Free Thinking

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Landmark – Man with a Movie Camera Nov 09, 2017

Show notes

"The greatest documentary of all time"? Michael Nyman, Alexei Popogrebsky, Ian Christie and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Matthew Sweet to discuss Dziga Vertov's 1929 film, Man with a Movie Camera, which was voted top of a poll conducted by Sight and Sound Magazine.

Vertov's film is a kind of cinematic symphony of urban life in the Soviet Union. It fizzes with ideas and is the embodiment of the notion that cinema can promote revolutionary consciousness. For some its an achievement to set along side the films of Eisenstein. Both could lay claim to being the greatest film maker of their time and their friendship ended in rivalry. Man with a Movie Camera counts amongst its admirers the novelist, Salman Rushdie and the enfant terrible of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard.

Michael Nyman has composed scores for the three major films that the pioneering Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov made in the late 1920s and is now working on an opera about Vertov. Ian Christie is Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck University London. He is co-editor, with Richard Taylor, of The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896-1939 and Eisenstein rediscovered. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh is chief film critic for the Metro newspaper. Alexei Popogrebsky is a film director and screenwriter whose work includes How I Ended this Summer and Prostye veshchi. Plus, on the website you can find Salman Rushdie's comments about watching the film.

Part of Radio 3’s Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

Producer: Zahid Warley

Free Thinking: Soviet Histories: Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture Nov 08, 2017

Show notes

Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexeivich on the Soviet Woman's Stories of World War II and why they did not want them published; Stephen Kotkin with Volume II of his biograph of Joseph Stalin explores the bloody creation of a Soviet State capable of standing up to hostile global countries. Ran Mitter talks to them about their top down/bottom up histories of Soviet Culture and also hears from Juliane Fürst about Soviet hipsters and hippies who challenged the system in ways that required no words.

Svetlana Alexeivich's books include The Unwomanly Face of War, Boys in Zinc and Chernobyl Prayer.

Stalin, Vol 2: Waiting for Hitler, 1928-1941 by Steven Kotkin has just been published. Stalin, Vol 1: Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928 is now in paperback. Steven Kotkin is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Juliane Fürst, Reader in Modern History at Bristol, is the co-producer of the documentary Soviet hippies (dir. Terje Toomistu) and the author of Stalin's Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism.

Part of Radio 3’s Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

The pros and cons of Swearing. Nov 03, 2017

Show notes

Comedian Janey Godley, historian John Gallagher, poet and journalist Bridget Minamore and author and science writer Dr Emma Byrne discuss with Matthew Sweet swearing on stage, in pain and protest and when new terms entered our language.

Swearing Is Good For You by Emma Byrne is out now.

Please note this programme may contain strong language.

Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Benjamin Britten and Radio Nov 01, 2017

Show notes

David Hendy, Glyn Maxwell, Kate Kennedy and Lucy Walker with Philip Dodd and an audience at Aldeburgh in a discussion exploring Britten’s relationship with radio in Britain and in America, with his subjects as varied as mountaineering (with words from Christopher Isherwood), a dramatisation of Homer’s Odyssey and short stories by D.H. Lawrence (with a young W.H. Auden). But why was Britten so reluctant to accept a job at the BBC’s Music department in the 1930s?

David Hendy is a historian of the BBC and Professor of Media and Cultural History at the University of Sussex.

Glyn Maxwell is a poet and librettist who has traced the journey of Auden and MacNeice to Iceland.

Kate Kennedy is a biographer and editor of the forthcoming ‘Literary Britten’

Lucy Walker is Director of Programmes and Learning at the Britten-Pears Foundation.

Recorded in front of an audience as part of the Britten on the Radio weekend at the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings.

Producer: Fiona McLean.

Jonathan Swift at 350. Black and White Art. History of British nature writing. Oct 31, 2017

Show notes

What does Gulliver's Travels say to us now? Satirical cartoonist Martin Rowson and Daniel Cook from the University of Dundee assess the legacy of Swift's best-known work. And Monochrome exhibition co-curator Jennifer Sliwka and photographer Sarah Pickering discuss exhibits ranging from black and white art on glass, vellum, ceramic, silk, wood, and canvas from Leonardo da Vinci to Gerhard Richter to a room filled with yellow light by the artist Olafur Eliasson, who created the Sun installation at Tate Modern. And New Generation Thinker Will Abberley tells Anne about a new project to compile a comprehensive history of British nature writing.

Monochrome: Painting in Black and White runs at the National Gallery in London from October 30th until February 18th 2018.

Swift at 350: A Graphic Anthology is launched at Dundee on November 25th along with a series of events for families, Telling Tall Tales, Gulliver! A Fantastical Pantomime and an exhibition at the local library in Dundee. Find out more at www.beinghumanfestival.org.

Martin Rowson is taking part in a discussion about satire at the British Library on November 28th with Jonathan Coe, Rory Bremner, Judith Hawley, and Sathnam Sanghera.

Land Lines – Modern British Nature Writing 1789-2014 - Finding the UK's favourite nature book. Find out More at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/favouritenaturebooks/

Forgotten authors, cult fiction and The Prisoner Oct 26, 2017

Show notes

Alex Cox discusses surveillance, mind bending and the power of the individual versus the collective in the 1967 cult TV series The Prisoner. Plus Christopher Fowler, Clare Walker Gore and Lynda Nead look back at bestsellers from the past which deserve re-reading and the way movies and fiction of the 1950s reflected both the smog and fashions of post-war British culture.

Christopher Fowler's The Book of Forgotten Authors catalogues 99 writers whom he thinks should be better known.

The Prisoner first aired in Canada in 1967 and ran for 17 episodes. I am (not) a Number: Decoding The Prisoner by Alex Cox is published later this year.

The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-war Britain by Professor Lynda Nead is published by London and New Haven: Yale University Press / Paul Mellon Studies in British Art.

Clare Walker Gore is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Cambridge who has edited a critical edition of Dinah Mulock Craik’s out-of-print novel A Noble Life, published by Victorian Secrets - an independent publisher which makes available scholarly editions of unjustly neglected Victorian novels.

Producer: Karl Bos

Free Thinking: Young Marx, Yanis Varoufakis and Ruth Lea and Tara Bergin Oct 26, 2017

Show notes

Yanis Varoufakis discusses economics and Marxist analysis with Philip Dodd and Ruth Lea. Plus the new play from Richard Bean and Clive Coleman - the team behind One Man, Two Guvnors. which stars Rory Kinnear stars as the 32-year-old Karl Marx hiding out in Dean Street, Soho. And poet Tara Bergin on her version of Eleanor Marx.

Young Marx by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman opens Nicholas Hytner's new London base The Bridge Theatre running until December 31st. It will be streamed in cinemas as National Theatre Live on December 7th.

Yanis Varoufakis' new book has just published Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism. Tara Bergin's collection The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx was shortlisted for this year's Forward Poetry Prize.

Producer: Zahid Warley.

Harry Potter. Tim O'Reilly. Tove Jansson. Oct 25, 2017

Show notes

Web guru Tim O'Reilly on algorithm regulation and the magical worlds of Harry Potter, Philip Pullman and Tove Jansson with guests Aisha Bushby, young adult author, and New Generation Thinkers Hetta Howes and Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough.

Free Thinking: Landmark: Marnie Oct 18, 2017

Show notes

Matthew Sweet discusses memory and Marnie with novelist and Freud scholar Lisa Appignanesi, Andrew Graham - son of the novelist Winston Graham who wrote the 1961 novel which Alfred Hitchcock turned into a film in 1964, Gwyneth Hughes - who wrote the screenplay of 'The Girl', an exploration of Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren, and Hitchcock and Marnie scholar Murray Pomerance. plus the audience at Wellcome Collection in London.

Recorded as part of BBC Radio 3's series of programmes Why Music? The Key to Memory.

Lisa Appignanesi - Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness Murray Pomerance - Marnie: BFIClassic

Nico Muhly's opera based on Marnie premieres at English National Opera on November 18th and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

The Man Booker Prize. Mike Bartlett. Is Small Beautiful? Oct 17, 2017

Show notes

Dr Foster writer Mike Bartlett on his new play Albion. Alex Clark reports from the Man Booker prize ceremony. And former SNP MP George Kerevan, David Goodhart and Marián Arribas-Tomé from UEA discuss whether the 21st century is set to be a century of small nations.

The Man Booker Prize shortlist 2017 is : 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund Exit West by Mohsin Hamid Elmet by Fiona Mozley Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Autumn by Ali Smith

Mike Bartlett's play Albion runs at the Almeida Theatre in London from October 10th to November 24th. David Goodhart is Head of Demography, Immigration & Integration at Policy Exchange and author of The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

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