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The Arena Samuel Beckett Season: Art, Drama and Adaptation
5 July 2022
Beckett’s plays written or adapted for British television during the author’s lifetime were rarely screened in drama slots but instead in arts series on BBC2. It was under the auspices of Arena in 1982 that BBC’s most significant Beckett season was broadcast, in December of that year. Arena had not commissioned any of the productions,… continue reading.
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No proper job for a grown person: Hugh McIlvanney and the BBC Arena documentary Sportswriter
5 July 2022
Introduction The idea that intrinsic meaning and value can be found in sport, which are unique to the human experience, is the driving force of the BBC Arena documentary Sportswriter produced by Francis Hanly, which was written and presented by the acclaimed Observer and Sunday Times sport journalist Hugh McIlvanney. The documentary sets about the… continue reading.
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Arena’s Memorial Portrait of Henry Moore
5 July 2022
Arena (BBC2, 1975- ) introduced new subject matters and forms to public service broadcasting arts programming. By the mid-1980s, the editors of this critically acclaimed arts series had firmly steered away from traditional high art forms, adopting a more expansive notion of the popular arts. To the seasoned Arena audiences, then, who might have been… continue reading.
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BBC Arena’s Poetics of the Ordinary
5 July 2022
Over four decades and 700 programmes the composition of a bottle afloat on a moonlit sea containing a single word in simulated neon beneath Brian Eno's 'Another Green World' has served as a portal to another order of the real. The haunting sequence marking Arena’s reconfiguration in 1979 as a filmic strand under the stewardship… continue reading.
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Arena - A Director’s Story
5 July 2022
I first worked on Arena not as a director but as a trainee assistant film editor in 1977. Arena was still in its original, magazine format at the time, but in 1979 it changed to single, director led film essays. Since leaving the Royal College of Art Film School, my overriding ambition was to direct… continue reading.
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Nigel Finch
5 July 2022
Nigel Finch was an instrumental and transformative presence across the first two decades of Arena, from the pilot edition in 1975 through to his death from an Aids-related illness on Valentine's Day 1995. Here, Ian Greaves looks back on the director and co-series-editor’s life and work. It is 20 September 1973, and at London Weekend… continue reading.
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The Day She Came to Dingle: Arena, Cultural Memory, and Musical Reclamation of Amy Winehouse
5 July 2022
The tenth anniversary of singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse's death on July 23, 2021, provided a natural point for reflection and reconsideration of her contribution to music culture, and how best to understand and honour that legacy. Once the subject of intense tabloid speculation, she has posthumously become an equal site of cultural fascination. This mythologising sparks… continue reading.
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Arena - Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
5 July 2022
The Latin route for the word ‘arena’ is harena, the name of the sand used to cover the wooden floor of the Colosseum in Rome as it was particularly good for absorbing blood. Outside of gladiatorial endeavours, the arena is a level place where all kinds of activities can be shared with the public. And… continue reading.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: ISSUE 119 - The Present and Future of Audiovisual Education
15 February 2022
Welcome to ViewFinder Issue 119: The Present and Future of Audiovisual Education This term we are looking at the present and future of audiovisual education. 2020 saw a huge shift in learning due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Teachers and students alike were suddenly thrown into new ways of working and denied the… continue reading.
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Robert Pattinson: an actor’s conscious diversion of career trajectory
15 February 2022
Introduction by Dr Rebecca Feasey, Bath Spa University Joseph Michell’s article entitled ‘Robert Pattinson: An Actor’s Conscious Diversion of Career Trajectory’ offers a fascinating and potentially unique example of a contemporary star who has successfully managed to reinvent their original star image. After all, it is routinely the case that contemporary A-list performers struggle to… continue reading.