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Front Row: Film director Alice Wu, writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, the allure of Golden Brown and baritone Peter Brathwaite remakes paintings

05/05/2020

Film director Alice Wu, writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, the allure of Golden Brown and baritone Peter Brathwaite remakes paintings

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Film director Alice Wu, writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, the allure of Golden Brown and baritone Peter Brathwaite remakes paintings

Alice Wu on her film, The Half of It, a queer love triangle based on Cyrano de Bergerac.

Alice Wu on her film, The Half of It; Frank Cottrell Boyce and Maryanne Woolf on why it is so difficult now to concentrate on a book; baritone Peter Brathwaite remaking paintings.

Writer and director Alice Wu talks to Samira Ahmed about her new film, The Half of It, a queer love triangle that draws on the Cyrano de Bergerac story. Set in small town America, the film explores the Asian American experience and navigating love, friendship and fitting in at High School. 

Among the anxieties associated with the coronavirus pandemic many readers are finding it more and more difficult to concentrate on a book. But the modern adult's ability to concentrate has been under pressure from the myriad sources of digital text we confront  daily. To explore the psychology and neurology of modern reading, Samira is joined by author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce and academic Maryanne Woolf, author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. 

When the baritone Peter Brathwaite's opera engagements were cancelled because of the pandemic he took up the Getty Museum's challenge to remake  paintings with household objects. He searches for works featuring black people and what began as a pastime has developed into a serious artistic project winning wide attention. He tells Samira Ahmed what has drawn him to this, how he goes about it and what he has learned.

The Stranglers' keyboard player Dave Greenfield died on Sunday having been infected with the coronavirus. He wrote their best-known song, Golden Brown, which, involving a harpsichord an eddying melody and varying time signatures, is an unusual work for a punk band. Composer and Radio 3 presenter Hannah Peel explains the allure of this sophisticated piece, which depends on a strange rhythm shift, from 12/8 to 13/8.

And The Nan and Elsie Transcripts, a micro-psychodrama recorded remotely by members of the BBC's Radio Drama Company.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Julian May

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Film director Alice Wu, writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, the allure of Golden Brown and baritone Peter Brathwaite remakes paintings

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