The latest releases, the hottest stars and the leading directors, plus news and insights from the film world
With Antonia Quirke Antonia presents a guide to the universe of The Coen Brothers with help from the siblings themselves. From Film Programme interviews over the last twenty years, Joel and Ethan discuss old Hollywood movies, haircuts and communism.
With Francine Stock Director Kevin Macdonald reveals the influence of The Battle Of Algiers on his latest drama, The Mauritanian, the true story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi, who was held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp for 14 years without charge. Photo credit: Tatiana Lund
With Antonia Quirke Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey has had an eventful 12 months, from being told to pack his bags overnight and get a flight to America to work on a major Hollywood movie, to catching Covid in Los Angeles, and then working on an entirely different movie in Sicily. He recounts it all in an exclusive audio diary for The Film Programme. 1917 was the biggest hit in British cinemas last year, and it belongs to a long tradition of films that appear to be shot in one take. Antonia loo...
With Antonia Quirke This year sees the 20th anniversary of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. To mark the occasion, Antonia revisits her encounter with Christopher Lee in 2001 and hears from London Voices, the choir who sang Elvish on the soundtrack. Bait director Mark Jenkin continues his exclusive series of audio diaries as he prepares to make a film in lockdown. This week, he begins to scout locations for his supernatural drama Enys Men. There's another Scene Stealer from writer Nat Segnit: the a...
Script supervisor Angela Allen on what it was really like to work with Marilyn Monroe, Orson Welles and John Huston, and why Monroe believed she was having an affair with husband Arthur Miller. With Antonia Quirke.
With Francine Stock Francine reflects on the career of Leslie Caron, who is 90 this year, and hears about her adventures in La La Land with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Cary Grant.
With Antonia Quirke The Dig production Designer Maria Djurkovic reveals how she re-created the famous burial mounds in Sutton Hoo in a field just outside Guildford. Director Mark Jenkin reveals what it's like to make a film in lockdown. He's currently in pre-production on Enys Men, but has to use online maps to do a recce, had to cut out a scene involving 200 extras because of social distancing rules, and must wait for an actor to get their vaccine before he can shoot a crucial scene. What's it ...
With Antonia Quirke Brothers Bill and Turner Ross discuss their film Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, set in the last night of a bar on the outskirts of Los Angeles, that resides somewhere between fiction and documentary Neil Brand reveals how a little known movie called Chappaqua changed the course of contemporary classical music Kenneth More was one of the most popular actors in Britain in the 1950's, but he's never been the subject of a biography. So, Nick Pourgourides decided to do something abou...
With Antonia Quirke. Legendary actress Ellen Burstyn talks about Pieces Of A Woman, the film that might make her the oldest person to be nominated for an Academy Award in the history of the Oscars. Deepa Mehta, the director of the Earth, Fire and Water trilogy discusses her new drama Funny Boy, set around the time of Black July, the outburst of sectarian violence that led to civil war in Sri Lanka.
With Francine Stock Francine rifles through The Film Programme archives to hear from director Richard Lester about working with The Beatles on A Hard Day's Night and Help ! And why he didn't work for several years after the 60s had ended.
With Antonia Quirke Director Christopher Nolan and author Tom Shone discuss Tom's book The Nolan Variations, and the influence of artists Escher and Francis Bacon on movies like Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. And Nolan reveals why he has a favourite glacier. Photograph: Oliver Nolan
With Antonia Quirke Lesley Manville reveals how her Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread led to her latest role as a psychotic American matriarch in Let Him Go A tale of two Picturehouses over one year: Kevin Marckwick, the owner of the Uckfield Picture House and Clare Binns, Joint MD of the Picturehouse chain, discuss their contrasting fortunes over the past twelve months and reveal why the future for cinema is still bright, despite rumours to the contrary. Photograph: Rachell Smith...
With Antonia Quirke David Byrne discusses the film version of his Broadway musical American Utopia which was directed by Spike Lee. And he reveals why he's a changed man since his last concert movie Stop Making Sense. Bait director Mark Jenkin is about to return to the film he had to abandon in March because of lockdown, Enys Men. But, thanks to social distancing rules, the film is very different from the one he had originally planned, with no crowd scenes, for instance, and a tighter budget. Th...
With Antonia Quirke Actor Tom Burke reveals how he perfected the voice of Orson Welles for his new film Mank, about the making of Citizen Kane. Rob Savage explains how he made a horror movie called Host, when every member of the cast and crew were locked down in their homes and he directed them in his pyjamas and dressing gown. Critic Pamela Hutchinson, the curator of a new season of Marlene Dietrich movies, picks her favourite Marlene moment.
With Francine Stock Heaven's Gate is a symbol of Hollywood excess and financial mismanagement. One of the biggest disasters in film history, Michael Cimino's epic is said to have killed the studio that produced it, United Artists. Francine scours through the archives to hear from two its chief protagonists, head of production Steven Bach and director Michael Cimino.
With Antonia Quirke. Ron Howard talks about the challenges of making films about real people, and what it was like to act opposite John Wayne and discovering the secret of his famously laconic acting style. Film-maker Carol Morley makes the case for Muriel Box, Britain's most prolific female director and arguably most neglected. Artist and film-maker Andrew Kotting has to leave his studio after working there for 15 years. In that time, he has amassed a treasure trove of film props, paintings, co...
With Francine Stock In this month's edition of Moving Image, director Sarah Gavron talks about the unlikely film that influenced Rocks, her realistic drama about the life of a teenager in East London. The film is After Life, a Japanese fantasy about the recently deceased having to choose a memory that will be re-enacted and filmed, which they then can take to the afterlife with them. Gavron explains why Hirokazu Koreeda's award-winning movie is a source of constant inspiration.
With Antonia Quirke. When Fred Scott began his documentary on the making of Roy Andersson's About Endlessness, he had no idea about the drama behind the scenes that he was about to uncover. When Marion Stokes died, she left behind 70,000 VHS tapes of American television that she'd been recording 24 hours a day for 30 years. Director Matt Wolf describes the long and arduous process of sifting through those tapes to make his documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project Cathy Schulman, the Oscar...
With Antonia Quirke. Steve James, the director of Hoop Dreams, looks back at his ground-breaking documentary about the lives of two African-American teenagers as they try to realise their dreams of becoming professional basketball players. To celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Jean Luc Godard's A Bout De Souffle, Antonia rifles through the Film Programme archives to hear from some of the directors who have been influenced by this Nouvelle Vague masterpiece - Bernardo Bertolucci, Agnes Varda, ...
With Antonia Quirke Antonia continues her look at women and horror with directors Josephine Decker and Natalie Erika James. Relic was inspired by Natalie's experience of looking after her grandmother who had been diagnosed with dementia. Shirley is the story of Shirley Jackson, the author of The Haunting Of Hill House, but is not a conventional bio-pic, instead it treats an episode in her life as if it was the subject of one of her own Gothic novels. Writer Nat Segnit starts a new series on Scen...
With Antonia Quirke. This month sees the release of six horror movies directed by women. And there are many more in production and waiting release. One of them is Amulet, directed by Romola Garai. Last year, Antonia visited her on set and found out why she wanted to make her directorial debut with a horror movie. As filming starts again in Britain and America, Antonia talks to two producers, Charles Collier and Matt Kaplan, about what it's like to film in the middle of a global pandemic. The cla...
With Antonia Quirke This month sees the release of five horror movies directed by women. The first one out of the blocks is Saint Maud, written and directed by Rose Glass. She tells Antonia why she thinks so many women are turning to horror for their debut movies. Out next week is Carmilla, directed by Emily Harris. One of the stars of the films is the sound effects by foley artist Catherine Thomas. She explains how she made the sound of ants scuttling on a branch with the help of some grape sta...
With Antonia Quirke. Tricia Tuttle, the director of The London Film Festival, reveals all the challenges that she faces organising the festival during a global pandemic. Actor Patrick Kennedy describes what it was like to be on the red carpet of this year's Venice Film Festival, where the public weren't invited and the stars had to wear masks to the premieres and keep a social distance from one another. Director Mark Jenkin knows what a festival can do for a film's reputation. After a rave revie...
With Francine Stock. Controversial cult film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky is almost as famous for a film he didn't make as he is for the films he did. The Chilean director pioneered a new type of cult movie with his psychedelic western El Topo, but it's his doomed attempt to make a version of Dune, starring Salvador Dali, that propelled him to legendary status. He tells the story of his life, from creating mimes for Marcel Marceau to working with The Beatles on The Holy Mountain.
With Antonia Quirke. Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson describe how they wrote their award-winning film Rocks in collaboration with their teenage cast. Theresa reveals why she didn't tell her older sister that the main character was based on her, until she saw the film. Director Hong Khaou talks about the autobiographical elements that underpin his new drama Monsoon, about a young British man who returns to the place of his birth in Vietnam. Hong explains why his mother refuses to watch his movies...
With Antonia Quirke. Writer/director Sally Potter discusses her new feature film The Roads Not Taken and why she dedicated it to her late brother Nic. She describes her experience of the coronavirus and why it became both a sad and productive time for her. Antonia visits the community cinema The Phoenix in Oban, as they prepare to open their doors for the first time in 5 months. Everything is ready for the big day, except for one thing: the films themselves. They are being sent by courier to the...
With Antonia Quirke Les Miserables is not another adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel, but an award-winning, autobiographical thriller set in a deprived estate in the Parisian suburbs. Ladj Ly's film made such an impact with French audiences that President Francois Macron asked to watch it. He was so shaken by what he saw on screen that he ordered his ministers to start finding solutions to the poor housing conditions in the French capital. Tenet was the film that was going to save our cinemas. Or...
With Francine Stock "I Am Spartacus" is one of the most famous lines in film history and Francine tells the turbulent backstory of that line and how it involved the so-called Hollywood witch-hunt, in which writers had to secretly change their names to get work. She hears from actor Kerry Shale and historians Pamela Hutchinson and Colin Shindler.
With Francine Stock Earl Cameron, who died earlier this year aged 102, was one of the pioneers of British cinema, one of the first black actors to get a starring role in a British movie. Francine spoke to Earl in 2009, just after he'd been awarded the CBE, and he revealed how he entered show business almost by accident, about the racism he encountered during the war and why he didn't think BAME actors received the recognition they deserved in the British film industry. Earl's debut was the thril...
With Ben Bailey Smith With no blockbusters and several heatwaves, it's been a cruel summer for our cinemas. The Uckfield Picture House in Sussex is feeling the heat. With only dozens of customers each day, owner Kevin Markwick was relying on two films to bring audiences back to his family business. One of them, Mulan, is now being released for streaming only. Kevin tells us his plans for survival with temperatures in the 30s and only one blockbuster being released at the end of August. As an act...
