Frankenstein: A Modern Myth

Documentary showcasing the life and works of surrealist artist Salvador Dali. "Presents Dali's entire oeuvre--painting, sculpture, writing, fashion and film--in the context of his extraordinary life and international career."

Documentary on film maker Akira Kurosawa

A profile of British painter, Francis Bacon.

Documentary exploration of Dirk Bogarde's private life and long-term affair with manager, Anthony Forwood, seen through home movies and excerpts from Bogarde's memoirs.

A film exploring Ian Fleming's espionage career, relentless habits, and tropical retreat in Jamaica, which shaped the fictional secret service agent, while detailing his tragic struggle to escape a character that overshadowed his legacy.

Gauguin’s vivid artworks sell for millions. He was an inspired and committed multi-media artist who worked with the Impressionists and had a tempestuous relationship with Vincent van Gogh. But he was also a competitive and rapacious man who left his wife to bring up five children and used his colonial privilege to travel to Polynesia, where in his 40s he took ‘wives’ between 13 and 15 years old, creating images of them and their world that promoted a fantasy paradise of an unspoilt Eden in the Pacific. Later, he challenged the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church in defence of the indigenous people, dying in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, sick, impoverished and alone.

Nelson Mandela and his fellow ex-prisoners recall their incarceration on South Africa's Robben Island. For three decades, the island housed not only political prisoners but convicts, lepers and the mentally ill. Yet amidst the hopelessness, Nelson Mandela and his comrades devised strategies and subterfuges with which they transformed life on the island, while the vision of a new South Africa began to take shape.

Two-part Arena special celebrating the life and distinguished career of one of Britain's best-loved public figures. Lord Attenborough's film CV as actor stretches from Brighton Rock to Jurassic Park, while as director he has been responsible for Oh! What a Lovely War, Shadowlands and Gandhi. He has also been integral to the work of many charities, while his support for minority groups has led to the building of a Centre for Disability and the Arts. Part one examines his early career and follows Attenborough as he visits his childhood home, travels to Brighton and Hove, and reminisces with brothers John and Sir David. Part two explores his other lives as chancellor of Sussex University and vice-president of Chelsea FC, and examines the political commitment behind films such as Cry Freedom and 10 Rillington Place.

A hundred years after its publication, this film reveals the tawdry, shocking, poetic, uplifting and gloriously kaleidoscopic humanity of James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses.

Thirty years after his BBC film The Auden Landscape, director Adam Low returns to the poet and his work. Following surges of popularity - from featuring in Four Weddings And A Funeral to being the poet New Yorkers turned to after 9/11 - Low reveals how Auden’s poetry helps us to better understand the 21st century and the tumultuous political climate in which we now live.

A portrait of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney. Six years after his death, his family recalls the experiences that inspired his finest poems.

In May 2024, Alan Bennett turned 90. This film celebrates the life and long career of one of Britain's best-loved playwrights. Part frank reflection on the ageing process, part remembrance of the joys of youth, Alan is aided by the films he has written and the documentaries he has presented in his quest to understand the person he has become.

Performance artist Marina Abramovic invites Alan Yentob into her home, opens her archive, travels to her birthplace in Belgrade and talks about turning her life into art.

Alan Yentob joins South African artist William Kentridge as he prepares an epic frieze along the banks of the river Tiber in Rome. Alan visits him in his hometown of Johannesburg, the inspiration for the magical hand-drawn animated films he calls 'drawings for projection'. Brought up under apartheid, Kentridge has witnessed the fragile transition to a multi-racial democracy, and his art continues to reflect South Africa's turbulent times.

Documentary on Krzysztof Kieslowski's Dekalog from the BBC Arena series.