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Front Row: Moffie director Oliver Hermanus, Sharon D Clarke, Lesbian visibility, Anna Meredith

23/04/2020

Moffie director Oliver Hermanus, Sharon D Clarke, Lesbian visibility, Anna Meredith

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Moffie director Oliver Hermanus, Sharon D Clarke, Lesbian visibility, Anna Meredith

Director Oliver Hermanus and Sharon D. Clarke on World Book Night.

Oliver Hermanus on his new South African film Moffie, Lesbian Visibility Week, Sharon D. Clarke on World Book Night and Anna Meredith's body-percussion piece Handsfree.

Oliver Hermanus's new film about a gay teenage conscript and his brutal experience of being in the South African army during Apartheid is called Moffie, a common Afrikaans anti-gay slur. He tells us how a fear of homosexuality fuelled the problem of toxic masculinity that is still so prevalent in the country, and why he used such a provocative title for his film. 

This week is Lesbian Visibility Week and we’ll be considering how far LGBTQ+ campaigning progress has extended to the visibility of lesbians and lesbian relationships across books, film and TV, with Erica Gillingham, bookseller at London’s Gay’s The Word bookshop and Emma Smart, programmer for the BFI’s Flare Festival of queer cinema.

Tonight is World Book Night, the annual celebration of books and writing that aims to encourage more adults to read for pleasure. Sharon D. Clarke, best known to TV audiences as Grace O'Brien in Doctor Who, will be joining Samira to read an excerpt from one of World Book Night’s specially chosen titles, Bedtime Stories for Stressed Out Adults. Digital copies of the book are available free via a link on the Front Row website.  

As the recent Thursday evening tradition of ClapForCarers continues shortly after we come off air, composer Anna Meredith discusses Handsfree, her instrument-free, 'body-percussion' piece which involves extensive clapping, which has been performed many times around the world and was included as part of the 2012 Proms Season.

Main image: Kai Luke Brummer (Left) and Ryan de Villiers in the film Moffie
Image credit: Daniel Rutland Manners/Curzon Artificial Eye

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Jerome Weatherald
Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald

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Moffie director Oliver Hermanus, Sharon D Clarke, Lesbian visibility, Anna Meredith

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