Arena — Season 1, Episode 178: Listen to Britain AND Housing Problems
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Presents two classic films from the early days of documentary. Featured in last month's True to Life? edition, they're shown complete for the first time on British television. Listen to Britain made in 1941 by HUMPHREY JENNINGS, is a poetic evocation of the spirit with which - and for which - Britain was fighting the war. Housing Problems made in 1935 by Arthur ELTON and EDGAR ANSTEY , simply ' reported ' from the heart of London's East End slums, giving ordinary people a voice for the first time in cinema history. The 'father' of documentary, John Grierson hoped it would give people ' a living sense of what is going on'. In quite different ways, both these films did exactly that. Introduced by Gavin Millar
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.