Tuesday 3 March 2009

Off-air recordings 7-13 March 2009

Please email Rich Deakin < rdeakin@glos.ac.uk > if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*



Timewatch: The Real Bonnie and Clyde - "Hollywood portrayed them as the most glamorous outlaws in American history, but the reality of life on the run for Bonnie and Clyde was one of violence, hardship and danger.
With unprecedented access to gang members' memoirs, family archives and recently released police records, Timewatch takes an epic road trip through the heart of depression-era America, in search of the true story of Bonnie and Clyde."



The Satanic Verses Affair - "Twenty years ago, novelist Salman Rushdie was a wanted man with a million pound bounty on his head. His novel, The Satanic Verses, had sparked riots across the Muslim world. The ailing religious leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, had invoked a little-known religious opinion - a fatwa - and effectively sentenced Rushdie to death. Never before had a novel created an international diplomatic crisis on such a scale, and never before had a foreign Government publicly called for the killing of a private citizen of another country.
This film looks back on the extraordinary events which followed the publication of the book and the ten year campaign to get the fatwa lifted. Interviews with Rushdie's friends and family and testimony from leaders of Britain's Muslim community and the Government reveal the inside story of the affair. Rushdie himself was forced into hiding for nearly ten years. Arguably this was the moment when religious identities, in Britain and abroad, became more important than ethnic and cultural belonging."



The Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith - "In 1950 the American photo-journalist W Eugene Smith came to Britain to cover the general election for Life Magazine, but his photographs were never published. Welsh writer and broadcast Professor Dai Smith goes in search of these lost pictures and discovers how the magazine's opposition to Attlee's radical Labour government caused them to suppress Smith's work."



Panorama: Immigration - Time for an Amnesty? - "Panorama looks at a proposed amnesty for hundreds of thousands of long-standing illegal immigrants, offering them the right to work and full citizenship. London mayor Boris Johnson is in favour of the idea, and ninety-three MPs from across the country support it. But it is a big ask with the UK in the grip of a credit crunch, and amid protests calling for British jobs for British workers. Should the amnesty be granted?"



The Miners' Strike - "Documentary which captures the extraordinary passions unleashed by the 1984 miners' strike and examines how it changed Britain forever. Mining villages were consumed by violence and hatred as pickets fought running battles with police and striking and working miners were locked in confrontation.
With powerful interviews, evocative archive and dramatic reconstructions, the film follows the lives of five young miners from one village through a torrid but exciting year."



All Our Working Lives: Cutting Coal - "In their peak period, Britain's coal mines powered the nation's industrial rise and provided jobs for over a million men. With the help of old miners and pit managers, this documentary highlights the dangerous conditions, insecurity and disputes that led to the nationalisation of the mines after the Second World War and charts the rapid decline of the industry in the 1970s and 80s."



My Strike - "My Strike explores the experience of going on strike and the impact it has on individuals on both sides of a dispute. Drawing on a time when millions of days were lost to industrial action each year in Britain, it covers a spectrum of industries and includes personal accounts from people not normally thought of as strikers – including Lord Tebbit, who took part in a pilots' strike before he went on to become Trade And Industry Secretary, and former BBC Director-General Greg Dyke.
Every striker confronts personal pressure. Women machinists at the Ford Motor Company plant in Dagenham incurred the wrath of husbands and families when they forced the temporary closure of their factory in the fight for pay parity in 1968. Ian Lowes, who led the gravediggers' strike in 1979, tells how they faced physical attack from furious members of the public who were unable to bury their dead, and Norman Tebbit's agent had some stern questions for his striking Tory candidate.
The programme examines how each strike had a different tone. For some, striking was a very gentlemanly affair – London Weekend Television allowed strikers inside the building, in case of rain, and Greg Dyke split his time between the picket line and wind-surfing in Wales.
For others, strike action was out-and-out war. Former newspaper boss and one-time reluctant striker Eddie Shah recounts some of the dirty tricks he claims print unions used when he confronted them over the closed shop.
The programme also examines how striking changes lives. South Shields miner Norman Strike split from his wife and family in the strike but found a new life as an academic; Anne Scargill lost her faith in the police after her arrest during the miners' strike, but found her independence; Peter Snow faced his own crisis of confidence on crossing the picket line in the run-up to an election; and Norman Tebbit used his experience of striking to shape legislation to curb the unions. "



Call Yourself A Feminist - BBC Radio 4 3 part series - "Historian Bettany Hughes presents the first in a series of three discussions tracing the development of feminist ideas from the 1960s onwards."


Baroque! From St Peter's to St Paul's - new 3 part series - "Writer and presenter Waldemar Januszczak continues his exploration into the Baroque age in this BBC Four series, filmed in high definition in locations across Europe. The series explores the impact of the world's first truly global art movement as it travelled from Catholic Rome to Protestant London between 1600 and 1720.
Programme two follows the Baroque on its travels to the dark heart of Spain, where it thrived – and sometimes shocked – and then onwards to Flanders and Holland, where Rubens and Rembrandt took it on.
One of the chief reasons why the Baroque became the first global art movement was because it was so adaptable – adopting the local tastes and customs wherever it arrived and making itself at home. But when it got to Spain it didn't have much adapting to do. Spain was already very Catholic with an appetite for drama, emotion and passion – so a ready-made home for the Baroque.
Waldemar joins the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela – the Via de la Plata – starting in Seville, the birthplace of Velazquez, and the setting of Rossini's Barber Of Seville and Mozart's Marriage Of Figaro. He also charts the journey of Spanish Baroque exported from as far afield as Peru and Latin America.
In Spanish Flanders, Waldemar hunts down Rubens's greatest Baroque paintings. And in Holland, he watches the Baroque turning protestant for the first time with Rembrandt, Frans Hals and the incomparable Vermeer."



That's all folks! Any more just let me know.

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* This applies to staff members at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.

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