BBC Two Northern Ireland

Kirsty Wark

Louise Lockwood

Matthew Springford

Welcome to Edinburgh 2017

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Welcome to Edinburgh

19/08/2017

BBC Two - Welcome to Edinburgh 2017

Kirsty Wark celebrates the best of this year's Edinburgh Festival.

Kirsty Wark celebrates the best of this year's Edinburgh Festival, now in its seventieth year, looking at how the idealism and bravura of the original 1947 festival live on today.

In 1947, the Edinburgh Festival opened its doors to the world. Conceived as a cultural event where great art would transcend political and cultural boundaries, it helped reunite the divided continent of Europe. Seventy years later it is as vibrant and provocative as ever.  
 
Kirsty Wark presents the best of this year's Edinburgh Festival and looks at how the idealism and bravura of the first festival held in 1947 continue today. She talks to world-renowned sitar player Anoushka Shankar, whose most recent album Land of Gold is a personal response to the international refugee crisis; discovers two extraordinary transgender stories in the National Theatre of Scotland's production of Adam and Eve, two plays performed by actors who tell their own real-life stories; and meets the acclaimed American novelist Paul Auster, now also in his seventieth year, to discuss his life and work and the importance of speaking out. 
 
The programme also features Don Giovanni, performed by the Budapest Festival Orchestra, a performance by FK Alexander in collaboration with Okishima Island Tourist Association, I Could Go On Singing (Over the Rainbow), and Ehsan Abdollahi, an award-winning illustrator of children's books.

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