The Film Programme

The Film Programme this week features ill -fated romance, outer space and excessive drinking. So something for everyone! Francine Stock talks to Withnail's creator, Bruce Robinson about his return to directing with The Rum Diary starring Johnny Depp; Errol Morris will be discussing his new documentary --Tabloid -- about Joyce McKinney the former beauty queen known to some readers and newspaper editors in the Seventies as the woman at the centre of the sex in chains scandal;and Fish Tank's director Andrea Arnold explains her involvement with Wuthering Heights. Then to round it all off the critic Nigel Floyd revisits the cult science fiction film, Silent Running which gave Bruce Dern his first lead role as a kind of cosmic gardener.Producer: Zahid Warley. Presenter FRANCINE STOCK.

Francine Stock meets three of the biggest stars in American cinema -- Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Landis and Miranda July. Philip Seymour Hoffman will be discussing his debut as a director, Jack Goes Boating and the challenge of playing a man whose integrity is matched by his diffidence. Miranda July offers a few tips on how to navigate the charming but quirky world of The Future where cats speak and time stands still; and John Landis - the director of An American Werewolf in London and Michael Jackson's Thriller video -- explains why he's always been fascinated by monsters in the movies. The critic, Andrew Collins, will also be popping in to evaluate the nominations for this year's British Independent Film Awards - and what they say about the health of our film industry.Producer: Zahid Warley.

Francine Stock meets with director Roland Emmerich whose new film Anonymous claims William Shakespeare is not the man behind the plays. Is George Clooney a future President of the United States of America? His character in the Ides of March is hoping to go all the way to the White House - at any cost. The man behind the film Beau Willimon discusses the grubby game of getting elected. Mexican filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo explains why his film Miss Bala is a desperate plea to the Mexican authorities to rid his country of organised crime. Analogue film made by the old photochemical process is fast becoming a thing of the past. It's been announced that a trio of leading film camera manufacturers - Arri, Panavision and Aaton - have made their last. Paul J Franklin - the man responsible for the onscreen wizardry of Christopher Nolan's Batman films - laments its demise. Producer: Craig Smith.

In a special edition of the Film Programme Francine Stock and guests travel back four decades to what might be the most extraordinary year in American cinema - 1971. The year that saw the release of such films as Klute, The Last Picture Show, The French Connection and Carnal Knowledge. Filmmakers James Watkins and Marc Evans explain how they have been influenced by films from that era. Director Jerry Schatzberg discusses his film from 1971, The Panic in Needle Park, starring Al Pacino in his first major film role. Contributions also from critic Joe Queenan, professor Ed Guerrero, Cybill Shepherd and director William Friedkin.

Presenter Francine Stock talks to Tilda Swinton about her role as the mother spurned in the film adaptation of We Need To Talk About Kevin, directed by Lynne Ramsay. What happens when a group of Swedish journalists comes face to face with the Black Power movement? Director Göran Olsson explains all. Julia Leigh discusses her erotically charged debut Sleeping Beauty. 2011 is fast becoming a record-breaking year for British cinema but we reveal why this week is not a good week to be releasing your much slaved-over masterpiece. Producer: Craig Smith.

Francine Stock travels to Manhattan for an extended interview with the supreme exponent of screen neurosis in the 1970s and beyond, Woody Allen, currently enjoying his biggest box office success in years with Midnight in Paris. Producer: Craig Smith.

Francine Stock talks to Lars von Trier about his new film Melancholia starring Kirsten Dunst as depressed bride Justine and Charlotte Gainsbourg as her sister Claire, responding in their different ways to their imminent annihilation - a rogue planet is hurtling towards earth and there is nothing they can do to stop it. John Madden reveals the details of his new spy thriller The Debt starring Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds. The film is set in Israel in the 1990s with extensive flashback to Berlin in the 60s when the protagonists, a trio of Mossad agents, were tasked with finding an influential Nazi doctor who had slipped back into civilian life after the war. It's a fictional film but its plot is no more fantastic than some of the real life scenarios which it resembles. Ali Samadi Ahadi discusses his film documenting the protests in Iran in 2009, The Green Wave. Against expectations elections held in that year reinforced the power of the ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Protestor

If you fancy a change of gear or need your batteries charging The Film Programme is the place for you. Francine Stock talks to Nicholas Winding Refn about his new film, Drive, starring Ryan Gosling as a stuntman who drives getaway cars in his spare time. He falls for the wife of a criminal played by Carey Mulligan and soon falls foul of the local gangsters. Its a turbo-charged ride and shares the fascination with violence evident in Refn's earlier work. Drive's 21st century sheen is more than matched by the vision of Humphrey Jennings...the man Lindsay Anderson described as the only poet of British cinema. A collection of films from the beginning of his career is being released on DVD for the first time this month and Francine Stock is joined by Jennings' biographer, Kevin Jackson, to assess them and their place in his achievement. There's also an interview with Andrew Rossi who went undercover to produce Page One, a documentary about the New York Times and Neil Brand is on hand to diagnose some of your leas

Who can forget James Dean in Rebel without a Cause or Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame in the thriller, In a Lonely Place. Come to that who can forget the man who directed them both - Nicholas Ray? Ray was one of the Hollywood greats and was hero- worshipped by the French New Wave but he ended his career away from the limelight at a college in upstate New York where he made a multi-screen experimental feature with his students - We Can't Go Home Again. This has now been restored and is on release for the first time. Francine Stock discusses the film and its split screen experiments with Mike Figgis, director of Time Code and asks Ray's widow, Susan about her documentary examining the evolution and legacy of her husband's last project. Francine will also be talking to Celine Sciamma, the writer and director of Tomboy - an exciting new film from France which vibrates with childhood's sense of self invention and features two dazzling central performances, one by a six year old girl - and to round things off Fr

Spy fever is about to grip the nation so if you want to steal a march on your rivals listen to the Film Programme with Francine Stock. She'll be talking to Gary Oldman about playing George Smiley in Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy - the John le Carre novel that thrilled audiences when it was adapted for television in 1979 with Sir Alec Guinness in the starring role. The director of the brand new cinema version,Tomas Alfredson, will also be in the studio. He made his name with the brilliant vampire feature, Let the Right One In and he'll be explaining what drew him to the project and how the idea of damp tweed acted as the inspiration for the film's period aesthetic. For an assessment of where the film sits in Britain's venerable tradition of espionage movies, Francine will then be turning to the film historian, Ian Christie. She'll also be examining the health of the industry with two insiders - the cinema owner, Kevin Markwick and the analyst, Michael Gubbins and as West Side Story celebrates its 50th anniversa

Pack your bags..Francine Stock is wearing her travelling shoes. First stop is the North of England to meet Moira Buffini's new Jane Eyre. Then its off to the Continent with Martin Scorsese for a guided tour of the commanding heights of Italian cinema - among them Rossellini, Visconti, Fellini and Antonioni. On the way back we'll be stopping off in the Greece of Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg -- a brilliant, playful feature about sex, grief and the passing of the old order inspired by the wild life documentaries of Sir David Attenborough. To finish we're back in Blighty with artist Gillian Wearing's powerful and disturbing film, Self Made - an exploration of identity as well as a kind of exorcism.That's all in this week's Film Programme with Francine Stock.Producer: Zahid Warley.

Leading ladies hog the limelight in this week's Film Programme with Matthew Sweet. Anne Hathaway talks about mastering a Yorkshire accent for her role as Emma in the celluloid version of David Nicholls' much loved book, One Day and Elena Anaya discusses the challenges of acting for Pedro Almodovar in his disturbing new feature, The Skin I Live In... a sort of cross between Frankenstein and Jane Eyre if you can imagine that! There's also the concluding part of Mark Gatiss' world of horror series. This week he's in India for the extraordinary Bollywood film, Mahal. And then last, but certainly by no means least - there's Jonathan Balcon - whose father Michael was the driving force behind Ealing Studios. Jonathan paints a picture of his father and reflects on the ethos which inspired films such as Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Lavender Hill Mob, two of the Ealing classics that have been re-released on DVD this summer. Producer: Zahid Warley.

The Film Programme this week is all about odd but exhilirating couples. Harrison Ford talks about his new film, Cowboys & Aliens and resists attempts to suggest he has anything in common with John Wayne; the writer and comedian Mark Gatiss shares his guilty pleasure in Coffin Joe - the star of an extraordinary Brazilian horror which glories in the title Tonight I Will Possess Your Corpse; and the film historian Jeffrey Richards and the critic Karen Krizanovich vie with each other to come up with the weirdest pairings in film titles from the past. To round things off Matthew also hears how Britain's blonde bombshell, Vera Day, sent Marilyn Monroe into a spin when she appeared on the set of Laurence Olivier's The Prince and the Showgirl.Producer: Zahid Warley.

In the Film Programme this week Matthew Sweet talks to James Marsh about Project Nim, the director's first feature since the Oscar- winning Man on Wire. It's the story of a chimpanzee taken from his mother as a baby and brought up in a human family as part of an experiment to see if he could acquire and use language. With the release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes as well this week the philosopher and cinephile, Raymond Tallis reflects on cinema's fascination with the links between apes and humans and weighs up the motives behind those involved in experiments such as Project Nim. Further afield the young French director, Romain Gavras, discusses his debut, Our Day will Come, as well as volunteering observations on rioting, nihilism and the dead hand of the New Wave on France's film culture. To round things off Mark Gatiss mounts a broomstick and whizzes off to the Russian steppes which is the latest staging post in his brief history of foreign horror. Producer: Zahid Warley.

Matthew Sweet ranges from Iraq to India and from Baghdad to Buddha in this week's Film Programme. He talks to Dominic Cooper about playing both Saddam Hussein's psychopathic son, Uday and Latif Yahia, the man forced to impersonate him in Lee Tamahori's feature, The Devil's Double. Then, having set up camp in the Middle East, Matthew investigates the background to an extraordinary film commissioned by Saddam about the end of British colonial influence in the region. With the help of two members of the cast, Marc Sinden and Nicholas Young he re-lives the experience of shooting The Great Question while the Iran-Iraq war was still in progress. His excursion to the Subcontinent is prompted by the revival of one of the landmarks of silent cinema, Light of Asia, a life of Buddha which is being showing again in a brand new print and with a brand new score. And then there's part three of Mark Gatiss' guide to foreign horror. This week he's dodging about among the chimney pots of Paris to celebrate Franju's Nuits Rouge

In this week's Film Programme Matthew Sweet talks to Hollywood royalty, Anjelica Huston. Their extended conversation embraces her latest excursion into kids films, Horrid Henry but also her reflections on Montgomery Clift, Jean Paul Sartre, Dick and Dom, her father and childhood in Ireland. She's joined by the designer, Wayne Hemingway, who shares his enthusiasm for the vintage film, Jazz on a Summer's Day and by Mark Gatiss who reveals the extraordinary story of the Spanish Dracula in the second instalment of his series about foreign horror. Producer: Zahid Warley.

Modern love is the focus in this week's film programme presented by Matthew Sweet. A septuagenarian Christopher Plummer comes out after forty years of marriage when his wife dies in Mike Mills' Beginners; Jennifer Aniston plays a randy dentist in Seth Gordon's new film, Horrible Bosses; and Rita Hayworth torments herself and Glenn Ford in the luminescent, Gilda -- King Vidor's classic film noir which has just been re-released. All are subject to scrutiny -- Matthew discusses the part autobiography plays in Beginners with the director; probes Jennifer Aniston on the need for boundaries in comedy; and muses on the femme fatale with the novelist,Linda Grant, who is passionate about Rita Hayworth. There's also the first of six trips into the weird and wonderful world of horror with the comedian and actor, Mark Gatiss. This week he takes Matthew Down Under to a terrifying nursing home where one of its residents, Patrick, casts his deadly spell. Producer: Zahid Warley.

As the Hogwarts Express prepares to chug off into the sunset Francine Stock reflects on the legacy of Harry Potter. There's an interview with David Yates, who directed the last four films in the series and you can hear some of the distinguished British actors who've given the films much of their savour. Francine will also be talking to Aidan Gillen about his role in Treacle Jnr - the new film by the much lauded independent director, Jamie Thraves who remortgaged his home to fund the feature. And Jane Asher shares her thoughts about starring in Skolimowski's cult classic, Deep End. We'll also be hearing about Martin Scorsese's programme of films for the Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall, plans to screen The Great Dictator at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and the Lexi Cinema's Nomad project which among other things will bring Fitzcarraldo to the Serpentine this summer. Producer: Zahid Warley.

Terrence Malick is one of the most thrilling and charismatic directors working in America. He's not prolific and his films - like some wine -- only seem to be released in good years. This is one of those vintage years. His new feature,The Tree of Life, is in cinemas this week and Francine Stock talks to one of its stars, Jessica Chastain, about working with Malick. Francine will also be assessing David Schwimmer's new film Trust and Bertrand Tavernier's The Princess of Montpensier. Even though the stories they tell are separated by five hundred years both focus on the enduring sexual allure of teenage girls and both act as cautionary tales. To round things off the keyboard wizard,Neil Brand, is on hand to explain how music helps to conjure the ghostly and the unseen into cinematic life.Producer: Zahid Warley.

Francine Stock meets with Tom Hanks to discuss his new comedy Larry Crowne, and reveals why smoking marijuana and watching pornography doesn't necessarily make a character irredeemable. Asghar Farhadi's A Separation was the first Iranian film to win the Golden Bear award at the Berlin film festival earlier in the year. As it gets its UK release, critic Karen Zarindast discusses this tale of a troubled marriage. Director Bob Rafelson looks back at his celebrated feature from 1970, Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson. They were the first country to send a man into space but did Russia also win the cinematic space-race? Film historian Ian Christie discusses a glut of Russian-made films inspired by the cosmos. Producer: Craig Smith.