Arena (British TV series)

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 over 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, Julian Temple, Anthony Wall, Leslie Woodhead, and Alan Yentob.

Arena
Message in a bottle title sequence used by Arena since 1975.
GenreDocumentary
Created byHumphrey Burton
Written byVarious
Directed byVarious
Opening theme"Another Green World" by Brian Eno
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodesover 600
Production
EditorsAnthony Wall (1985–present)
Anthony Wall and Nigel Finch (1985–1995)
Alan Yentob (1979–1985)
Leslie Megahey (1977–1978)
Various (1975–1977)
Production companyBBC
Release
Original networkBBC Two (1975–2011)
BBC Four (2003–present)
Original release1 October 1975 (1975-10-01) 
present
External links
BBC Four - Arena

The current series editor is Anthony Wall, who has edited Arena since 1985.

History

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?, La Dame Aux Gladiolas, a portrait of Edna Everage, and most notably the groundbreaking My Way, 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), The Private Life of the Ford Cortina (1982), Desert Island Discs (1982). Other successes included Megahey's portrait of Orson Welles (1982), Williams's study of George Orwell (1982), Yentob's portrait of Mel Brooks (1981) and Wall's four-part documentary on Slim Gaillard (1989).

On Yentob's move to become Head of Music & Arts in 1985, Finch and Wall took over as joint editor 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), followed by Caribbean Nights (1986), Animal Night (1989), Food Night (1990), Texas Saturday Night (1991) and Stories My Country Told Me (1995), 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.

Most recently Arena has 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.

Werner Herzog has praised the series as "the oasis in the sea of insanity that is television".

Branding

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.[2]

The Arena opening titles were voted among the "Top 5 Most Influential Opening Titles in the History of Television" by Broadcast magazine in 2004.

Series editors

Wall has been the Editor of Arena since 1985. He joined the series in 1978 and became one of its leading directors.

Awards and nominations

Arena has won a Primetime and International Emmys,[3] a Grammy,[4] nine BAFTAs,[5] six Royal Television Society Awards, a Peabody and the Prix Italia. Arena also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Paris is Burning, the Best Performance Award for Lili Taylor's role in I Shot Andy Warhol at the Sundance Film Festival, and the SFFIF's Mel Novikoff Award.[6]

Selected filmography

Year Films Director
1979

My Way

Nigel Finch
1980

Making The Shining

Vivian Kubrick
1981

The Comic Strip Hero

Anthony Wall
1981

Chelsea Hotel

Nigel Finch
1981

Brixton to Barbados

Anthony Wall
1982

The Orson Welles Story

Alan Yentob

L. Megahey

1983

Burroughs

H. Brookner
1983

Borges and I

D. Wheatley
1985

Old Kent Road

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

Stop Making Sense

Jonathan Demme
1988

Kapuściński

Adam Low
1989

The Other Graham Greene

Nigel Finch
1989

Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 1) - "A Traveller's Tale"[7]

Anthony Wall
1989

Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 2) - "How High The Moon"[8]

Anthony Wall
1989

Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 3) - "My Dinner With Dizzy"[9]

Anthony Wall
1989

Slim Gaillard's Civilisation (Episode 4) - "Everything's OK in the UK"[10]

Anthony Wall
1990

Paris is Burning

J. Livingston

Nigel Finch

1991

Miller Meets Mandela

B. Marcus

Nigel Finch

1991

Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon

Nigel Finch
1991

The Human Face[11]

Nichola Bruce

Michael Coulson

1993

Edward Said

F Hanly

T. May

1993

The Last Soviet Citizen

Leslie Woodhead
1994

Kalashnikov[12]

Paul Lee
1994

Marvin Gaye

J. Marsh
1995

Punk and the Pistols

P. Tickell
1995

Stonewall

Nigel Finch
1996

Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Eric Hobsbawn and Slovakian Nationalism[13]

Frederick Baker
1996

Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Desmond Tutu and the Rainbow Nation[13]

T. May
1996

Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood - Eqbal Ahmad on the Grand Trunk Road[13]

H. O. Hazareth
1996

The Burger & the King: The Life & Cuisine of Elvis Presley

James Marsh
1996

I Shot Andy Warhol

M. Harron
1997

The Football Men

F. Hanly
1999

Cuba Night

P. Esterson

J. Shinner

1999

Salman Rushdie

M. Dickinson
1999

Looking for the Iron Curtain

Anthony Wall
2000

Wisconsin Death Trip

James Marsh
2000

Clint Eastwood

Anthony Wall

B. Ricker

2001

Salgado: Spectre of Hope

P. Carlin
2002

Kurosawa

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

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

Martin Scorsese
2005

The Princess and Panorama

Samantha Peters
2006

Pete Doherty

Ashtar Alkhirsan
2007

Underground

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

Phil Spector

Vikram Jayanti
2009

T. S. Eliot

Adam Low
2010

Brian Eno: Another Green World

Nicola Roberts
2010

Harold: A Celebration

Anthony Wall
2010

Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way

Bruce Ricker
2011

Produced by George Martin

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

Jonathan Miller

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

The National Theatre

Adam Low
2014

Whatever Happened to Spitting Image?

Anthony Wall
2014

The 50 Year Argument: The New York Review of Books

Martin Scorsese

David Tedeschi

2017 The American Epic Sessions Bernard MacMahon
2017 American Epic Bernard MacMahon

Sources

  • Vahimagi, Tise. British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press / British Film Institute, 1994. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.

References

  1. Tise Vahimagi. (2003-12) "Burton, Humphrey (1931-) ". BFI Screen Online". Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  2. Nigel Smith (22 February 2010). "Brian Eno and the Arena Bottle". BBC Music Blog. BBC. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  3. International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. (2013) “International Emmy Awards – Previous Winners 'Arts Programme'” Archived 5 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine. The International Emmy Awards. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  4. The Recording Academy. (2013) "GRAMMY.COM Past Winners Search – ‘No Direction Home’". GRAMMY.COM. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  5. British Academy of Film and Television Arts. (2013) "BAFTA Awards Search – ‘Arena’". BAFTA. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  6. "SFFILM to Honor BBC Portrait Television Series Arena with Mel Novikoff Award at 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival". SFFILM. 20 March 2019. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  7. Wall, Anthony (22 October 1989). "A Traveller's Tale". An Arena Special:Slim Gaillard's Civilisation. Episode 1. BBC Two. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  8. Wall, Anthony (29 October 1989). "How High The Moon". An Arena Special:Slim Gaillard's Civilisation. Episode 2. BBC Two. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  9. Wall, Anthony (5 November 1989). "My Dinner With Dizzy". An Arena Special:Slim Gaillard's Civilisation. Episode 3. BBC Two. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  10. Wall, Anthony (12 November 1989). "Everything's OK in the UK". An Arena Special:Slim Gaillard's Civilisation. Episode 4. BBC Two. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  11. "Radio Times". BBC Genome. BBC. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  12. Weprin, Alex (8 March 2008). "Paul Lee: Next-Gen Adventures in Audience-Building". Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  13. Stories My Country Told Me: The Meaning of Nationhood. Retrieved 26 April 2016.
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