Production
No biography available.
JMW Turner's paintings are world famous, but what if they're not what they seem? This revealing documentary film could change the way we interpret some of Turner's most familiar works as two plucky enthusiasts, joined by art historians and academics, reveal the startling hidden codes they believe are woven into his paintings. Follow their Da Vinci Code-esque quest as they delve into the unseen images which have been staring out from their frames for centuries.
In this unique, compelling film, those who knew him speak freely, some for the first time, to reveal the many mysteries of Francis Bacon.
While Joseph Mallord William Turner is considered by many to be Britain's greatest landscape painter, his private life reveals a man of extremes and contradictions. This docudrama explores the extraordinary story of a brilliant self-made man.
Drama-documentary exploring the life of Jane Austen. Actor Anna Chancellor, a distant relative of Jane Austen, discovers the woman behind the acclaimed novels through readings and reconstructions. Location shots of her homes in Steventon and Chawton and extracts from adaptations of her work are also featured.
Stephen Smith explores the extraordinary life and work of the virtuoso jeweller Carl Faberge. He talks to HRH Prince Michael of Kent about Faberge items in the Royal Collection and to Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who spent $100 million acquiring nine exquisite Faberge eggs. The bejewelled trinkets Faberge made for the last tsars of Russia in the twilight of their rule have become some of the most sought-after treasures in the world, sometimes worth millions. Smith follows in Faberge's footsteps, from the legendary Green Vaults in Dresden to the palaces of the tsars and the corridors of the Kremlin museum, as he discovers how this fin de siecle genius transformed his father's modest business into the world's most famous supplier of luxury items.
The life and work of Tove Jansson, mainly known for creating the Moomins but also a writer and painter.
Michael Palin heads for rural Pennsylvania and Maine to explore the extraordinary life and work of one of America's most popular and controversial painters, Andrew Wyeth. Fascinated by his iconic painting Christina's World, Palin goes in search of the real life stories that inspired this and Wyeth's other depictions of the American landscape and its hard grafting inhabitants. Tracking down the farmers, friends and family featured in Wyeth's magically real work, Palin builds a picture of an eccentric, enigmatic and driven painter. He also gets a rare interview with Helga, the woman who put Wyeth back in the headlines when the press discovered he had been painting her nude, compulsively but secretly for 15 years.
Exploring the wit, work and world of Joe Orton through his own words, and the testimony of those who knew him and worked with him.
Dance, espionage and passion come together in this powerful and exciting docudrama that tells the extraordinary story of how Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West in 1961 and became a living legend.
Katie Puckrik explores the 1970s American music phenomenon of Yacht Rock, a halcyon period of Los Angeles studio craft that married R&B with themes of longing, aspiration and melancholy, before going on to explore how the genre adapted to the musical times of the 1980s.
Nicholas Parsons explores his life-long enthusiasm for clocks when he goes in search of the most valuable and famous watch in the world - the so-called Marie Antoinette.