BBC Four

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The latest news and business developments.

World News Today: 26/10/2009

26/10/2009

BBC News Channel - World News Today, 26/10/2009

The latest news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.

The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.

BBC News Channel

An impartial and independent news service offering breaking news, analysis and insight.

A 24-hour impartial and independent news service offering breaking news, analysis and insight. It provides fast and comprehensive coverage of local, UK and international events.

Inside Antiques

Inside Antiques: Episode 12: Art Deco Bronzes

Episode 12

Episode 12: Art Deco Bronzes

Art Deco Bronzes

BBC Four - Inside Antiques, Art Deco Bronzes

As the Jazz Age began, modernity and luxury held sway, and home design embraced Art Deco.

Lars Tharp looks at the age of Art Deco, ushered in at the end of the First World War and remembered by eager collectors of risque sculptures of dancing girls.

The end of the First World War heralded an explosion of optimism and forward thinking. As the Jazz Age sprang to life, modernity and luxury were the watchwords of the day. Home design embraced the age of Art Deco, popularly remembered nowadays by eager collectors of the often risque ivory and bronze sculptures of scantily clad dancing girls. Lars Tharp gets to grips with them and discovers what the Moulin Rouge, Tutankhamun and tennis have in common.

Knowledge, arts, music and culture from the UK and the world.

BBC Four reflects arts, music and culture with an ambitious range of intellectually and culturally enriching programmes, taking an expert and in-depth approach to its subjects.

Lars Tharp presents a series looking at all types of antiques

Beginning an evening of Age of Glamour programmes, Lars Tharp explores the age of Art Deco, which sprang to life at the end of the First World War and captured the optimism and forward-thinking of the period. Lars takes a closer look at risque ivory and discovers what the Moulin Rouge, Tutankhamun and tennis all have in common.

The Twenties in Colour: The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn

Series examining Albert Kahn's ambitious Archives of the Planet photography project

Series examining Albert Kahn's ambitious Archives of the Planet project, in which he sent photographers around the world to document all aspects of human life.

The Twenties in Colour

The Twenties in Colour: The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn: The Twenties in Colour: Episode 3: Far East: Expeditions to Empires

Episode 3

Episode 3: Far East: Expeditions to Empires

Far East: Expeditions to Empires

BBC Four - The Twenties in Colour: The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn, The Twenties in Colour, Far East: Expeditions to Empires

Life in the Far East captured from 1914-1928, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan and India

Series examining Albert Kahn's photography project. A record of life in the Far East from 1914-1928, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan and India.

Series examining Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet project, in which he sent photographers around the world to document major events.

Between 1914 and 1928, Kahn sent some of his most talented photographers to the Far East. In Cambodia, Vietnam and Japan, they produced a compelling photographic record of economic and cultural life, subsistence industries, and ceremonial practices, and produced a fascinating portrait of the life of a wealthy Maharajah in India during the British Raj.

The Twenties in Colour: The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn: The Twenties in Colour

The Twenties in Colour: theWonderful World of Albert Kahn

A look at the autochromes produced by Kahn's photographers during their trips to India, Dahomey (later called 
Benin), and Japan.

Glamour's Golden Age

Glamour's Golden Age: Episode 2: Beautiful and Damned

Episode 2

Episode 2: Beautiful and Damned

Beautiful and Damned

BBC Four - Glamour's Golden Age, Beautiful and Damned

The story of 1920s London's Bright Young People, a tale of sex, drink and drugs.

A look at the growth of 1920s London's bright young party set, whose sex, drink and drugs antics were enjoyed and scorned in equal measure by the gossip-hungry.

The story of 1920s London's Bright Young People is a tale of sex, drink, drugs and a gossip-hungry press. Beautiful and Damned traces the growth of 1920s London's bright young party set whose antics were enjoyed and scorned in equal measures by a watching nation. And the more artistic of the merry band - Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford among them - saw their work make the characters and attitudes of the era both legend and fable.

Contributors include Philip Hoare, DJ Taylor, Selina Hastings, Lucy Moore and Adrian Bingham.

Series looking at the 1920s and 30s, an age that was daring, influential and exciting

Series looking at the 1920s and 30s, which creates a portrait of an age so daring, influential and exciting that it still shapes who we are today

New. 2/3. Exploring the decades between the two world wars, when a cultural revolution in music, fashion and the arts occurred. Narrated by Hermione Norris. Part of the Age of Glamour strand. See panel. 
Repeated on Thursday at 8pm

The Cotton Club

29/08/2003

BBC Four - The Cotton Club

Musical drama set in 1928 that pays a visually striking tribute to the Prohibition era.

Musical drama that pays tribute to the Prohibition era. Jazz musician Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere) saves a mobster's life and gets sucked into his world of racketeering and violence.

Musical drama set in 1928 that pays a visually striking tribute to the Prohibition era.

Jazz musician Dixie Dwyer saves a gangster's life and gets sucked into the mobster's world of bootleg liquor, racketeering and escalating violence, centred round the eponymous Harlem nightclub.

Francis Coppola 's vivid evocation of Prohibition America, set around 
Harlem's dazzling nightclub scene. In 1928, jazz musician Dixie Dwyer saves the life of Dutch Schultz and suddenly becomes part of the mobster's world of bootleg liquor, racketeering and escalating violence. Film of the Day: page 43.  
Director Francis Coppola (1984,15)

Feasts

Feasts: Episode 1: India

Episode 1

Episode 1: India

India

BBC Four - Feasts, India

In India, Stefan Gates experiences the festival of Onam and takes part in the tiger dance.

Stefan Gates takes part in feasts and festivals around the globe. In India, he attends an expensive Rajasthani Hindu wedding and experiences the bewildering festival of Onam.

Series in which food writer and presenter Stefan Gates immerses himself in some of the most extraordinary feasts and festivals on earth. By joining ordinary people in these strange and wonderful distillations of their culture and beliefs, he hopes to gain a revelatory insight into how the world thinks and feels. 

Stefan makes a journey across India to discover how feasts and celebration divide - and bring together - a turbulent nation that can be riven by religious tension and extremes of wealth.  

He is shocked to see how much extravagance and social engineering there is in an expensive showpiece Rajasthani Hindu wedding, yet how little emotion is actually expressed. These events are spectacular, and the scale is terrifying for a father of two young daughters.

In Kerala, Stefan experiences the bewildering festival of Onam, a Hindu celebration that brings this massive state of millions of people together, Hindu and Christian, rich and poor alike. Over several days he joins almost all of the entire 32m population in sitting down to exactly the same meal - an 11-portion feast eaten with fingers from a banana leaf.

Stefan joins in the Pulikali, the tiger dance, and is apparently he first westerner ever to take part. It is  the most physically uncomfortable, gruesome day of his life. He has his body hair shaved off with a dry razor, then spends five hours being painted with several layers of household gloss paint, holding on to two sticks to keep his arms outstretched as he dries out. He is then covered in a sweaty, sticky mask and a pair of bordello pants, and packed off into the streets to join his team in dancing like a maniac around the baking-hot streets of the city of Thrissur for four hours.

Food writer Stefan Gates immerses himself in extraordinary feasts and festivals

Series in which food writer and TV presenter Stefan Gates immerses himself in some of the most extraordinary feasts and festivals on earth

Feasts: triple bill

Feasts: Episode 2: Japan

Episode 2: Japan

Japan

BBC Four - Feasts, Japan

Stefan joins the Naked Man festival, which sees him eat, drink and remove clothing.

Stefan Gates takes part in feasts and festivals around the globe. In Japan, he joins the Naked Man festival, which involves much drinking, eating and the removal of clothing.

Series in which food writer and presenter Stefan Gates immerses himself in some of the most extraordinary feasts and festivals on earth. By joining ordinary people in these strange and wonderful distillations of their culture and beliefs, he hopes to gain a revelatory insight into how the world thinks and feels. 

Stefan attempts to get under the skin of the traditional Japanese reserve by joining in some amazing feasts and festivals, a journey which culminates with Stefan and 10,000 Japanese men wearing nothing but loin cloths in a drunken rampage at a sacred Shinto temple.

He starts his trip by helping a Shinto priestess carry a six-foot wooden penis around a suburb of Tokyo, as she bemoans how kids today seem to have lost their traditional Japanese reserve, before joining the Baby Sumo festival where parents compete to get their children to cry first, to give them good luck for the rest of their lives. 

Finally, he embarks on the most extraordinary event of his life - the Naked Man festival. He meets up with Mr Kosaki, a man from the classic Japanese mould who has never told his wife he loves her, who has forsaken his love of music to become a salaryman, and whose work consumes his life. He is as different from Stefan as anyone could hope to be, until his friends arrive and everything changes. 

They get wildly drunk, practically naked, and stuff themselves with sushi. Then those still standing head off on a terrifying, barrier-wrecking festival that finally allows the Japanese man to reveal himself as passionate, expressive and loving as anyone. It is all rooted in centuries of Shinto food-related tradition, but is really a huge primal scream from men who spend their days unable to express themselves.

Feasts: Episode 3: Mexico

Episode 3: Mexico

Mexico

BBC Four - Feasts, Mexico

Stefan experiences a teenager's coming-of-age ceremony and the Day of the Dead festival.

Stefan Gates takes part in feasts and festivals around the globe. In Mexico, he experiences a teenage girl's bizarre coming-of-age ceremony and the Day of the Dead festival.

Series in which food writer and presenter Stefan Gates immerses himself in some of the most extraordinary feasts and festivals on earth. By joining ordinary people in these strange and wonderful distillations of their culture and beliefs, he hopes to gain a revelatory insight into how the world thinks and feels. 

Stefan goes on a wild emotional and spiritual rollercoaster ride, starting with a teenage girl's bizarre coming-of-age ceremony and ending with the Day of the Dead, a cacophonous cross-cultural festival of the senses during which Mexicans truly believe that their loved ones come back from the dead for three days every year to spend the day with them. 

In Oaxaca, he is dressed up as a dead woman and made to dance like a lunatic at the head of a procession as it makes its way through town. He is turned into an emotional wreck at the moment the dead return, bursting into tears as Dias de los Muertos makes him experience grief and loss for the first time. 

But then in the next breath, the family Stefan is living with teach him to celebrate and laugh at death.  They turn his views on their head, allowing him to embrace and conquer his fear of death through an extraordinary sensual onslaught of food, flowers, songs and smells. The sight of the graveyards overflowing with flowers and mescal-drinking revellers is a truly life-changing experience.

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Feasts

Episode 2: Japan

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Feasts

Episode 3: Mexico

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