Arena Season 2019

The film project that artist Peter Beard initiated together with Jackie Kennedy’s sister, Lee Radziwill, about her relatives, the Beales of Grey Gardens. Lost for decades, this extraordinary footage focuses on Beard and his family of friends, who formed a vibrant and profoundly influential creative community in Montauk, Long Island in the 1970s. Featuring Peter Beard, Lee Radziwill, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and Andy Warhol.

Cindy Sherman is one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. She is also notoriously elusive. So, it is a coup for Arena to get this in-depth and revealing audio interview with her. An exuberant weave of art and archive gives us a rare insight into one of the most influential artists alive today.

Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama’s work pushed boundaries that often alienated her from her peers and those in power in the art world. Kusama was an underdog with everything stacked against her: the trauma of growing up in Japan during World War II, life in a dysfunctional family that discouraged her creative ambitions, sexism and racism in the art establishment, and mental illness. Kusama overcame countless odds to bring her radical vision to the world stage and created a legacy of artwork that spans the disciplines of painting, sculpture, performance art, film and literature. Born in 1929, Kusama still creates new work every day. Her Infinity Mirror Room installations, the first of which was created in 1965, continue to attract visitors in record numbers.

Documentary that exposes a darker, less well-known side of film director Ingmar Bergman. Focusing on 1957, a landmark year in which Bergman directed two films and four plays, Jane Magnusson explores not only the director’s filmography but also his, at times, complex and turbulent personal life. Using a wealth of previously unseen archive material, contemporary interviews and a fantastic selection of clips from Ingmar Bergman’s vast body of work, this is a fascinating and unflinching study of one of the giants of world cinema.

A haunting film about Britain and the nuclear age, from the first bomb tests to our potentially futile preparations for attack during the Cold War. Framed by Britain's mission to build the bomb, A British Guide to the End of the World uses extraordinary unseen archive and exclusive testimonies from people directly involved in our nuclear story, from conscripted soldiers attending the early nuclear tests in the South Pacific to servicemen, volunteers and civil servants involved in the planning of how we might have managed in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. Accompanied by an atmospheric score, the film features classified footage, hidden for decades, as well as television reports and government information videos that retain the spirit of Cold War paranoia. Horrifying, absurd and at times achingly poignant, the film recaptures a time of stockpiled paranoia that left a generation traumatised.

Contemporary artist Gillian Wearing celebrates the legacy of Victorian novelist George Eliot. Just as Eliot’s novel Middlemarch explored the lives of ordinary men and women, this experimental film is made up of a diverse cast of people from different backgrounds and features Jason Isaacs and Sheila Atim as the narrators.