Arena — Season 1, Episode 380: Kino Perestroika
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Tonight's programme looks at the Soviet cinema since perestroika and examines the work of some of its most important film directors who are working again after years of enforced silence. Through film clips and interviews, Arena discusses the work and problems of directors Rustam Khamdamov, Kira Muratova and Sergei Paradzhanov , and one of the first westerners to work on a Russian production, French film star Jeanne Moreau. Will they be able to sell their concept to a population brought up on undemanding mass cinema?
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.