Sebastian Barfield
2021Secrets of British Animation
Sebastian Barfield
Peter Lord, David Sproxton
BBC Four’s new documentary takes us on a journey through more than a century of animation. It examines the creative and technical inventiveness of some of the great animation pioneers who have worked in Britain – trailblazing talents such as Len Lye, John Halas and Joy Batchelor, Joanna Quinn, and Bristol’s world-conquering Aardman Animations.
Secrets of British Animation
Britain's Tudor Treasure: A Night at Hampton Court
Sebastian Barfield, Rachel Jardine
Lucy Worsley, David Starkey
Lucy Worsley and David Starkey celebrate the 500th anniversary of Britain's finest surviving Tudor building, Hampton Court. As Henry VIII's pleasure palace, Hampton Court was a showcase for royal magnificence and ceremony - and the most important event of all was the christening of Henry's long-awaited son, Prince Edward, on October 15th, 1537. Lucy and David explore how Tudor art, architecture and ritual came together for this momentous occasion. Drawing on historical records and with the help of a team of experts, they recreate key elements of the christening ceremony - including a magnificent set piece procession through Hampton Court involving nearly 100 people in full Tudor costume.
Britain's Tudor Treasure: A Night at Hampton Court
Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art
Sebastian Barfield
Vic Reeves, Isaac Julien
Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.
Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art
War of Words: Soldier-Poets of the Somme
Sebastian Barfield
Michael Sheen, Peter Barton
The 1916 Battle of the Somme remains the most famous battle of World War I, remembered for its bloodshed and its limited territorial gains. What is often overlooked, however, is the literary importance of the Somme: more writers and poets fought in it than in any other battle in history. Narrated by Michael Sheen, War of Words: Soldier-Poets of the Somme details the experiences of the poets and writers who served in the battle. The work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg and JRR Tolkien (who arrived at the Western Front with ambitions to be a poet) was informed and transformed by the battle. Taken together, their experiences allow us to see this dreadful historical event through multiple points of view. The film uses animation, documentary accounts, surviving artefacts, battalion war diaries and the landscape itself to reconnect this literature to the events that inspired it.
War of Words: Soldier-Poets of the Somme
Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits
Sebastian Barfield
Laura Cumming
Laura Cumming takes a journey through more than 500 years of self-portraits and finds out how the greatest names in western art transformed themselves into their own masterpieces.
Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits
