:02:23. > :02:27.Hello and welcome to the Culture Show from the Larmer Tree Festival
:02:27. > :02:30.where I'm delighted to host my very own and very muddy film club.
:02:30. > :02:37.Coming up I'll get into the Olympic spirit by taking part in a relay
:02:37. > :02:41.race with a difference. Here's what else is in the running this week:
:02:42. > :02:48.Artist Chris Ofili's Titian inspired works. Actress Fiona
:02:48. > :02:52.Shaw's passion for poetry and Tate Modern's shiny new oil tanks.
:02:52. > :02:55.First up, Turner Prize winning artist Chris Ofili whose latest
:02:55. > :03:02.work is part of a collaboration with the Royal Ballet. Alan Yentob
:03:02. > :03:05.explains all. When the artist Chris Ofili was
:03:06. > :03:10.asked to design a set and costumes for the Royal Ballet he said he
:03:10. > :03:17.felt like a lamb to the slaughter. He had no idea what ballet design
:03:17. > :03:25.involved. Then he turned back to the story and inspiration at the
:03:25. > :03:30.heart of the ballet. Titian's paintings of Diana, which depict
:03:30. > :03:38.mythical tales taking from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which the young
:03:38. > :03:44.hunter spies on die yama whilst she's bathelinging with her nymphs.
:03:44. > :03:50.Diana turns him no a stag and he's torn apart by the hounds. Ovid's
:03:50. > :03:57.Metamorphoses's imagine aegs was -- ofili's imagination was ignited.
:03:57. > :04:01.This is an ambitious dlabraigs. Chris Ofili is one of three
:04:01. > :04:04.contemporary artists and an array of choreographers and poets who are
:04:04. > :04:08.asked to team up and create a ballet and new works of art in
:04:08. > :04:13.response to Titian's master pieces, which will all be displayed
:04:13. > :04:16.together at the National Gallery. So as well as the set design and
:04:16. > :04:21.the costumes. Chris has also made ten new paintings for the
:04:21. > :04:25.exhibition. They've just arrived in London from his home in Trinidad.
:04:25. > :04:31.But there's not enough space to hang all of them. So with the help
:04:31. > :04:38.of the show's curator, Mina, he needs to decide which will stay and
:04:38. > :04:43.which will go. Just swap these two, the green for the pink. That's
:04:43. > :04:49.really working now. These two now. Did this significant body of work,
:04:49. > :04:54.which is very powerful, did you have to embark on this before you
:04:54. > :04:58.decided on exactly how you saw the set and... I tell you right, first
:04:58. > :05:03.thing, it wasn't easy, this whole process wasn't easy. It was two
:05:03. > :05:10.years, but the first year was just not sleepless nights, but just
:05:10. > :05:15.thinking, "what am I doing here?" how did I end up saying yes to this
:05:16. > :05:20.one? The classics, which I didn't study at all, so I had a little bit
:05:20. > :05:26.of help and a friend in Trinidad who studied classics. He was able
:05:26. > :05:30.to just tell me, like, the basics of it. And actually there's nothing
:05:30. > :05:36.special about it. Humans don't change. We pretty much do the same
:05:36. > :05:44.things as they did all those years ago. So, then I was able to exhale
:05:44. > :05:48.and think OK, it's all right. I can just make some of this up. I was
:05:49. > :05:54.liberated by painting the back drop at Purfleet, which was the biggest
:05:54. > :06:01.painting I've made. It's quite amazing you did that because very
:06:01. > :06:04.few artists today would actually paint the back drop themselves.
:06:04. > :06:11.paint a line for a minute and walk with it was something I'd never
:06:11. > :06:21.really done before. It made me think a lot about how simple things
:06:21. > :06:26.
:06:26. > :06:32.I don't want to take it out, but let's take it out. I think you may
:06:32. > :06:42.have to find another room. Alan is lobbying for me. We've got loads of
:06:42. > :06:50.
:06:50. > :06:56.If I were to continue, I think the whole thing could get a lot darker.
:06:56. > :07:03.There's a very bright won -- wonderful side when the nymphs are
:07:03. > :07:08.bathing, but then it all turns and gets very, very dark. I do wonder
:07:08. > :07:12.at some point why Diana got so angry. It's funny. Aren't you
:07:12. > :07:17.overdoing it a little bit? Yeah. seems a little heavy handed. It's
:07:17. > :07:23.as if the whole environment has been infected by this sort of spell
:07:23. > :07:28.of Diana's, this moment. Right. There are times when you go walking
:07:28. > :07:33.in the forest in Trinidad and the destination would be a water fall.
:07:33. > :07:38.You do feel like the whole thing is just infected with this particular
:07:38. > :07:42.feeling, that's very unique and very private. When I started
:07:42. > :07:46.reading about Ovid I could immediately identify with that
:07:46. > :07:55.feeling of that sacred space, where you can be naked or you can be
:07:55. > :08:00.without fear. This sensuality that we're talking about, which is here
:08:00. > :08:05.all around us, you see it in the costumes as well. The nymphs wear
:08:05. > :08:11.all in one, figure-hugging lycra suits. What I did, I drew on the
:08:11. > :08:15.suits while they were wearing them and those areas were cut out to
:08:15. > :08:23.reveal parts of their flesh to give the audience that feeling that
:08:23. > :08:27.they're naked, semi-naked and just to heat the whole thing up a bit.
:08:28. > :08:31.It's so mysterious, a hole-in-the- wall. This is pretty much the set.
:08:31. > :08:41.The magic moment will be when the dancers in costume come on the
:08:41. > :09:03.
:09:03. > :09:08.One of the things I think is again so appropriate about your
:09:08. > :09:15.involvement in this project is that you go somewhere surprising and
:09:15. > :09:19.strange and foreign, but also, very absorbing. It's like you enter this
:09:19. > :09:25.world. I can see it all as I look at these pictures, this magical
:09:25. > :09:30.environment in which a theatre is, you open. You sign up to believe
:09:30. > :09:36.that what happens within this box, which is 50 times bigger than that
:09:36. > :09:42.box over there, is real for 35 minutes, before ice-cream time.
:09:42. > :09:46.It's that wonderful feeling that we, as human beings, still like to play
:09:46. > :09:49.make-believe and have a dolls' house and move things around. It's
:09:49. > :09:55.far more sophisticated than that, but it's still that wonderful thing
:09:56. > :10:05.that we like to make things ourselves. So here we are now,
:10:05. > :10:11.we've got, there are ten paintings. Have you yet made your mind up?
:10:11. > :10:21.think... I have a room in my house I could fit one in. Yeah? Good,
:10:21. > :10:22.
:10:22. > :10:26.keep the door open. We'll bring them in.
:10:26. > :10:29.Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 is at the National Gallery until
:10:29. > :10:35.September 23. You can see more about the project in Imagine on BBC
:10:35. > :10:39.One next Tuesday. Now, Peace Camp is another London
:10:39. > :10:45.2012 collaboration between director Deborah Warner and actress Fiona
:10:45. > :10:52.Shaw, a celebration of both love poetry and the beauty of Britain's
:10:52. > :10:57.coastal landscape. Cerys Matthews went to find out more.
:10:57. > :11:02.The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared and mer Rhyl did we drop
:11:02. > :11:05.below... I collect poetry like I do music. I go back to my favourites
:11:05. > :11:13.time and time again. They age really well, the more you go back
:11:14. > :11:22.to them, the more they can reward. "Higher and higher every day, till
:11:22. > :11:26.over the mast at noon... # " These days lyrical poetry plays
:11:26. > :11:35.such a tiny part in our day-to-day lives, which is a shame because
:11:35. > :11:43.there's over a thousand years worth of material to plunder and enjoy. I
:11:43. > :11:50.am a wind on the sea. I am a wave of the ocean. I am the roar of the
:11:50. > :11:55.sea. I am the meaning of poetry. I am a spear on the attack. I am the
:11:55. > :12:04.God who fires your mind. This dates back to about the 11th
:12:04. > :12:08.century from the book of invasions. It's the song of Amer -- Song of
:12:08. > :12:11.Amergin. This summer one of the most
:12:11. > :12:16.intriguing commissions of the cultural Olympian is Deborah Warner
:12:16. > :12:22.and Fiona Shaw's Peace Camp, eight glowing encampments set in romantic
:12:22. > :12:26.sites in the most remote and rugged reaches of the British coastline.
:12:27. > :12:30.From the Isle of Lewis to Cornwall, Northern Ireland to Anglesey, as
:12:30. > :12:40.the sun sets, the coast will light up and start to speak to us in
:12:40. > :12:43.
:12:43. > :12:53.verse. "Sweet Heart, sweet heart, do not
:12:53. > :12:53.
:12:53. > :12:58.love too long. I loved long and long and long. And grew to be out
:12:58. > :13:02.of fashion." Here we are at the test site. It's like a dress
:13:03. > :13:08.rehearsal. It is. They're nice dresses! They look like pods, like
:13:08. > :13:12.poetry pods or eggs even. How did you hatch this idea? Well, it's
:13:12. > :13:16.really hatched by Deborah Warner, who was asked to do something like
:13:16. > :13:20.this for the Olympiad and just thought to affect landscape.
:13:20. > :13:23.Landscape is the basis of it. You have got the sea. You've got land.
:13:23. > :13:26.To make people wonder and be with themselves in land and look at land
:13:26. > :13:31.in a different way. The moment you put the pods down, you're looking
:13:31. > :13:35.at the world in a different way. You think, are there huemans in
:13:35. > :13:44.them. Are people chatting. "How many years are there left to cross
:13:44. > :13:52.over and show you things themselves, not my idea of things ." The tents
:13:52. > :13:56.contain speakers playing love poetry and music. How did you
:13:56. > :13:59.collect the poetry? I went all over the country to hear different
:14:00. > :14:09.voices and I was hoping to hear poems I didn't know before and
:14:10. > :14:11.
:14:11. > :14:17.sometimes I did. In Scotland, there was a fantastic poem called Dark
:14:18. > :14:27.Ellen. It's about a woman who says, you came and burnt down my house.
:14:28. > :14:28.
:14:28. > :14:36.Killed my brothers and sisters. You killed my father and I love you.
:14:36. > :14:40.This is a shocking kind of amoral poem which tells you everything
:14:40. > :14:44.about the unlegislated area of love in the mind. That was a really good
:14:44. > :14:54.find. Sometimes we offered poems to people, famous poems, iconic poems,
:14:54. > :14:54.
:14:54. > :14:59.you can go from Shakespeare to John Donne and Robert Burns. Going
:14:59. > :15:05.around here you can hear snippets of poetry. How did you choose?
:15:05. > :15:11.had about 560 poems recorded. You mix up these islands of England and
:15:11. > :15:21.Ireland and Scotland and Wales and make different, the sounds would
:15:21. > :15:26.
:15:26. > :15:36.bring out the truth of these "On the French coast the light
:15:36. > :15:43.
:15:43. > :15:47.gleems and is gone..." Musician Mel Mercier has created an on site
:15:47. > :15:56.sound escape. I'm trying to create an environment or texture in which
:15:56. > :16:06.the poems can live so that the voices then are really like music.
:16:06. > :16:08.
:16:08. > :16:12.I love the way twouf pieces of poetry and one line from one a
:16:12. > :16:17.familiar one and a poem I don't know but it makes you look at them
:16:17. > :16:21.different. Absolutely. A lot is that by listening to the seniority
:16:22. > :16:26.of the voices and seeing which ones work well together and then they
:16:26. > :16:31.start a dialogue with each other and it's really unexpected and you
:16:31. > :16:38.hear the reasonances from one being amplified by the other and they
:16:38. > :16:48.cross over each other. I feel like I am on some mad moonscape and
:16:48. > :16:56.
:16:56. > :17:00.start to work like you have no I sometimes feel when you say the
:17:00. > :17:03.word poetry, it's like the word jazz, it repels people more than it
:17:03. > :17:07.can attract people. How do you think people are going to react to
:17:07. > :17:12.this? I hope that they'll come with a bottle of beer in their hand or a
:17:12. > :17:15.glass and I hope they'll wander and I hope they don't speak too much to
:17:15. > :17:21.their mates, just listen and see what they hear and nobody's trying
:17:21. > :17:25.to teach them anything. You are are just trying to evoke a pit of you,
:17:25. > :17:29.the erotic bit of you, the bit that's lost love or gained love or
:17:29. > :17:33.wants to love and these poems hold the memory of all the people who
:17:33. > :17:43.have loved. So you are plugging into a lot of love. If ever any
:17:43. > :17:44.
:17:44. > :17:51.beauty out at sea which I desired and got, it was but a dream of
:17:51. > :17:57.And you can join the Peace Camp at various locations around the UK
:17:57. > :18:01.from tomorrow until Sunday. Next, two huge oil tanks
:18:01. > :18:08.decommissioned since 981 will now be used to house performance and
:18:08. > :18:14.live art at Tate Modern. Alice ter Souke went to survey the gallery's
:18:14. > :18:18.sleek new spaces. Huge underground tanks, formerly
:18:18. > :18:21.used to hold millions of litres of oil which fuelled one of London's
:18:21. > :18:30.biggest power stations. Certainly not your average location
:18:30. > :18:34.to house exhibitions. For the past two years Tate Modern
:18:34. > :18:40.has been transforming its basement into the world's first museum space
:18:40. > :18:44.solely dedicated to life performance art and film.
:18:44. > :18:49.Live performance has always been an essential component of avant-garde
:18:49. > :18:52.culture throughout the 20th century but preserving it has been tricky
:18:52. > :18:59.for museums and galers because if you miss the show that's it, until
:18:59. > :19:02.now. The Tate's oil oil are being touted as the most exciting spaces
:19:02. > :19:08.to displace art anywhere in the world which is quite a bold claim.
:19:08. > :19:12.The big question is, can they live up to the hype?
:19:12. > :19:16.Joining me to look at one of the empty tanks is someone who's used
:19:16. > :19:26.to performing in unusual spaces, the choreographer and dancer Akram
:19:26. > :19:28.
:19:28. > :19:33.Wow, yeah. It's bigger than I thought it would be. It's
:19:33. > :19:38.incredible. I know they're if finishing touches going on outside
:19:39. > :19:43.but that atrium, I wasn't entirely convinced by but this feels like a
:19:43. > :19:49.coherent, nicely concentrated focused space. I like also is it's
:19:49. > :19:51.circular and it's rare you get that, it feels like you are back in the
:19:51. > :19:55.gladator era where people can sit around but it has huge
:19:55. > :20:01.possibilities. Immediately you feel that? You are thinking if I were
:20:01. > :20:05.making a work here I would utilise the fact it's in the round?
:20:05. > :20:08.course, you are 360 degrees. I thought OK the audience is going to
:20:08. > :20:11.be around and them looking towards the centre, the gravitas is towards
:20:11. > :20:15.the centre. Yeah, it's extraordinary. I quite like the
:20:15. > :20:19.fact these tanks have a real purpose. They will be for live
:20:19. > :20:22.performance and filmworks, but I did wonder before coming whether
:20:22. > :20:26.they would feel austere, like a Castle but like a Castle dungeon
:20:26. > :20:29.where you are shunted off into the depths, the bowels of the building.
:20:29. > :20:33.How do you feel about that? first place I look is for the
:20:33. > :20:37.dungeon and I always wished I had a basement. It's very private and you
:20:37. > :20:42.are below everything else that's happening above, the creativity but
:20:42. > :20:45.in a sense what's wonderful, if you think of it conceptually is
:20:45. > :20:50.everything starts from the roots. In a sense, maybe what happens here
:20:50. > :20:53.will influence what happens above. What's beautiful about live art,
:20:53. > :20:57.it's important to have the intimacy, to feel you are sharing the same
:20:57. > :21:01.space. In a traditional theatre you are - the stage is separate to you
:21:01. > :21:07.and you are in the audience here, even if you stand on the side I
:21:07. > :21:11.feel I am part of the work. Akram and I were given a sneak
:21:11. > :21:15.preview of rehearsals for the first performance in the South Tank, a
:21:15. > :21:25.reworking of a minimalist dance piece by the Belgian choreographer
:21:25. > :21:44.
:21:44. > :21:48.You know that piece really well. Do you feel it was at all different
:21:48. > :21:52.given that it was in a new space? have seen it many times, many
:21:52. > :21:56.places. It's definitely different. How has it changed? Because of the
:21:56. > :22:00.atmosphere of the space itself. If she had done it somewhere else,
:22:00. > :22:07.maybe the subtly might have been felt differently. It's a seminal
:22:07. > :22:10.piece of work because it's so minimal, yet so complex. It's
:22:10. > :22:20.extremely complex in its simplicity. I think that's the best way to
:22:20. > :22:29.
:22:29. > :22:32.How much does the space where you are making a work, define what the
:22:32. > :22:35.work is? At the moment you are doing something which is the
:22:35. > :22:41.opposite of intimate. You are doing a piece for the opening ceremony of
:22:41. > :22:45.the Olympics. With the Olympics I made it outside the stadium, but we
:22:45. > :22:50.are kind of rehearsing in the stadium and when we do you have to
:22:50. > :22:54.reshape the whole choreography and rechange stuff for it to be - to be
:22:54. > :23:03.in the right format for a stadium. I think the same goes here, you
:23:03. > :23:08.know. We are used to traditionally used to a proscenium theatre, where
:23:08. > :23:11.there is a space, there's a fourth wall and that's the audience. Here,
:23:11. > :23:17.it's hard not to be influenced because you don't know where the
:23:17. > :23:21.audience is. Focusing on film and live live performance art feels
:23:21. > :23:25.timely as these artforms have become increasingly fashionable.
:23:25. > :23:31.They feel refreshingly independent of the art market. The new spaces
:23:31. > :23:39.at Tate Modern aim to show a diverse body of work. In the South
:23:39. > :23:44.Tank over 15 waoeubgs nine -- weeks nine different performance artists
:23:44. > :23:48.will engage with the space in a variety of ways. The East Tank will
:23:48. > :23:58.be dedicated to one piece of work, the first commission is a complex
:23:58. > :24:03.
:24:03. > :24:10.video installation by the south I think the transformation of these
:24:10. > :24:13.two tanks is rather special. I am pleased that at last Tait has this
:24:13. > :24:18.permanent bastion to two aspects of contemporary art and performance
:24:18. > :24:21.and film that are potentially more vulnerable because they're
:24:22. > :24:25.ephemeral. I think there may be a risk that these distinctive spaces
:24:25. > :24:30.will dominate whatever is shown within them, but they still throb
:24:30. > :24:39.with drama and possibility. And I am excited to see how artists in
:24:39. > :24:45.the future will go about using them. Now, I realise that I may not have
:24:45. > :24:49.the sporting physique necessary for a relay race but a Hansel film is a
:24:49. > :24:55.movie marathon of short films taking place from Shetland to
:24:56. > :24:58.Southampton and back. I was eager to pick up the baton in Berwick-
:24:58. > :25:03.upon-Tweed and get up to speed with their progress so far.
:25:03. > :25:07.For the last five weeks a group of energetic Brits have been involved
:25:07. > :25:10.in a nationwide relay with a difference. No, not the Olympic
:25:10. > :25:15.torch, these runners have been transported hundreds of short films
:25:15. > :25:20.around the country. It's not a competition, but a celebration of
:25:20. > :25:25.home grown local cinema. And let's not forget mighty oaks from little
:25:25. > :25:29.acorns grow. A young Christopher Nolan used
:25:29. > :25:33.short film to experiment with surreal special effects. Tim Burton
:25:34. > :25:41.to sketch out his gothic fantasy world.
:25:41. > :25:44.And hart-you hart--- hard-hitting realist to win an Oscar. The short
:25:44. > :25:49.film offerings from Hansel's Hollywood wannabes will be
:25:49. > :25:54.transported torch-like around 23 arts venues in the UK. The relay
:25:54. > :25:58.culminates in a roundup of 100-odd films at the annual film festival
:25:58. > :26:04.screenplay which I co-curate. Hansel is a Shetland word for gift,
:26:04. > :26:06.the sharing of each community's cinematic fair at the heart of this
:26:06. > :26:10.project. Creativity has been seeping from the walls of every
:26:10. > :26:20.town along the way. Around 300 film-makers have submitted work and
:26:20. > :26:30.so far we have had poetic pieces, darkly comic motion animations, and
:26:30. > :26:32.
:26:32. > :26:42.poignant documentaries. One of my personal favourites is
:26:42. > :26:55.
:26:55. > :27:00.Stkopl by Asockalypse. Guys, stop It's shaping up as a Hansel of film
:27:00. > :27:09.favourite, tell me about making it. It's obviously Night of The Living
:27:09. > :27:12.Dead. You were originally going to call it? Night of The Linen Dead.
:27:12. > :27:16.We made it entirely inside a washing machine box so we got the
:27:16. > :27:21.packaging and built the room inside there. You get four people crammed
:27:21. > :27:26.into a washing machine box and a camera in there. They weren't
:27:26. > :27:30.related but they might as well have been. There's been a great response
:27:30. > :27:35.to the Hansel callout for short films, why do you make them because
:27:35. > :27:39.you have ambitions to be a feature film-maker or do you enjoy making
:27:39. > :27:43.short film themselves? I suppose it beats stamp collecting. The calibre
:27:43. > :27:52.of short films is truly impressive and I am intrigued to see what's on
:27:52. > :27:57.offer at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Yes, here comes James with the
:27:57. > :28:07.films for tonight! Hello, James. You have the reel for to us take.
:28:07. > :28:12.
:28:12. > :28:16.Can I take it off you. Ladies and Hansel 2012 features a diverse
:28:16. > :28:26.range of films, like this heartfelt drama About A Boy who sacrifices
:28:26. > :28:33.
:28:33. > :28:43.Young presenter Henry debuts in this touching nature documentary.
:28:43. > :28:47.Like a blink, they have gone and to me, that means end of summer.
:28:47. > :28:51.Each screening is a unique window into the communities involved. As
:28:51. > :28:54.this one ends, it's time for me to pass the baton on.
:28:54. > :29:02.This is the musical leg of the journey. You are going to play the
:29:02. > :29:10.films out from here and then on to the Skipton. Take it away.
:29:10. > :29:13.MUSIC The thing I love about short film-
:29:13. > :29:18.making is it's so democratic. Anyone can do it and right now it
:29:18. > :29:21.seems that everyone is. And they're not doing it to make money or as a
:29:21. > :29:31.step on a career ladder, they're making short films for the sake of
:29:31. > :29:34.
:29:34. > :29:39.making them and that is something You can catch up with the Hansel of
:29:39. > :29:44.film at locations around the UK until September 7th. That's about
:29:44. > :29:50.it for this week, but if you need another culture fix go to the