With Ben Bailey Smith Actor and writer Ben Bailey Smith has worked on numerous film sets and rarely hears a working class accent unless it's an upper class actor attempting the Cockney dialect or if it's an electrician working behind the scenes. He asks writer Danny Leigh just just how much the class system plays its part in the British film industry. The Uckfield Picture House in Sussex has been run by the same family for 50 years, but the pandemic and lockdown is starting to threaten its futur...
Aug 06, 2020•44 min
With Antonia Quirke Film producer Luc Roeg talks about his only acting role, as a seven year old boy alongside Jenny Agutter in Walkabout. He reveals what it was like to be directed by his dad, Nic, and why he really didn't like swimming naked in the film's most famous scene. Coky Giedroyc, the director of How To Build A Girl, gives her tips for young female filmmakers on how to survive and thrive in a male dominated industry. Writer Nat Segnit pitches a remake of La Grande Bouffe, in which some...
Jul 23, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke As cinemas across the world are pinning their box-office hopes on Christopher Nolan's Tenet this summer, Antonia looks again at the director's breakthrough hit Memento, and travels back to the year 2000 when Nolan talked to Radio 4 for the first time. Filmmaker Mark Jenkin has to wait a year to shoot his follow-up to Bait as a result of the pandemic. In the meantime, he has dreamt up a new movie and is recording an audio diary of the film-making process. This week, he is grap...
Jul 16, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke Director Mark Jenkin sends his latest audio diary as he embarks on a new project, while he waits another year to start shooting his follow-up to the award-winning Bait. This week's recommendation for a film to stream is High Life, a movie about lockdown and living in isolation, as convicts are sent into space for a scientific experiment. From the archives, director Claire Denis explains that her original idea was to make a film about a deadly virus. Cinema owner Kevin Markwic...
Jul 09, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke What does a film-maker do when they can't make a film ? Three directors share their audio diaries, in which they chart their lives in lockdown. Mark Jenkin was about to start shooting his follow-up to Bait when Covid 19 intervened. He now has to wait a year until he can begin again. Carol Morley set up her own on-line film club because she was missing the communal feeling of watching a film with an audience. Andrew Kotting's film The Whalebone Box was about to be released in ...
Jul 02, 2020•28 min
With Francine Stock June 29th is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ray Harryhausen, the special effects supremo who gave us a seven headed hydra, a a sword fighting skeleton and a lizard from Venus in such classics as Jason And The Argonauts, The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad and 20 Million Miles To Earth. To celebrate the anniversary, Francine remembers the time she visited Ray in his London home and heard how he did all the effects himself, moving his fabulous beasts one painstaking step at a t...
Jun 26, 2020•27 min
With Antonia Quirke The Film Programme's recommendation for films to stream this week are three movies that shed some light on race relations in America. The three films are: BlacKkKlansman, Sorry To Bother You and Monsters And Men. Antonia delves into The Film Programme archives and hears from directors Spike Lee, Boots Riley and Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Jun 18, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke Persepolis director Marjane Satrapi talks about Radioactive, her biopic of Marie Curie, and explains why she also wanted to recognise the work of Marie's husband Pierre. The sun never sets in the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Lapland, but like many festivals, this year it had to go online. Caitlin Benedict and Antonia Quirke revisit last year's festival and talk to programme manager Milja Mikkola about the painful decision not to hold the festival in the small town of Sodanky...
Jun 11, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke Antonia's recommendation for a film to watch while the cinemas are closed is The Garden by Derek Jarman. The garden itself and the adjacent cottage have just been saved for the nation after a successful campaign and Antonia recalls her pilgrimage to Dungeness on the 25th anniversary of the film-maker's death, when she spoke to collaborators Simon Fisher-Turner, Spencer Leigh and Seamus McGarvey, and critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh. Antonia raids the programme's archive to hear fro...
Jun 04, 2020•28 min
With Francine Stock This week's lockdown choice is not a movie, but a whole movement, the British New Wave. Francine picks four kitchen sink classics - Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, A Taste Of Honey, The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner and Billy Liar - for listeners to watch this week. And she hears from the stars of the New Wave - Sir Tom Courtenay, Shirley Anne Field and Murray Melvin.
May 28, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. This week The Film Programme recommends not just one lockdown movie, but a whole life-time's. The life and work of Agnes Varda, including masterpieces Cleo From 5 To 7, The Beaches Of Agnes and Faces, Places. We hear one of the last interviews Agnes gave in this country and from JR, her co-director on Faces, Places, who became her best friend, even though there was 50 years between them. Neil Brand continues his series on rejected film scores, with the epic fail of Troy, the...
May 21, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. For this week's film club, Antonia recommends Terence Stamp's movies from the 1960s and hears from the man himself about celebrity, meeting his idols and why he left the film industry at the end of the decade. Adrian Smith from The Cult Film Club in Eastbourne tells us what happened when the club went online and ended up with 600 people taking part in the same film quiz
May 17, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke This week's recommendation for a film to watch in lockdown is There Will Be Blood. Antonia hears from director Paul Thomas Anderson, stars Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano and composer Jonny Greenwood. Neil Brand reveals the story behind the score for Flash Gordon and why one composer became seriously ill with the stress of the job. Jon Naylor and Katie Hobbs tell us how they set up The Travelling Symphony Movie Club especially for the lockdown.
May 10, 2020•28 min
With Francine Stock The Film Programme's recommendation for a film to watch in self isolation this week is Raging Bull. Editor Thelma Schoonmaker and director Martin Scorsese guide Francine through the making of a classic.
May 03, 2020•28 min
Antonia Quirke plunders the Film Programme archive and hears from the makers of Women In Love: Glenda Jackson, Ken Russell and cinematographer Billy Williams And there's another round of Pitch Battle, as Lizze Francke, Rowan Woods and Clare Binns give their verdict on Gavia Baker Whitelaw's pitch to remake Avatar.
Apr 26, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke As part of The Film Programme's guide to what to watch during self isolation, Antonia presents a special on the 1950 crime drama Night And The City. She plunders the Film Programme archives and hears from stars Richard Widmark, Herbert Lom, Googie Withers and director Jules Dassin
Apr 23, 2020•28 min
With Francine Stock. "I Am Spartacus" is one of the most famous lines in film history and Francine tells the backstory of that line and how involved the so-called Hollywood witch-hunt. She hears from actor Kerry Shale and historians Pamela Hutchinson and Colin Shindler.
Apr 12, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Before the national lockdown, Antonia went to Hastings to visit film-maker Andrew Kotting just as he discovered that cinemas were shutting down and his latest film The Whalebone Box would not see the light of a projector for the foreseeable future. But, like a number of new releases, it will be available to stream instead Franz Waxman won an Oscar for his score for A Place In The Sun, but he might not have composed all the music on the soundtrack, as Neil Brand reveals....
Apr 05, 2020•19 min
The latest releases, the hottest stars and the leading directors, plus news and insights from the film world.
Mar 19, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke In November 2019, far right protesters tried to stop the premiere of Georgia's first LGBTQ film And Then We Danced. They fought with riot police and attacked cinema-goers in Tiblisi. As the film is released in this country, its star Levan Gelbakhiani talks about what it was like to be in the eye of the storm and why the cast and crew needed bodyguards during the making of the movie. Directors Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles discuss their modern day western Bacurau...
Mar 12, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. John Boorman looks back at a career that includes Deliverance, Hope And Glory and Point Blank. He reveals why he's still surprised that films get made, or at least finished, given that so much can go so wrong.
Mar 05, 2020•28 min
With Francine Stock. Justin Kurzel, the director of True History Of The Kelly Gang, talks about the movie that has been a major influence on his film-making. Wake In Fright was made in 1971 and was in contention at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival that year. It was quickly forgotten, however, and considered lost until the film's editor discovered it in a bin in Pittsburgh in 2002. Fully restored seven years later, it went on to become a cult classic and a huge influence on Australian cinema....
Feb 27, 2020•28 min
Her performance in Little Joe won Emily Beecham best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Also starring Ben Whishaw it is a scifi take on the dangers of genetic engineering in flowers. It's the first film in English for Austrian director Jessica Hausner and she reveals what inspired it and the themes that recur in her films. Continuing our series on how to get a movie made, Pitch to Production, Matthew Sweet explores the tricky business of assigning rights with Clare Israel of fi...
Feb 20, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke Ken Russell's wife Lisi Tribble Russell explains why Dance Of The Seven Veils, his film about Richard Strauss, is finally going to be seen 50 years after it was banned. In a new series of Pitch Battle, Gaylene Gould pitches a remake of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes called Brothers Prefer Weaves. A panel of industry insiders, Lizzie Francke, Rowan Woods and Clare Binns decide whether or not to give this update the green light. Composer Neil Brand reveals what happened when legendar...
Feb 13, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Director Bong Joon-ho talks about his Oscar winning Korean thriller Parasite, which has been a surprise hit in the United States. And he reveals the debt of gratitude his film owes to Alfred Hitchcock. Matthew Sweet finds out how he could get a dystopian science fiction novel from 1954 optioned as a movie. He is aided in his quest by film development consultant Rowan Woods. As A Streetcar Named Desire returns to the big screen, Brando biographer William J Mann takes us behin...
Feb 06, 2020•28 min
With Francine Stock. Award winning cinematographer Seamus McGarvey talks about the film that is a continuing influence on his work, A Matter Of Life And Death, and about his friendship with the movie's legendary director of photography, Jack Cardiff, who became his mentor.
Jan 30, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke Director Robert Eggers and Willem Dafoe discuss one of the most unusual Hollywood movies of this year or any other. The tale of two drunken lighthouse-keepers, the film is already infamous for its love scene between man and mermaid. Director Marielle Heller reveals why many British viewers have walked out of A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood, her real life story of chlldren's TV presenter Mr Rogers, mistakenly assuming that it will be the American equivalent of the Jimmy S...
Jan 23, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Todd Phillips explains how an impromptu pitch in the back of a limo led to the billion dollar blockbuster Joker. And he reveals how he dealt with the huge controversy about the film in the United States before the movie had even been released. Cinematographer Roger Deakins takes us behind the scenes of 1917 and reveals how he made the war movie look like one continuous shot. Neil Brand explains the reasons why Michael Nyman's score for Practical Magic was binned at the last ...
Jan 20, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Chemical engineer Robert Paul was an unlikely film pioneer. But after a chance encounter in his chemist's shop, he went on to invent revolutionary movie cameras and projectors, as well as direct Britain's first fiction film, and a war movie filmed on Muswell Hill golf course. And now he has an exhibition in his honour. Antonia visits the National Museum Of Science And Media in Bradford and has a whirlwind tour in the company of curators Toni Booth and Ian Christie. Uncut Gem...
Jan 09, 2020•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Actor/director Taika Waititi talks about his World War II drama Jojo Rabbit and what it was like to direct a film dressed as Adolf Hitler. In the finale of Pitch Battle, Lizzie Francke of the BFI and development consultant Rowan Woods decide which of the final three pitches is their absolute favourite. The battle is between a memoir of the Beat generation, a time slip love story, and a science fiction thriller in which Britain is waterlogged and populated by mutant dogs....
Jan 02, 2020•28 min
