Arena — Season 1, Episode 401: Anselm Kiefer : Operation Sealion
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Kiefer is Germany's most controversial and reclusive artist. He is also its most successful. The millions his work commands in the auction houses and his popularity with collectors belies the sombreness of the subject matter - Germany's past. Through Wagnerian legend, historical conjecture and ancient mythology, Kiefer offers a personal view of Germany today that is both an exorcism and a warning. Never before filmed, Kiefer has collaborated with Arena in an unusual portrait in which he sets out to 'disinter some corpses from Germany's past'.
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.