•28 min
With Francine Stock. The producer of Pride, David Livingstone, discusses the film's evolution from script to screen and reveals what he thinks about his comedy being touted as the next Full Monty. A Most Wanted Man director Anton Corbijn talks about working with Philip Seymour Hoffman in his last starring role before his untimely death earlier this year. Is being a writer on a film a thankless task ? Jeremy Brock, whose credits include the adaptation of The Last King Of Scotland, reveals the pli...
Sep 11, 2014•28 min
