Wednesday 28 September 2011

Off-air recordings for week 1-7 October 2011

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk , or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
__________________________________________________________
Saturday 1st October

Factual; History; Politics

Frost on Nixon
BBC2, 7:00-9:00pm

Joan Bakewell talks to Sir David Frost about his landmark interviews with former United States president Richard Nixon. The Nixon Interviews, first broadcast in 1977, gained record audiences and the high drama which surrounded them later became the subject of both a West End play and an Oscar-nominated film, Frost Nixon.

Sir David tells Joan Bakewell about the fight to secure the interview and the struggle to raise the money to make it. He also recalls the negotiations with Hollywood super-agent Swifty Lazar, who Nixon had retained to represent him, the intense discussions with Nixon's own team of advisers, and trying to come to terms with the hugely complicated personality of Richard Nixon himself.

At times the contest between the two men verged on gladiatorial, at others Frost almost seemed to be Nixon's confessor. It ended with Nixon's momentous apology to the American people.


Drama; Political

Frost/Nixon
BBC2, 9:45-11:40pm

The story behind one of the most unforgettable moments in TV history. When disgraced President Richard Nixon agreed to an interview with jet-setting television personality David Frost, he thought he had found the key to saving his tarnished legacy. But, with a name to make and a reputation to overcome, Frost became one of Nixon's most formidable adversaries and engaged the leader in a charged battle of wits that changed the face of politics.

_______________________________________________________
Sunday 2nd October

Documentary; Languages

Fry's Planet Word
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/5 Identity

What is it that defines us? Stephen argues that above all, it is the way we speak. Be it a national language, a regional dialect or even class variation - we interpret and define ourselves through our language.

From markets in Kenya to call centres in Newcastle, Stephen charts the shifting patterns of lingua franca and the inexorable spread of Globish (Global English). As many of the world's more than 6000 languages are threatened with linguicide, Stephen seeks out examples of this rise and fall. In Ireland he learns how TV soaps are keeping Irish alive, whilst in Southern France, Provencal and other Oc languages are struggling to survive after 200 years of suppression by Parisian orthodoxy and the heavy hand of the Academie Francaise.

But even amidst the imminent death of some, other languages like Basque survive, whilst Hebrew in Israel is reborn. Variety is the spice and in Bradford poet Ian McMillan teaches Stephen the subtle variations of dialect, whilst in Norwich Stephen finds his ultimate sense of identity in the chants of his beloved Canaries, Norwich City F.C.


Documentary

Stonewall Uprising
Yesterday, 10:00pm-12:00am

Relive the New York homosexual community's spontaneous stand against the police in 1969, a defining event in the gay rights moment that helped put an end to shocking persecution.
__________________________________________________________
Monday 3rd October

Documentary

Dispatches: Can You Trust Your Doctor?
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm

GPs are among the most trusted and respected of all professions. They are our first port of call for most NHS treatment with 800,000 people visiting surgeries every day. But Dispatches reveals that failing doctors routinely slip through the system.

We've been filming secretly in GP practices and have uncovered concerning evidence of misdiagnosis by doctors who have failed in the past, but are still practising.

Reporter Jon Snow reveals that, six years after The Shipman Inquiry called for increased scrutiny of doctors, GPs who've been sanctioned by the authorities in the past are not regularly checked to make sure they are safe to practice. Even GPs who've been punished by the authorities in the past are not regularly checked to make sure they are safe to practice.

Jon Snow also speaks to a whistleblowing doctor and nurse who reveal that even when the authorities have serious concerns about a doctor's fitness to practice they don't always act promptly to alert all patients. They allege they have been barred from telling patients the truth about serious malpractice at a surgery they worked at.

As the government prepares to hand over more control and responsibility to Britain's GPs Dispatches asks how much we are really told about the medical competence of our own doctors.


__________________________________________________________
Tuesday 4th October

Factual; Arts; Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Hidden Paintings of the South East
BBC4, 7:30-8:00pm

Interior designer Kathryn Rayward uncovers the hidden art of the Bloomsbury Set in Sussex, where a long-hidden painting of a lady in a red dress sheds light on the tangled love lives of novelist Virginia Woolf, painter Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. She follows the trail of Bloomsbury's artistic legacy to the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery to unearth more hidden art, and visits the stunning murals at Berwick church and goes behind-the-scenes at Towner in Eastbourne.


Factual; Health and Wellbeing; Science and Technology; Science and Nature; Life Stories; Documentaries

Transplant
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm

For the first time on UK television, Transplant shows the extraordinary reality of multiple organ donation, following the organs from a single donor to the different recipients. The film shows the surgeries and the human stories on both sides, as both donor and recipients have agreed to waive the normal anonymity that exists between them.

Transplant follows the complex process of donation coordinated by the organ donor organisation, NHS Blood and Transplant, from the very beginning when a potential donor is declared brain dead and their organs are retrieved through to the transplant surgeries and recovery of the patients who've benefited from the donor's organs.



Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries

Alex: A Life Fast Forward
11:35pm-12:35am

Alex Lewis knows he does not have much longer to live. Aged 21 he finds himself falling hopelessly in love and can't quite believe what's happening.

Alex was first diagnosed with bone cancer shortly before his 18th birthday. After over three years of intensive treatment, he realises he is running out of options. He decides to cram as much life as possible into the time he has left. His remarkable zest for life is contagious.

On the first day of filming in June, 2010 his only sadness is not being able to commit to a long-term relationship. That evening he goes to a party in Swansea, kisses a girl, falls in love and within weeks they are inseparable. In September Alex and Ali become engaged to be married. This is a story of the power of love, as a young man confronts his mortality in the most emotionally charged circumstances imaginable.

__________________________________________________________
Wednesday 5th October

Drama; Classic and Period

Wide Sargasso Sea
BBC4, 9:00-10:25pm

Dramatisation of Jean Rhys's novel set in 19th-century Jamaica. The tragic story of the first Mrs Rochester from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre centres on an arranged marriage between a white Creole heiress and a brooding Englishman, who fall in love only to be torn apart by rumours, paranoia and a cultural divide.




Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

The Real Jane Austen
BBC4, 10:25-11:20pm

Drama-documentary exploring the life of Jane Austen. Actor Anna Chancellor, a distant relative of Jane Austen, discovers the woman behind the acclaimed novels through readings and reconstructions. Location shots of her homes in Steventon and Chawton and extracts from adaptations of her work are also featured.
__________________________________________________________
Thursday 6th October

Factual; Science and Technology; Science and Nature

Horizon: Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong?
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm

There's something very odd going on in space - something that shouldn't be possible. It is as though vast swathes of the universe are being hoovered up by a vast and unseen celestial vacuum cleaner.

Sasha Kaslinsky, the scientist who discovered the phenomenon, is understandably nervous: 'It left us quite unsettled and jittery' he says, 'because this is not something we planned to find'. The accidental discovery of what is ominously being called 'dark flow' not only has implications for the destinies of large numbers of galaxies - it also means that large numbers of scientists might have to find a new way of understanding the universe.

Dark flow is the latest in a long line of phenomena that have threatened to re-write the textbooks. Does it herald a new era of understanding, or does it simply mean that everything we know about the universe is wrong?



News; Factual and Arts

Mixed Race Britannia
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3, 1910-1939

In this three-part series George Alagiah explores the remarkable and untold story of Britain's mixed-race community and examines through the decades how mixed race has become one of the country's fastest growing ethnic groups. Most of all, the films tell a tale of love, of couples coming together to fight prejudice and create a new society.

The first film (1910-1939) discovers the love between merchant seamen and liberated female workers and witnesses the riots in British port cities as returning white soldiers find local girls in relationships with other men. George hears about the eugenics research examining mixed-race children and learns how Britain avoided the race laws and race hatred of fascism that scarred other countries in Europe.

The second film (1940-1965) sees the Second World War creating a miniature baby boom of “brown babies” born to local British women and African American GIs, and tells the tragic story of the British-Chinese children in Liverpool who lost their Chinese seamen fathers. With the post-war mass immigration, mixed couples, once rare and exotic, were becoming more common and society finally witnessed the first interracial kiss on British television.

In the Seventies a new wave of immigration was settling in Britain, the National Front was on the march and mixed-race families faced violence on the street (film three, 1965-2011). George learns about the debates surrounding mixed race adoption and hears about a 21st story love-story as the couple struggle to overcome the cultural prejudice from the community.
_________________________________________________________
Friday 7th October

Documentary; News; Current Affairs

Unreported World
Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm, 1/10, Trouble in the Townships

New Unreported World reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy visits South Africa. Seventeen years after it was freed from apartheid, he finds a country in which violent protests against corruption and the lack of basic services mean its ambition to lead the continent as a prosperous democracy hangs in the balance.

Simmering with anger, South Africa's people tell Krishnan they feel a sense of betrayal they will tolerate no longer.

Johannesburg is the centre of Africa's biggest economy but is also the heart of a country where the poorest people are often robbed by corrupt officials, while the most powerful stand accused of creaming off astonishing wealth.

There are 182 squatter camps in Johannesburg. Guru-Murthy and producer Alex Nott visit one of the biggest and most dangerous - Diepsloot, which is home to 200,000 people.

Journalist Golden shows them shocking reports of the mob justice that rules here. He says that the residents of Diepsloot fear for their lives every night they go to sleep, as the police seem powerless, or unwilling, to address the horrendous levels of crime.

Guru-Murthy talks to Philippine, who lives in a shack but says she should by now be living in a state-subsidised house. She says she has the papers and the keys but when she went to move in five years ago, she found another family there.

She suspects that a local official has corruptly sold the home that had already been assigned to her, but she has got nowhere with the authorities since then.

The team hears about one local official helping people jump the housing queue for bribes. Posing as a desperate father looking for help getting his family out of a squatter camp, Golden rings Albert Setwyewye, a former ANC councillor now working for local government. He is told to meet Albert at a nearby shopping mall, and bring some money.

__________________________________________________________
*This applies to staff members and students 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.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Off-air recordings for week 24-30 September 2011

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

_________________________________________________________
Sunday 25th September

Factual

Fry's Planet Word
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/5, Babel

Stephen Fry explores linguistic achievements and how our skills for the spoken word have developed in a new five-part series for BBC Two.

In Planet Word, Stephen dissects language in all its guises with his inimitable mixture of learning, love of lexicon and humour. He analyses how we use and abuse language and asks whether we are near to beginning to understand the complexities of its DNA.
From the time when man first mastered speech to the cyber world of modern times with its html codes and texting, Planet Word takes viewers on a journey across the globe to discover just how far humans have come when it comes to the written and spoken word.

Factual

Brighton Bomb
More 4, 10:00-11:00pm

On 12 October 1984, the IRA carried out the most audacious terrorist attack in its history. At 2:53am, a huge explosion ripped through the front of Brighton's Grand Hotel, in an effort to kill Margaret Thatcher and decapitate her administration. It was the first attempt to wipe out an entire government in Britain since the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. The programme features interviews with the victims of the bomb, those charged with the rescue effort, the aides who were with Mrs Thatcher on that fateful night, and a former member of the IRA. What emerges is the terrifying real tale of a historic event, including a dramatic assessment of just how close the IRA came to achieving their primary aim: the assassination of the Prime Minister.

__________________________________________________________
Monday 26th September

News

Panorama - Syria: Inside The Secret Revolution
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm

After Libya, will Syria be the next Arab dictatorship to fall to people power? For months, a popular uprising has been fighting an unseen and bloody battle against the Syrian regime. Panorama has been filming inside Syria, and can now tell the full story of those struggling against President Assad and the truth about his brutal crackdown against his own people.


Factual

Exposure: Gadaffi and the IRA
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm

Colonel Gadaffi gave the IRA enough weapons to turn a militia into an army. Exposure’s first film examines his support for the Republican terrorists and investigates the continuing danger of his legacy.

________________________________________________________
Tuesday 27th September

Religion and Ethics; Documentaries

What's the Point of Religion?
BBC1, 11:15-11:45pm

For his New Year Rosh Hashanah message the Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, puts the case for religion as a vital antidote to what he sees as a crisis in British society.

He focuses on three key parts of British life - family, community and communication between generations - examining the breakdown of each and offering an alternative way forward through religious values and concrete examples within the Jewish community of how society is working and can work.

To debate his case he is joined by two eminent intellectuals: Harvard sociologist, Professor Robert Putnam who, over a period of 25 years, has compiled statistics from over half a million interviews in the US about the state of modern society; and Labour life peer, Maurice Glasman, who is at the forefront of the current political thinking on the Big Society idea.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Hidden Paintings of the East
BBC4, 7:30-8:00pm

Meera Syal searches for the hidden paintings which reveal the extraordinary story of a Norfolk Prince. At the heart of the film is the story of Frederick Duleep Singh, son of the Last Maharaja of the Punjab. Despite being disinherited by the British Establishment, he spent his life trying to become one of them. The story unfolds through an extraordinary collection of paintings that he bought - bargain hunt style - from the landed gentry, and then donated to the nation.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries


Teenage Kicks: The Search for Sophistication
BBC4, 11:30pm-12:30am

The teenage search for sophistication is recalled in this bittersweet film about the people we were and the luxury items we thought would give us the keys to the kingdom.

_________________________________________________________
Wednesday 28th September

Factual; Documentaries

Village SOS
BBC1, 1:30-2:30am, 1/6, Talgarth

Sarah Beeny follows a passionate group of locals as they spend a year trying to rescue their community. When the residents of Talgarth near Brecon applied for a grant from the BIG Lottery fund to renovate a derelict mill, they had no idea what was in store. The mill last ground corn in 1946, but can a bunch of volunteers really turn its fortunes around?


Factual; Science and Nature

Planet Dinosaur
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm, 3/6, Last Killers

By the end of the cretaceous period - 75 millions years ago - these gigantic and specialised hunter-killers had spread throughout the globe. In the southern continents it was the powerful and muscular abelisaurids that reigned supreme but it was the famous tyrannosaurids (or tyrant dinosaurs) that dominated in the north.

Whilst the Northern Daspletosaurus hunted in gangs, using its highly developed smell and hearing to take down opponents like the horned rhino-sized beast, Chasmosaurus, in the Southern hemisphere the small skulled Majungasaurus reigned. And though the sharp toothed Majungasaurus was an efficient killer of the much smaller feathered Rahonavis, that did not stop it from occasionally turning cannibal and hunting its own.


Documentaries

True Stories: Up In Smoke
More4, 10:00-11:00pm

Slash-and-burn farming generates more carbon emissions than all air and road travel combined. It's one of the biggest contributors to deforestation and global warming.

British scientist Mike Hands thinks he has a sustainable alternative for farming in equatorial rainforests. It's taken him 25 years to develop. But can impoverished farmers afford to risk adopting a new farming method, and can Mike convince governments and agencies to back his plans?

Filmed over four years, with Mike and Honduran farmers Faustino and Aladino, Up in Smoke addresses one of the most urgent issues facing humanity.

__________________________________________________________
Thursday 29th September

Factual; Documentaries


Village SOS
BBC1, 3:00-4:00am, 2/6, Honeystreet

Sarah Beeny follows a passionate group of locals as they spend a year trying to rescue their community. When the residents of Honeystreet in Wiltshire applied for a grant from the Big Lottery Fund to renovate their local pub, they had no idea what was in store. With pubs in Britain closing every week, the volunteers must first transform the pub's reputation. But will they really succeed where countless others have failed?


Documentary

Timeshift: Dealer Censor
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm

Documentary lifting the lid on the world of cinema censorship, examining the work of the British Board of Film Classification. With unique access to the files of the BBFC, the programme features explicit and detailed exchanges between the censor and film-makers, and casts a wry eye over some of the most infamous cases in the history of the board. From the now-seemingly innocuous Rebel Without a Cause, through the first 'naturist' films and the infamous works of Ken Russell, up to Rambo III, the programme details how a body created by the industry to safeguard standards and reflect shifts in public opinion has also worked unexpectedly closely with the film-makers themselves to ensure their work reaches an audience.

__________________________________________________________
Friday 30th September

News; Current Affairs and Politics

Dispatches: The Wonderful World of Tony Blair
Channel 4, 2:50-3:45am

Since resigning in June 2007 Tony Blair has financially enriched himself more than any ex-Prime Minister ever. Reporter Peter Oborne reveals some of the sources of his new-found wealth, much of which comes from the Middle East.


On the day Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister, he was appointed the official representative Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. By January 2009 he had set up Tony Blair Associates - his international consultancy - which handles multi-million-pound contracts in the Middle East. It is so secretive we don't know all the locations in which they do business.

Dispatches shows that at the same time as Blair is visiting Middle East leaders in his Quartet role he is receiving vast sums from some of them. If Blair represented the UK government, the EU, the IMF, the UN or the World Bank, this would not be permitted.

He would also have to declare his financial interests and be absolutely transparent about his financial dealings. But no such stringent rules govern the Quartet envoy.

However, he could opt to abide by the rules and principles of public life. They were introduced by John Major, and Tony Blair endorsed and strengthened them for all holders of public office - but chooses not to himself.

_________________________________________________________

*This applies to staff members and students 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.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Off-air recordings for week 17-23 September 2011

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

___________________________________________________________
Saturday 17th September

Documentaries

The Story of Film: An Odyssey

More 4, 9:00-10:25pm, 3/15

The 1920s were a golden age for world cinema. The programme visits Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai and Tokyo to explore the places where movie makers were pushing the boundaries of the medium.

German expressionism, Soviet montage and French impressionism and surrealism were passionate new film movements, but less well known are the glories of Chinese and Japanese films and the moving story of one of the great, now largely forgotten, movie stars, Ruan Lingyu.

________________________________________________________
Monday 19th September

Factual; Life Stories; Religion and Ethics

Buddha in Suburbia

BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm

Buddha in Suburbia tracks the extraordinary journey of 40 year old Lelung Rinpoche, one of Tibetan Buddhism's three principal reincarnations, as he sets out to gather the lost teachings of his faith and to attempt a return to his homeland.

For the past seven years, Lelung Rinpoche has been living in Ruislip North London, in the garden shed of one of his students. He runs a dharma or teaching centre locally, attended by British followers. Now a British passport holder, he embarks on a mission to find previous Lelungs' teachings, and the teachers who hold the key to unlocking their secrets. His odyssey takes him to India, Mongolia and China as he tries to find a way of getting back home to Tibet. He meets some of Tibetan Buddhism's most senior teachers, including the Tibetan Prime Minister in exile.

Lelung is a young, modern lama, with relationships with many across the globe from teenagers in Rusilip to the Dalai Lama. The film includes an interview with Tibetan Buddhist expert Professor Robert Thurman, father of Uma Thurman. Lelung Rinpoche has a daunting task to complete on his quest to recover lost teachings before they disappear, and to try to take the right steps on his own path towards enlightenment.


News

Panorama: Drinking Our Rivers Dry?

BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm

Most of our water comes from rivers, and environmentalists fear we are pushing some of them and the wildlife they support to the edge. With many of Britain's rivers at the limit of what can sustainably be taken from them, Simon Boazman investigates whether the water industry and its regulators are doing enough to protect the nation's rivers.


Documentaries; Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media

When TV Goes To War

BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm

Documentary looking at how war has been dramatised on British television from the Second World War through the Falklands campaign to contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, examining the challenges - both financial and dramatic - in bringing war to the small screen.

Why have so many of our greatest TV writers been drawn to the subject, and why has so much of their work been controversial? Should writers always respect the historical facts, or can dramatic licence reveal the greater truth about war? And in a world of 24-hour news, can drama tell us anything about war we canʼt now see for ourselves?

It also looks at the lighter side of war, and why it has inspired some of our most successful sitcoms. Is there something about army life that lends itself to comedy? Soldiers who have had their exploits dramatised for television - Colonel Tim Collins, played by Kenneth Branagh in Ten Days to War, and Robert Lawrence, played by Colin Firth in Tumbledown - talk about the experience.

Other contributors include historians Antony Beevor and Max Hastings, and playwrights Alan Bleasdale (The Monocled Mutineer) and Ian Curteis (The Falklands Play). Ex-MI5 chief Stella Rimington considers television's coverage of the Cold War, and comedy writers Jimmy Perry (Dad's Army) and Greg McHugh (Gary Tank Commander) discuss the rules of the war-based sitcom.

_________________________________________________________
Tuesday 20th September

Documentaries;

Inside Nature's Giants

Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm, 4/4, The Racehorse

The thoroughbred racehorse is one of the greatest athletes on the planet, galloping with incredible speed and stamina for such a large animal. It is the result of unnatural selection, and exists on a knife edge between glory and catastrophic failure.

The team explore how this animal has been biologically engineered for speed. They dissect an elite racehorse to reveal the extraordinary spring system that propels it to 45mph, its super-sized organs and built-in turbo-booster.

Simon Watt visits the top breeding centre in Europe to find out how to produce a champion; and Mark Evans investigates the science behind their phenomenal performance and their vulnerability to injury.


Documentaries; Historical

America's Planned War on Britain: Revealed

Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm

Documentary series exploring historical events. Military experts and historians from America, Canada and Britain work through the top secret 'War Plan Red' to see how a battle between America and Great Britain might have unfolded.

__________________________________________________________
Wednesday 21st September

Documentaries; Factual; Science and Nature

How to Build a Dinosaur

BBC4, 9:00-10:00

Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago and we have hardly ever found a complete skeleton. So how do we turn a pile of broken bones into a dinosaur exhibit? Dr Alice Roberts finds out how the experts put skeletons back together, with muscles, accurate postures, and even - in some cases - the correct skin colour.


Documentary

Extinct: A Horizon Guide to Dinosaurs

BBC4, 10:00-11:00

Dallas Campbell delves in to the Horizon archive to discover how our ideas about dinosaurs have changed over the past 40 years. From realising that lumbering swamp dwellers were really agile warm-blooded killers, astonishing new finds, controversial theories and breakthrough technology have enabled scientists to rethink how they lived and solve the mystery of their disappearance. And they can even reveal whether dinosaurs might still be with us today.

_________________________________________________________
Friday 23rd September

Documentaries

Dispatches: Gypsy Eviction: The Fight for Dale Farm

Channel 4, 2:15-3:05am

In a film broadcast on the day that the mass eviction starts on Dale Farm, Britain's largest traveller site, Dispatches reporter Deborah Davies investigates the controversial relations between gypsies and travellers, their neighbours and the law.


Across Britain furious residents complain about the way gypsies and travellers pitch camp illegally in local parks, the damage they cause and the mess they leave behind.

They also accuse gypsies of underhand tactics to win planning permission on green belt land where housing development wouldn't normally be allowed.

Travelling families complain they're constantly moved on by police and bailiffs. They say many council sites are badly maintained and in locations where no one else would want to live. The gypsies and travellers also claim they're refused permission to develop their own sites because of prejudice.

The programme asks whether the government's proposed crackdown on unauthorised development will make things better or worse.

Councils will be given more freedom to decide how many places to allocate in their areas but there's already a shortfall of about 6000 caravan pitches and political reluctance to spend money on the travelling community may mean even fewer places are provided.

Set against that, councils already spend close to £20m a year evicting and clearing up illegal encampments because gypsies claim they have nowhere else to go.



Documentaries; Arts, Culture and Media; History

The Lost Genius of British Art: William Dobson

Documentary in which Waldemar Januszczak argues that the little known 17th-century portrait painter William Dobson was the first English painter of genius. Dobson's life and times are embedded in one of the most turbulent and significant epochs of British history - the English Civil War. As official court painter to Charles I, Dobson had a ringside seat to an period of intense drama and conflict. Based in Oxford, where the court was transferred after parliament took control of London, Dobson produced many high quality portraits of royalist supporters, heroes and cavaliers which Januszczak believes are the first true examples of British art. The film investigates the few known facts about Dobson and seeks out the personal stories he left behind as it follows him through his tragically short career. When he died in 1646 - penniless, unemployed and a drunk - Dobson was just 36. Among the Dobson fans interviewed in the film is Earl Spencer, brother of Princess Diana.


Factual; History

Reel History of Britain

BBC2, 6:30-7;00pm, 15/20, Britain's Secondary Modern Schools

Melvyn Bragg tours the country to show films from the BFI’s collection to tell the history of Britain. In Watford, he looks at films relating to school days in the 1960s.

___________________________________________________________

*This applies to staff members and students 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.