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Samira Ahmed

Julia Hardy

Robert Hastie

Betsy Blatchley

Peter Gardner

Matt Thorne

Kate Bullivant

Dymphna Flynn

Front Row: Ready Player One, Church Ministers for the Arts, Mental Institutions in Film, The York Realist

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27/03/2018

Ready Player One, Church Ministers for the Arts, Mental Institutions in Film, The York Realist

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Ready Player One, Church Ministers for the Arts, Mental Institutions in Film, The York Realist

Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg's return to the sci-fi genre, is reviewed.

Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg's return to the sci-fi genre, is reviewed and Robert Hastie talks about The York Realist, a gay love story set in 1960s Yorkshire.

Steven Spielberg, director of films like The Post, The BFG and Bridge of Spies, returns to the science fiction genre with an action adventure set in a virtual-reality game world sometime in the future. Julia Hardy reviews the film and tells Samira whether it is a classic of the genre like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Back to the Future.

The York Realist is a play set in 1963 when John, up from London and working as assistant director on a production of the York Mystery Plays, falls for local farm-worker, George, who is also a gifted actor and capable of a brilliant career - if he could bring himself to leave. Robert Hastie comes in to talk about the play which, after an acclaimed run in London, he is taking to Yorkshire where he is Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres. 

The Church of England has just appointed a "Pioneer Minister of the Arts" who will look to use art as a way of reaching out to different communities. For centuries religion and art have had a close relationship, with many artists drawing inspiration from their faith - from religious composers to Renaissance paintings. To discuss exploring faith through art we speak to Reverend Betsy Blatchley, the new Pioneer Minister of the Arts and Reverend Peter Gardner, who has been the Church of Scotland's Pioneer Minister to the Arts Communities of Glasgow since 2016. 

Steven Soderbergh's new film Unsane stars Clare Foy as a young woman involuntarily committed to a mental institution. But how are mental institutions and hospitals usually presented in films? Novelist and journalist Matt Thorne takes a look - from the German silent horror The Cabinet of Dr Caligari in 1920 to the supernatural slasher film Cult of Chucky released last year.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Kate Bullivant.

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