Front Row

Sonia Boyce’s exhibition, Feeling Her Way, won the top prize at the Venice Biennale international art fair. As the sound, video and wallpaper installation arrives at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, Sonia tells Samira why she wanted to form her own girl band and help them to achieve imperfection through improvisation.

Director Colm Bairéad on his film The Quiet Girl – a small scale Irish-language drama, but the highest grossing Irish-language film in history, and the first to be nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, and BAFTA nominated for Best Film Not In The English Language and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Equity general secretary Paul Fleming and freelance theatre director Kate Wasserberg discuss the ongoing problem of low pay and poor conditions in the UK theatre sector.

Artistic director and chief executive of Oldham Coliseum, Chris Lawson, discusses the decision to cancel its programme of shows after losing its Arts Council England funding.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main Image - Sonia Boyce courtesy of the artist and Simon Lee Gallery. Photographer: Parisa Taghizadeh

Beethoven’s love life has long fascinated music scholars primarily because so little is known about it despite some tantalising clues. In his new book, Why Beethoven, music critic Norman Lebrecht, identifies the dedicatee of Beethoven’s well-loved melody Für Elise, while Jessica Duchen has written a novel, Immortal, which provides one answer to the question, who was Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”? Both join Front Row to discuss why their explorations bring us closer to the composer.

Garry Lyons on his new play Blow Down at Leeds Playhouse, written to mark the demolition of the iconic cooling towers at Ferrybridge Power Station. It’s based on stories collected from people in Knottingley and Ferrybridge in Yorkshire. Blow Down will go on tour with performances in theatres and community centres across Yorkshire and the North East.

A new film about Mahatma Gandhi and his assassin Nathuram Godse has caused some controversy in India. Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh (War of Ideologies) imagines a world in which Gandhi survived and went on to debate with Godse, a premise that some have found offensive. Director Rajkumar Santoshi discusses the reaction to his film and BBC journalist Vandana Vijay explains why there’s increased sensitivity around some movies in India at the moment.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Director Sarah Polley discusses her latest film, Women Talking, nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Based on the true story of the women in a remote Mennonite colony who discovered men had been attacking the women in their community, the film focuses on their debate about what to do next.

Deep Fake Neighbour Wars, the new ITVX comedy which uses digital technology to place international celebrities in suburban Britain, arrives at a time when the technology is under increasing scrutiny. Zoe Kleinman, the BBC’s Technology Editor, and television critic Scott Bryan review and discuss the issues raised by the new series.

Swedish and Sami novelist Ann-Helen Laestadius talks about her bestselling novel, Stolen – a portrait of the plight of the reindeer-herding Indigenous Sámi people.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Karen Krizanovich and Michael Billington to review The Fabelmans and the 40th anniversary production of Noises Off.

Steven Spielberg’s new film, The Fabelmans, is a portrait of the artist as a young man, chronicling the development of Sam Fabelman, a boy drawn irresistibly to film-making. He finds meaning, and achieves some power, through his art. Critics Karen Krizanovich and Michael Billington assess Spielberg’s fictional autobiography.

They also review the fortieth anniversary production of Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s farce about a troubled touring company putting on a farce, as it opens in the West End with a cast including Felicity Kendal, Tracy-Ann Oberman and Joseph Millson.

Director Joe Cornish, best known for his sci-fi comedy Attack the Block, talks about heading up a new TV drama series Lockwood and Co. Based on the young adult novels by Jonathan Stroud, it follows a group of teenage ghost hunters.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Melanie C, aka Sporty Spice, is best known for being in one of the most successful girl groups of all time. But this week she’s swapping the pop world for the dance world and performing a new contemporary piece by the choreographer Jules Cunningham at Sadler’s Wells. Melanie C and Jules Cunningham discuss their collaboration, How Did We Get Here?

Rasha Nahas is a Palestinian singer-songwriter who was born in Haifa and now lives in Berlin. She tells Samira about her new album, Amrat, which is her first album in Arabic, and which explores nostalgia, sense of place, and the importance of authentic instrumental music.

Film-maker Laura Poitras talks about her new documentary, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which has been nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. Following the photographer Nan Goldin’s campaign against Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, for their part in the opioid crisis, the film paints an intimate portrait of Goldin’s life, work and activism.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Photo of Mel C, Harry Alexander and Jules Cunningham credit: Camilla Greenwell

John Akomfrah was announced today as the artist chosen to represent the UK at the next Venice Biennale - the world's biggest contemporary art exhibition. Known for his films and video installations exploring racial injustice, colonial legacies, migration and climate change, he discusses why watching a Tarkovsky film as a teenager opened his mind to the possibilities of art.

Film critics Jason Solomon and Leila Latif discuss the nominations for this year's Oscars, which are led by Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, and All Quiet of the Western Front.

Darren Henley, Arts Council England Chief Executive, responds to criticism the organisation has been facing since its new funding settlement was announced last November.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Main Image: John Akomfrah at his London studio, 2016

Jenna Coleman (Clara in Dr Who) and Aidan Turner (Poldark) are appearing in a new production of Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons at The Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End, before touring to Manchester and Brighton. Playwright Sam Steiner tells Samira Ahmed about his romantic comedy in which the characters are restricted to speaking just 140 words a day. And the director, Josie Rourke, talks about bringing the play to the stage, and how, in the theatre, language isn’t everything.

Alice Farnham, one of Britain’s leading conductors and the co-founder and artistic director of Women Conductors with the Royal Philharmonic Society, shares insights from her new book, In Good Hands- The Making of a Modern Conductor.

And the filmmaking duo Tom Berkeley and Ross White join Samira to discuss their Bafta nominated short film An Irish Goodbye.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Image: Aidan Turner as Oliver and Jenna Coleman as Bernadette in Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons at The Harold Pinter Theatre

Samira Ahmed and guests Maria Delgado and Isabel Stevens review two of the week’s top cultural picks.

They discuss a new exhibition of Spanish art, Spain and the Hispanic World, at the Royal Academy in London and Holy Spider, a film by Iranian director Ali Abbasi based on the true story of a serial killer in the holy city of Mashhad in 2001.

Blind artist Clarke Reynolds talks about his exhibition The Power of Touch and explains how he’s creating colourful tactile braille art for both blind and sighted audiences to enjoy.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Picture Credit: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Duchess of Alba, 1797, From the exhibition Spain and the Hispanic World: Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, Royal Academy of Arts

A new exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield celebrates the relationship that two of the UK’s greatest sculptors, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, had with the Yorkshire landscape they grew up in. Eleanor Clayton, the curator of the exhibition, Magic in this Country, joins the landscape photographer Kate Kirkwood - who has just published a new book, Cowspines, that blends the landscape of the Lake District with the backs of the cows that graze upon it – to discuss the power of landscape to draw an artist’s eye.

John McCusker discusses and performs live from his new ‘Best of ‘Album, which celebrates his 30-year career as one of Scotland’s most acclaimed fiddle players and musical collaborators.

Writer of fiction and poetry Victoria MacKenzie tells Shahidha Bari about her first novel, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, which is based on the lives of two extraordinary, trail-blazing fourteenth-century Christian mystics, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Main image from Cowspines by Kate Kirkwood

Over the last three weeks Front Row has broadcast a poem by each of the 10 writers shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry. The winner was announced last night: Anthony Joseph, for his collection Sonnets for Albert. Anthony talks to Samira Ahmed about his sequence of sonnets exploring his relationship with his often absent father, winning the prize and the attraction of the sonnet form.

Research from the film charity Birds Eye View shows that the number of female made films released in UK cinemas fell by 6% last year. The charity’s director Melanie Iredale and film director Sally El Hosaini discuss why women are failing to progress in the UK film industry.

Books about witches and witchcraft are increasingly popular, with several new novels published this year. Authors Emilia Hart, Kirsty Logan and Anya Bergman, who have all written about witches, explain why this subject matter provided such a rich source of inspiration.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed