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Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC since 1 October 1975. Voted by TV executives in Broadcast magazine as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has produced more than six hundred episodes directed by, among others, Frederick Baker, Jana Boková, Jonathan Demme, Nigel Finch, Mary Harron, Vikram Jayanti, Vivian Kubrick, Paul Lee, Adam Low, Bernard MacMahon, James Marsh, Leslie Megahey, Volker Schlondorff, Martin Scorsese, Julien Temple, Anthony Wall, Leslie Woodhead, and Alan Yentob.
| Arena | |
|---|---|
 Message in a bottle title sequence used by Arena since 1975. | |
| Genre | Documentary |
| Created by | Humphrey Burton |
| Written by | Various |
| Directed by | Various |
| Opening theme | "Another Green World" by Brian Eno |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of episodes | over 600 |
| Production | |
| Editors |
|
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Production company | BBC Arts |
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC Two (1975–2011) BBC Four (2003–present) |
| Release | 1 October 1975 – present |
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The arts strand Arena was initially created in 1975[1] 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 strand 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 earned 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 1979 included Who Is Poly Styrene?,[2] La Dame Aux Gladiolas,[3] a portrait of Edna Everage, and most notably the groundbreaking My Way,[4] an examination of the appeal of the song, by Finch and 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),[5] The Private Life of the Ford Cortina (1982),[6] Desert Island Discs (1982).[7] Other successes included Megahey's portrait of Orson Welles (1982),[8][9] Williams's study of George Orwell (1982),[10][11][12][13] Yentob's portrait of Mel Brooks (1981)[14] and Wall's four-part documentary on Slim Gaillard (1989).[15][16][17]
On Yentob's move to become Head of Music & Arts in 1985, Finch and Wall took over as joint editors of Arena until 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),[18] followed by Caribbean Nights (1986),[19] Animal Night (1989),[20] Food Night (1990),[21] Texas Saturday Night (1991),[22] Radio Night simulcast with BBC Radio 4 (1993)[23] and Stories My Country Told Me (1995),[24] 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.
Arena 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.[citation needed] Werner Herzog has praised the series as "the oasis in the sea of insanity that is television".[citation needed]
Wall retired in 2018, and the strand is now overseen by commissioning editor Mark Bell.[25]
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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.[26]
The Arena opening titles were voted among the "Top 5 Most Influential Opening Titles in the History of Television" by Broadcast magazine in 2004.
Anthony Wall edited Arena since 1985. He joined the series in 1978 and became one of its leading directors.
Arena has won a Primetime and International Emmys,[27] a Grammy,[28] nine BAFTAs,[29] six Royal Television Society Awards, a Peabody and the Prix Italia. Arena also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Paris Is Burning (1990), the Best Performance Award for Lili Taylor's role in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) at the Sundance Film Festival, and the SFFIF's Mel Novikoff Award.[30]
| Year | Films | Director |
|---|---|---|
| 1979 |
Now and Then - Anthony Green |
Nigel Williams |
| 1979 |
My Way |
Nigel Finch |
| 1980 |
Making The Shining |
Vivian Kubrick |
| 1981 |
The Comic Strip Hero |
Anthony Wall |
| 1981 | Nigel Finch | |
| 1981 | Anthony Wall | |
| 1982 |
The Orson Welles Story |
Alan Yentob
L. Megahey |
| 1983 | H. Brookner | |
| 1983 |
Borges and I |
D. Wheatley |
| 1985 | M. Dickinson | |
| 1985 |
Saint Genet |
Nigel Williams
C. Chabot |
| 1986 |
C. L. R. James' First Cricket XI |
C. Pattinson |
| 1987 |
The Confessions of Robert Crumb |
M. Dickinson |
| 1987 |
Evelyn Waugh Trilogy |
Adam Low |
| 1987 | Jonathan Demme | |
| 1988 | Adam Low | |
| 1989 |
The Other Graham Greene |
Nigel Finch |
| 1989 |
Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 1) - "A Traveller's Tale"[31] |
Anthony Wall |
| 1989 |
Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 2) - "How High The Moon"[32] |
Anthony Wall |
| 1989 |
Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 3) - "My Dinner With Dizzy"[33] |
Anthony Wall |
| 1989 |
Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 4) - "Everything's OK in the UK"[34] |
Anthony Wall |
| 1990 | J. Livingston
Nigel Finch | |
| 1991 | B. Marcus
Nigel Finch | |
| 1991 | Nigel Finch | |
| 1991 |
The Human Face[35] |
Nichola Bruce
Michael Coulson |
| 1993 | F Hanly
T. May | |
| 1993 | Leslie Woodhead | |
| 1994 | Paul Lee | |
| 1994 | J. Marsh | |
| 1995 |
Punk and the Pistols |
P. Tickell |
| 1995 | Nigel Finch | |
| 1996 |
Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Eric Hobsbawn and Slovakian Nationalism[37] |
Frederick Baker |
| 1996 |
Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Desmond Tutu and the Rainbow Nation[37] |
T. May |
| 1996 |
Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Eqbal Ahmad on the Grand Trunk Road[37] |
H. O. Hazareth |
| 1996 |
The Burger & the King: The Life & Cuisine of Elvis Presley |
James Marsh |
| 1996 | M. Harron | |
| 1997 |
The Football Men |
F. Hanly |
| 1999 |
Cuba Night |
P. Esterson
J. Shinner |
| 1999 | M. Dickinson | |
| 1999 |
Looking for the Iron Curtain |
Anthony Wall |
| 2000 | James Marsh | |
| 2000 | Anthony Wall
B. Ricker | |
| 2001 |
Salgado: Spectre of Hope |
P. Carlin |
| 2002 | Adam Low | |
| 2002 |
Harold Pinter Season at the BBC |
Anthony Wall
Nigel Williams Martin Rosenbaum |
| 2003 |
Imagine Imagine |
Frederick Baker |
| 2003 |
Dylan Thomas: Grave to Cradle |
Anthony Wall |
| 2004 |
Pavarotti: The Last Tenor |
Frank Hanly |
| 2004 |
Shadowing the Third Man |
Frederick Baker |
| 2004 |
Painting the Clouds: A Portrait of Dennis Potter |
Martin Rosenbaum
Nigel Williams |
| 2005 |
Calling Hedy Lamarr |
Georg Misch |
| 2005 |
Bacon's Arena |
Adam Low |
| 2005 | Martin Scorsese | |
| 2005 | Samantha Peters | |
| 2006 | Ashtar Alkhirsan | |
| 2007 | Zimena Percival | |
| 2007 |
Bob Marley's Exodus '77 |
Anthony Wall |
| 2007 |
Encountering Bergman |
David Thompson |
| 2007 |
Bergman and the Cinema |
Marie Nyrerod |
| 2008 |
V.S. Naipaul: The Strange Luck Of... |
Adam Low |
| 2008 | Vikram Jayanti | |
| 2009 | Adam Low | |
| 2010 | Nicola Roberts | |
| 2010 |
Harold: A Celebration |
Anthony Wall |
| 2010 |
Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way |
Bruce Ricker |
| 2011 | Frank Hanly | |
| 2011 |
George Harrison: Living in the Material World |
Martin Scorsese |
| 2012 |
Dickens On Film |
Anthony Wall |
| 2012 |
Sonny Rollins: This is Who I Am |
Dick Fontaine |
| 2012 |
The Dreams of William Golding |
Adam Low |
| 2012 | David Thompson | |
| 2012 |
Amy Winehouse: The Day She Came to Dingle |
Maurice Linnane |
| 2012 |
The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour Revisited |
Frank Hanly |
| 2012 |
Screen Goddesses |
David Thompson |
| 2012 |
Sister Wendy and the Art of the Gospels |
Randall Wright |
| 2013 |
AKA Norman Parkinson |
Nicola Roberts |
| 2013 | Adam Low | |
| 2014 |
Whatever Happened to Spitting Image? |
Anthony Wall |
| 2014 | Martin Scorsese
David Tedeschi | |
| 2017 | The American Epic Sessions | Bernard MacMahon |
| 2017 | American Epic | Bernard MacMahon |
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- Storyville, a similar documentary series by the BBC
- Vahimagi, Tise. British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press / British Film Institute, 1994. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
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